Rhetoric about water not protecting resource

With water being the single most important characteristic of Beaufort County, fundamental to our economy, history, sociology and lifestyles, are we really at the juncture described in your Sept. 2 article: "Capers Creek shrimping, shellfish closing: Development not to blame, officials say?"

Beaufort County, the EPA, the state and Lord knows who else are testing the waters for what, where, how often? Environmentalists call for restrictions on development, runoff, etc., and officialdom is saying it doesn't matter, or worse, we don't know.

I would love to see a tally on all the money being spent on these disjointed efforts. Why do we not have one comprehensive, countywide, periodic water analysis program that we can evaluate over time?

When areas of our marsh were (are?) browning off, it came out that no one tests for the specific chemicals that are sprayed around the county by the truckload. It came down to a private citizen to establish through his private funding the fact that these chemicals had made their way into the marsh.

We need to get a comprehensible, comprehensive and credible baseline analysis under way to track our most important resource. If the state of our knowledge in 2010 is reflected in this article, then we must conclude that our federal, state and county governments have failed us.

We perhaps need a water analysis "czar" to pull together everything we need to know regarding the health of our waterways. Otherwise, the rhetoric about concern and reverence for the Lowcountry is nonsense.

George Johnston

Dataw Island