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By THE CAPITAL EDITORIAL BOARD IT HARDLY SOUNDS dangerous: 3.45 millimeters, the average annual increase in the water level at Annapolis, is only about 0.14 inches. To look at it another way: The type on this editorial (on the lines without paragraph indentations) is 80 millimeters wide. So, at the rate things have been going for the last century, it will take more than 23 years for the water to rise the width of this editorial, and more than 85 years for it to rise the width of the type on this page. Could that be anything to worry about? Well, yes, over the long haul, it could. Especially as scientists say sea levels in the Chesapeake Bay are rising at nearly double the worldwide rate, and that the rate may increase drastically over the next century, worsening shoreline erosion. An increase in Annapolis' water levels of 2 feet by 2100 could put a rather sizable crimp into good times in the Land of Pleasant Living, in addition to making City Dock as flood-prone as anything in Venice. Everything our society builds rests on the tacit assumption that things on this planet will stay pretty much the way they've always been. That's not always a safe bet. For all our society's vaunted legal expertise, no one has gotten the planet to guarantee in writing that the comfortable status quo will continue -- or made it guarantee that it will compensate for harm we ourselves unwittingly cause. Water levels and erosion are not at the top of any state politician's priority list. After all, politicians live, if not day-by-day, then election-by-election. Who wants to spend energy and political capital on a problem that is growing so slowly that it is, in effect, invisible -- and that it may not be possible to do much about anyway? But state lawmakers did commission a task force that reported, in January, that 31 percent of the state's 4,360 miles of coastline is experiencing some degree of erosion, and that sea-level increases and coastal development make the problem worse. As there is no funding for more statewide study, state scientists are looking at the effects of erosion and water levels in specific bayside communities -- including the Shady Side peninsula, which will be the subject of a report due in a few weeks. We urge the state to keep
an eye on this problem, low profile or not. Call us cranks, but we have
a sneaking suspicion that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may
be a lot more concerned with erosion and rising water levels than with
whether the Weems Creek bridge was widened, or even who was elected mayor
of Annapolis in 2001.
Published August 30, 2001,
The
Capital, Annapolis, Md.
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