47 ABC: Johnny defended watermen after Potomac wastewater spill into the Bay

Millions of gallons of wastewater spilled into the Chesapeake Bay — the same Bay Eastern Shore watermen work every day, and the same Bay they get told to “do more with less” of every year. Johnny stood up for them and called out the contradiction.

Here’s the pattern the Shore has been watching for a decade: a treatment plant fails, the Bay takes the hit, and the response from Annapolis somehow ends up as another restriction on the watermen who didn’t cause the problem. Finfish quotas tighten. Oyster seasons shrink. Crab rules pile on. Year after year, the people pulling honest food out of the Bay are the ones bearing the cost of pollution they didn’t generate.

Johnny called for what should be obvious: cooperation between government and watermen, focused on the actual sources of pollution. Not another regulation that hammers families in Dorchester, Talbot, and Wicomico Counties while the wastewater plants keep doing what they’re doing.