No Good Dead Goes Unpunished

For about 100 years, Conowingo Dam protected the Chesapeake Bay from vast amounts of sediment that washed down from farms in Pennsylvania and New York. Now that it is at capacity, and can no longer hold back the sediment, the usual suspects want to penalize the dam owners for all the good years it saved the Bay. An editorial from the Balmer Sun: Conowingo tango

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for Mr. Hogan to help reduce water pollution from the Susquehanna. There certainly is. He might, for instance, force the owner of the Conowingo Dam — Exelon Corp. — to contribute money toward anti-pollution efforts. The goal might be to at least reduce “scouring,” the tendency for severe weather to stir up sediment deposits behind the dam and worsen the situation. While we don’t expect the company to dredge all of the millions of tons of sediment, it might be able to do enough to reduce this effect.

He could also, say, for example, put a punitive tax on newsprint sold to the public to raise money for dredging the pool behind the damn.