Interested in learning more about the ecology, botany, geology, and birds of the Eastern Shore? Would you like to become a certified Eastern Shore of Virginia Master Naturalist, and volunteer your time in stewardship, education, and citizen science projects? Training occurs over a ten-week period from September 7 – November 9 at Historic Onancock School. Cost is $95 which covers materials and field trips. Spaces are limited. Register by August 21. For more information, contact Mimi Stitt at 757-678-7879 / mimistitt@gmail.com or Barbara O’Hare at 410-707-1610 / barboh5@gmail.com .
Cape Charles Fourth of July 2017 was a grand success
Fun facts about the Fourth of July from Statistics Brain :
Percent of people who attend a fireworks display:63 %
Percent of people who display an American flag:66 %
Percent of people who watch a 4th of July parade:32 %
Number of hot dogs consumed on July 4th each year:150,000,000
Annual value of U.S. flags imported from China:$5,000,000
Number of 4th of July fireworks displays:14,000
Annual value of fireworks imported from China:$247,100,000
While this all may be true, the 4th in Cape Charles is it’s own unique and wonderful thing, from our hometown parade, incredible vendors, to our beautiful beach and fireworks. The Mirror spent the day with a camera, taking it all in. Below is video we shot, but be warned, it is in Full HD, and depending on your Eastern Shore internet connection, results may vary:
GOSSIP: Concerns for Beach Parking and Safety
This was sent by email to the Cape Charles Mirror, highlighting citizen’s concerns about the growth and safety of our town.
Cape Charles offers its unique and wonderful beach to its residents and visitors but parking is limited. Safety and convenience must coexist.
Please consider the following:
1) golf cart parking only along Bay Ave.
2) golf carts park head in
3) no bicycles or vehicles of any kind on median strip along Bay Ave.
4) limit # of food trucks/stands/food carts permitted on Bay Avenue
This will create a second problem; where do the cars then park?
Please review how our sister beach towns have handled this problem: Dedicated parking lots with fees.
Full time CC residents would be exempt and have an annual decal to park for free. Rental properties could issue this decal to renters for one car per home.
Please consider the following for safety on the beach.
1) Personal watercraft is to remain 1000′ from shoreline IAW regulations set by the National Park Service, example Fire Island.
2) Exceptions would be the navigational channels leading to the Town Harbor and the Bay Creek Marina.
Enhances safety, noise reduction, pollution reduction.
Shorekeeper action forces DEQ to review penalties against Tyson Poultry
Concerned citizens reached out to Shorekeeper early this year to inquiry about a consent order between the Department of Environmental Quality and the poultry company, Tyson for violations at their Temperanceville plant in Accomack County.
Shorekeeper contacted the state but the information provided raised more questions than answers and so Shorekeeper filed a Freedom of Information request to obtain the detailed reports of the violations as well as Tysons plan to remedy the issues.
The documents made clear that the proposed penalty of $16,000 was woefully inadequate as the violations were made knowingly and the state had failed to fine them for all violations. Additionally, the plan to remedy the issues was clearly insufficient to protect our waters from future pollution.
Shorekeeper wrote to the Department of Environmental Quality detailing our concerns with both the penalty and action plan proposed. We also made clear that a fine of $16,000 did not meet the intent of the Clean Water Act to serve as a deterrent. Shorekeeper also highlighted the fact that this facility has a long history of violating its permit and dumping excess pollutants into our waterways as evidenced by previous consent orders. Clearly the penalties are not having the intended action of forcing Tyson to clean up its act on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. [Read more…]
Shuck-N-Suck back for 2 big weekends in August
The Shuck-N-Suck Carnival is back, this time for two fun weekends August 4-6 and 11-13. Boat docking contest, fireworks, vendors and carnival rides will be here for 2 big weekends.
GOSSIP: Do RVs and Boat Trailers Pose a Safety Issue for Cape Charles?
Dear Cape Charles Mirror,
The Fourth of July was very busy this season, with much more out of town car traffic speeding through our streets. The safety of children and adults is compromised severely by street parking of boats, trailers, and RVs. To help alleviate the problem, I believe a couple of things could help to make it safer.
First, RVs are not to be parked in town or parked for overnight camping in town. All RVs are to use designated camping and storage facilities. Second, boats/trailers are not permitted to park on town streets. Parking lots exist for boat launches and storage areas exist for boat storage. They need to put them there.
Safety first
Endangered Red-Cockaded Woodpecker gains foothold within the Great Dismal Swamp
Several years ago, while working for the US Army out of Ft. Belvoir, our team was tasked with aiding Ft. Bragg in the creation of a geospatial database comprised of known locations where the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, or the RCW as it was named by the Army, was living. Ft. Bragg was and still is a major troop training facility, and the Army wanted to be sure that exercises did not conflict with areas where the RCW was still surviving
Fast forward to 2017, and conservation partners are celebrating the first successful breeding of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker within the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. This story in William and Mary news by Bryan Watts notes that “two young woodpeckers were banded on the 20th of May and flew from the nest cavity during the second week of June. This event represents a milestone in an ongoing effort to establish a breeding population within the refuge. A total of 18 woodpeckers were moved into the site during the falls of 2015 and 2016 by a broad coalition including several units of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, The Center for Conservation Biology, The Nature Conservancy, and many volunteers.” [Read more…]
DEQ Water Quality Map Highlights Local Areas that do not meet standards for fishing
With fishing season in full swing, depending on where it was caught, you may want to think a bit before frying up that catch. The Department of Environmental Quality map below indicates areas in the lower Bay, and in and around Virginia Beach and Norfolk that do not meet standards for fishing. The majority of the locations marked in red are for low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water, which restricts growth of aquatic animals. The map also indicates levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are stored in the fat of fish and can be passed on to humans.
For more information, view the entire Virginia Department of Environmental Quality map here.
Governor refuses to stop execution of William Morva
William Morva, 35, was executed Thursday after an unsuccessful campaign to spare the inmate’s life over concerns about his mental health. He was pronounced dead at 9:15 p.m. after a lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. It was the first execution carried out in Virginia under a new protocol that makes more of the lethal injection procedure secret.
Morva’s execution came hours after Virginia’s Democratic governor announced that he would not commute Morva’s sentence. Mental health advocates, state lawmakers and attorneys contended Morva’s crimes were the result of a severe mental illness that made it impossible for him to distinguish between delusions and reality.
“I personally oppose the death penalty; however, I took an oath to uphold the laws of this Commonwealth regardless of my personal views of those laws, as long as they are being fairly and justly applied,” McAuliffe said in a statement. [Read more…]
Plante: On the Fourth of July, Now Past and Gone!
Ah, yes, the Fourth of July, and lucky us this year, ain’t it people?
Gas the cheapest its been in years, and the same with hamburgers!
Isn’t this a wonderful country we live in, then?
But if so, why aren’t we happy?
That’s right, people, according to a MARKETWATCH article by Quentin Fottrell published just before the Fourth of July on June 28, 2017, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which once used to be ours, at least pursuant to the Declaration of Independence, but who knows of that anymore, now seems more attainable overseas.
Think about that people, after fighting a War of Revolution in this country to gain the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness promised us in the Declaration of Independence on the very first Fourth of July in the country, we now need to go to some foreign country like Norway to get it today.
When it comes to happiness in the citizen body, the U.S. ranked No. 19 just behind the Czech Republic, Japan and France.
[Read more…]
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