Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I think it is fair to say that all of us love our bay and our rivers and creeks. Many of us make our living there. All of us find peace and enjoyment there. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the nation and is a large economic engine for our region and state. About 30 years ago, we realized that the bay was in tremendous decline ecologically. If something were not done, we could no longer count on it to support our growing lifestyles.

It was then that my husband and I spent 18 months of Sundays gathering samples, testing them and submitting them to the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay to establish the baseline for the Piankatank River. At the time, the bay was assigned a “D-” rating.

Thirty-one years later, all funding has been pulled from the Chesapeake Bay cleanup. Coal ash from the mountains is now allowed to be dumped into the creeks and rivers in the western part of our state. Guess where that toxic coal slurry goes—downstream...