Maryland is celebrating a milestone in Chesapeake Bay restoration after
Gov. Wes Moore announced
the state has achieved nearly all of its 2025 Chesapeake Bay restoration
goals. But some watermen say the pollution reduction target numbers don't
reflect the conditions they're experiencing on the water. The
Maryland Department of the Environment says the state has hit 100% of its
sediment reduction goal, 100% of its phosphorus goal, and 99% of its
nitrogen reduction goal. ... But Captain Robert
Newberry, president of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, says the
pollution reduction target numbers published don't line up with conditions
that watermen are reporting. "It's not my opinion, I'm taking up
a conglomerate of what everybody's saying. We have problems with the
numbers. They're not right," Newberry said.
Newberry says he
spoke with watermen from Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne's, Talbot, Dorchester,
Somerset, Baltimore, Anne Arundel, St. Mary's, Calvert and Charles counties
while researching the issue, and says the consensus among them was
skepticism. “The upper bay, the guys have been
seeing, dead zones, benthic zones, bad water all summer long. And they saw
it in the south too, they’re seeing extremely turbid water, which is
non-visible,” said Newberry. "Nothing was getting done in one year. All of a
sudden, boom, we hit 100% phosphorus reduction, 99% nitrogen and 100%
sediment. That's not the consensus I'm getting bay wide.”
... Allison Colden, Maryland executive director of
the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, says the numbers released this week are based
on bay-wide modeling and show Maryland has met or is on track to meet its
reduction goals. But she cautions that models don’t tell the whole story.
"Models are always inherently an abstract of what we
are seeing in reality," Colden said. "It's a necessity to simplify what
we're seeing in order to produce a model. And because of that
simplification, there's always a chance that there is, you know, some sort
of gap between what the model would predict and what we are seeing. That
doesn't necessarily mean the model is wrong.”
That's almost the definition of a model being wrong; when it doesn't match reality.
At TownHall Matt Vespa thinks
You Won't Believe It, A John Cornyn Staffer Pulled a Benedict Arnold Move.
Here's His New Boss, James Talarico campaign. How to admit you have no sincere beliefs in
one easy career move. John Waters at RC History, looks at The Next American Right. "Today, the insurgency has won. What remains is not a bold, dramatic
second act, but the far more familiar (and mundane) work of routine
governance. We have entered the revolution’s mopping-up phase."
Rep. Nancy Mace has publicly revealed the nine tattoos she previously said she got during one of the most difficult periods of her personal and professional life, showing the artwork on her new YouTube show after largely keeping it covered throughout her time in Congress.
The South CarolinaRepublican first disclosed the tattoos in a February interview with Politico, saying she got all nine in rapid succession between late 2023 and early 2024 during a period that included the end of her engagement and significant staff turnover in her congressional office. ... Mace has spoken openly about surviving sexual assault and molestation and has frequently discussed how those experiences shaped her life and political advocacy. In previous interviews, she has connected the tattoos to a broader effort to reclaim ownership of her body following years of personal trauma.
The congresswoman described getting the tattoos during a tumultuous period that also saw the breakdown of her engagement and intense public scrutiny surrounding her political career. She explained that she viewed the tattoo process as both physically and emotionally significant.
That was definitely a non-explanatory explanation.
