Editor, Gazette-Journal:

At the June 6 meeting of the Gloucester Board of Supervisors, the long-awaited Department of Environmental Quality response to the nearly two-year effort by the BOS to weaken the countywide Resource Management Area was considered. 

In short, Virginia regulations require that an RMA (commonwealth wide) shall include land types that, “if improperly used or developed, have a potential for causing significant water quality degradation.” The DEQ response to the BOS minimum attempt to comply with the requirements of an RMA was found to fall far short of the RMA criteria for several required and recommended critical and technical reasons.

This movement by the BOS to weaken our current countywide RMA is particularly critical for Gloucester County. Our county has more tidal shoreline than any other county in Virginia (605 tidal shoreline miles). An article in a recent daily publication clearly states that “Virginia is on track to hit its pollut...