Overview

Drowning a County: When Urban Myths Destroy Rural Drainage links myths created by the Virginia Department of Transportation with Mathews County highway drainage failures. The flooding of private property and timber crops has lowered values. Roads are being damaged, and the health of residents and of the Chesapeake Bay are endangered. Budget constraints decades ago reduced ditch maintenance, and VDOT-created myths reduced it further. Working from an urban stormwater management perspective, VDOT officials act without an understanding of the rural watersheds inside the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater, ignoring their own maintenance manuals. Drowning a County reveals the origin of the VDOT-myths and offers facts about drainage, sea level rise and elevation in the county. It counters incorrect planning district reports with details from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other reliable sources. Drowning a County shows how flooded ditches increase the risk of mosquito-borne disease and toxic cyanobacteria, and includes still-valid recommendations from a 1960 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report and a County-sponsored 1980 drainage study. Mathews County, a rural Chesapeake Bay peninsula with the same population as in 1910, has preserved much of its pre-development hydrology. Its open network of grass-lined roadside ditches used to offer an efficient system of biofiltration and transport of fresh rainfall. This source of adequate sediment through outfall ditches sustained the County's extensive tidal marshes and brought oxygenated water to the county's creeks, rivers and bays. Restoring the ditches of Mathews County can help heal the Chesapeake Bay, and Drowning a County shows what's needed.

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Carol J. Bova found a new lifestyle as a writer in 2004 after moving from California to Mathews, Virginia, a rural Chesapeake Bay peninsula. In January 2012, she and G.C. Morrow co-founded the Ditches of Mathews County, a grass-roots volunteer project, to investigate and offer information to the Virginia Department of Transportation to help resolve highway drainage issues impacting landowners. When her research uncovered a history of VDOT-created myths used to avoid basic ditch maintenance for decades, Carol began compiling the information used in Drowning a County. In 2012-13, Carol served on the Steering Committee for the Piankatank, Milford Haven, Gwynns Island Water Quality Improvement Plan approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in August 2014. The Ditches of Mathews County was a community partner in the development of that clean-up plan. The US Geological Survey accepted Carol's July 2014 request to correct the flow lines on The National Map Hydrography Dataset for Garden Creek and the breach in the Winter Harbor barrier beach. Carol is a columnist for Chesapeake Style magazine, a novelist and the President of the Chesapeake Bay Writers chapter of the Virginia Writers Club. When not researching or writing, Carol enjoys photography, genealogy and creating silver jewelry. Carol shares her home with William the Cat, who found her at the Gloucester-Mathews Humane Society.

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