Pollution from "summary" of BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS by WILLIAM W. WARNER
Pollution, a term that hangs around the waterman like a cloud, like the sulfurous fumes that rise from the stacks of the paper mills, the sewage treatment plants, the chemical plants along the Potomac and the Patuxent. It is a word that has come to mean all the things that man has done to befoul the rivers and bays of the Chesapeake. The waterman knows about pollution. He has seen the floating bodies of drowned cattle, the oil slicks, the slicks of sewage, the foam of detergents. He has seen the gleaming bodies of striped bass, their gills clogged with silt, their bellies full of trash. He has seen the crabs, the soft crabs, the hard crabs, the crabs with their shells covered with sores, their claws deformed, their meat tainted. He has seen the oysters, the oysters smothered in silt, the oysters riddled with disease. He has seen the water, the water black with sewage, brown with silt, yellow with chemicals. He has seen the marshes, the marshes choked with trash, the marshes dying of thirst. He has seen the sky, the sky brown with smog, the sky gray with ash. He has seen the land, the land stripped of trees, the land eroded by plows, the land buried under houses and highways and shopping centers. He has seen the people, the people who live in the cities, the people who work in the factories, the people who drive the cars, the people who throw away the trash. He has seen them all, and he knows that they are all guilty. Guilty of pollution. Guilty of spoiling the land, the water, the air. Guilty of destroying the beauty of the world. Guilty of killing the crabs, the oysters, the fish. Guilty of killing the Chesapeake Bay.
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