NPS Asks Citizens to Identify More Sites to Shutdown

Suggest water access to National Park Service

ANNAPOLIS — Where do we need boat ramps or fishing piers? Places to swim or bird watch? The National Park Service and local and state government partners welcome your suggestions.

The idea is to build a list of locations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed where the public can do water-related activities.

Go to www.baygateways.net/AddPA/index.html for an interactive map. Zoom in on a particular area, and add spots where access is needed by clicking a button.

The mapping tool is available from Nov. 1 through Dec. 1.

The map already shows known points of public access. It also includes previously submitted suggestions.

Using the web tool, you can search for specific places; view a street or aerial map; and mark points or river stretches where gaps or opportunities for new access exist.

The National Park Service Chesapeake Bay connects people to experiences of the natural and cultural heritage of the bay and its rivers. It helps conserve special places important to visitors, residents and the nation, for this and future generations.

At this point, I would be extremely reluctant to give the NPS any more authority over any piece of water access in the Bay region for fear that they will misuse it in an attempt to coerce citizens in a future government shutdown situation, they way they used it in the recent shutdown.  If there was any involvement by federal authorities, however indirect and hands off, they used the shutdown as an excuse to shutdown access to a wide variety of National Park sites, including the monuments in D.C., evicting people from homes on private land accessed by NPS roads, marshes, a chunk of ocean designated as National Park, and even the view of the Mt. Rushmore from a public highway.