Choked Inlet Deprives Fish of Essential Oxygen
June 9, 2007 by Paul Birman · Leave a Comment
Letter to the Editor:
“We live on Cedar Beach Road in Southold. We own waterfront property across the street from our home and maintain a dock for two of our neighbors and ourselves. The area is known as Dryad’s Basin and it is extremely difficult for us to get our boat out of this basin and through the Cedar Beach waterway.
I would like to inform you of an incident that happened this past week. While my husband, Mickey, was working on our boat, a Suffolk County Public Health Sanitarian, who works for the Bureau of Marine Resources in the Office of Ecology, stopped and asked him if he could have permission to test the water from our dock. My husband said yes, and Mr. John Bredemeyer stated that our water had 2.9 % of oxygen content, which would not support marine life. He said that the testing around the Cornell facility was 3.2% of oxygen content which was also a danger to marine life. He stated that he felt that this area which was a large producer of clams, scallops, and fluke in the past would no longer be viable unless dredging was done since it would put the Cornell studies in jeopardy.
Maybe if the DEC was made aware of this issue, more could be done to open up the waterway in our area as soon as possible. We look forward to any new meetings in the future. Thank you for all your hard work on the behalf of all property owners on the North Fork.
Sincerely,
Barbara and Mickey Madden
Cedar Beach Road
Southold “
There are many reasons why the creeks need to be dredged. Our mission is to enumerate them, explain the reasons in common sense, logical terms and persist. This example is an excellent one. Our SPAT program, whose mission is to revive the stock of bivalves in our bays, will suffer because the county doesn’t have the will or the equipment to respond to the need. Dredging is a high priority issue. We need people on the Southold Town dredging committe who can help the county find a way to get it done.
John Kramer
how can I help with the dredging issue in particular and the overall mission of VOICE?