"Love the Bay" Anti-Nuke Concert -Please spread the word!

Chesapeake’s “Island Girl” Speaks

Deanna's album, "Chesapeake"

Concert organizer and Maryland performing artist, Deanna Dove, is one of the founding members of PAARC. Deanna is immensely popular in the Bay region, with four CDs to her credit and a busy touring schedule. Audiences of all ages love the Chesapeake’s “Island Girl’s” unique blend of soul-bluesy-rock-folk sound. As anyone lucky enough to attend one of her performances will tell you, showing up at a Deanna Dove concert is likely to make a Bay lover out of anyone.

I asked Dove exactly what made her want to help PAARC in its mission to stop the proposed new nuke on the Bay? “In 2002, when I quit my job with the Federal Government after 21 years of service to pursue my music," began Dove, “a small announcement was in the Calvert Independent concerning the re-up of the extension to keep Calvert Cliffs polluting our county for another 20 years. But unfortunately, I needed to fiercely pursue my music career in order to make my living. I made a vow that if the opportunity ever presented itself again, then I would be prepared to fight.”

In June, hearing the word of PAARC’s potential formation, opportunity knocked and Deanna Dove answered. The musician continued,

“I feel so compelled to be a protestor for this cause because I hadn't wanted Calvert Cliffs in my back yard to begin with... but at the time of its opening, I was just 16 years old and had just graduated high school. I did, however, make a conscious choice and decided to commute the 120 mile roundtrip into DC to work... instead of choosing to work at Calvert Cliffs. I hated that place and have never even been on the driveway into the facility or any further!”

A lifelong resident of Calvert County, Deanna Dove grew up playing at the water's edge in Broomes Island on the Patuxent River. Being asked what life was like back when Chesapeake seafood was abundant, Dove shared a bit of her personal history with the Bay.

“Every day of my life I saw the water or was out on it or in it. That is what we did in my family. It was all about the water and great seafood that it provided our family - and our family’s friends, who would come from far away to enjoy our way of life.”

Continuing, Dove explained,

“My Dad was a builder, but every other moment of his life, he was a waterman. He was my hero and Hercules that could work those oyster tongs pulling those oysters out of the mud in very cold weather. He had a waterman’s eyes to see the crabs and the quickness and finesse to catch and dip net every one he saw. Every evening when he came home from his job in Baltimore, we would have dinner and then he would say to my Mom, ‘Honey, I'm going to check the tide. Get the kids together and be ready to go when I get back.’ It was just a short walk to Island Creek where the skiff was docked at my Great Aunt's Restaurant, which is now Stoney's, and where we would bring back bushels of crabs caught only with dip nets - mostly his crab net - but I would fast become a good crabber myself and then lent a good deal of crabs to the baskets.”

No Dirty Dozen!

The Chesapeake Bay's famous blue crabs- feisty crustaceans that are both a regional symbol and a multimillion-dollar catch - are hovering at historically low population levels, scientists say, as pollution, climate change and overfishing threaten the bay's "ultimate survivor."

A few decades later, Chesapeake’s watermen have a rough time coming up with enough crabs to satisfy lifelong crab pickers like Dove. Once plentiful, crabs are now scarce and these days the Chesapeake delicacy fetches a pretty penny - with $195 as the going rate for a bushel of large male crabs. Bay catches are so short, in fact, that the State recently doled out “emergency disaster funding” (some call it hush money) to the tune of $10 million dollars to hungry Bay watermen and their families.
Less than a year ago, Senator Ben Cardin admitted Chesapeake crab populations are down 70% since the 1990s. Remarkably, however, websites of state, federal, and Bay-saving organizations do not contain any information about the 11 nuclear reactors in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed - nor their role in polluting the already 40% dead-and-dying Chesapeake.

With declining and diseased populations of seafood and fish such as crabs, clams, oysters, and rockfish, the State has nonetheless given its blessing to the construction of a twelfth reactor – the reactor many fear that just may be the final blow – the final environmental onslaught that leads to the total demise of the Chesapeake Bay.  

Nuclear Reactors add to the heavy burden borne by the Chesapeake Bay as it fights for its very life. The Susquehanna River, which enters the Chesapeake Bay at its northern end, carries 40 percent of the nitrogen that flows into the Bay—the largest single source. There is so much nitrogen in the northern Bay that algae have all the “fertilizer” they need, and changes in streamflow do little or nothing to affect the growth of algal blooms. As a result, oxygen levels in the Chesapeake drop below life-sustaining levels. This satellite image shows brown water flowing from the Susquehanna. (NASA image by Robert Simmon, based on Landsat-7 data provided by the UMD Global Land Cover Facility. Caption: Earth Observatory).

Who Will Take A Stand?