The Virginia General Assembly missed an opportunity to help coastal counties such as Gloucester and Mathews. That is unfortunate.Delegate Keith Hodges, our man in Richmond, introduced legislation that grounded on the shoals of the Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources.

If successful, the bill would have aided proposed dredging projects where it’s difficult to find a place for dredged material. Hodges proposed that funding from the Virginia Waterway Maintenance Grant Project could have been used “for the lease, purchase, or development of upland containment areas where dredged material can be selectively excavated and used beneficially for environmental restoration or for mitigation of coastal erosion.”

To those of us witnessing our vital waterways silting in, this makes sense.

To those of us watching our shorelines slowly wash away, this makes sense.

We hope Delegate Hodges’s bill will get another look when the General Assembly meets again.
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