Winter Harbor. Hole in the Wall. Davis Creek. Unmarked! After decades of having their channels delineated by aids to navigation, the markers are gone.

Winter Harbor was first; Queens Creek narrowly avoided this fate; and in the last month, Hole in the Wall and Davis Creek have joined the ranks.

These actions by the Coast Guard are, to our way of thinking, outrageous, with little consideration of the impact upon boaters; discouraging, in that all protests have proved in vain; disrespectful, to the board of supervisors that protested the closures, and also as if the people who live here and work on these waters do not matter in the giant world of bean crunchers.

Where does the blame lie? In the Coast Guard, because it cannot keep up with the shifting, in-silting channels? In the Army Corps of Engineers, which carries out dredging and looks into the economics of justifying it? In Congress, which has to make funds available for dredging?

These waterway closures—for, at a practica...