Inky Stain

by: deciminyan

Tue Jan 17, 2012 at 10:17:00 AM EST

The following letter was sent to Linda Loyd, a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Dear Ms. Loyd,

I was glad to see your article Push on for funds to deepen Delaware River channel in today’s newspaper. But I was disappointed that a veteran reporter like you only presented one side of the story.

Nowhere in your article do you mention the devastating impact that this dredging will have on the environment. While you report on the court case toward the end of the article, there’s no indication to the reader who initiated a request to block the dredging or why they did so.

According to a former federal official who has performed Environmental Impact Studies in New Jersey, past dumping of dredge spoils has caused intrusion of salt water in fresh water areas, resulting in the killing of insects and plants in environmentally-sensitive regions. He also points out that with a deeper Delaware Channel river, larger tankers will be bringing their contaminants further up the Delaware River, making any accidental spill even more egregious.

Although I understand the needs of those who ply commerce on the river as well as the concerns of the environmentalists (and I would personally side with the latter), the purpose of this letter is not to engage in that debate. Rather it is to express my disappointment with your news article that only presented one side of the issue.

I subscribe to the Inquirer because it is a decent newspaper that usually provides fair reporting. Unfortunately, today’s article is an exception – a one-sided account of an issue that impacts all of us.