The peril of government oysters

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

At first blush, the Mathews County Aquaculture Business Park and Incubator Program sounds too good to be true. A locally based, sustainable, environmentally friendly source of green jobs and opportunities to create wealth, restoring oysters to the Chesapeake Bay and paid for with somebody else’s money! It sounds so good that those providing it have effusively called for you to "Join Us!!! at a Public Meeting to explore this concept, future Grant funds will depend on your participation." How awesome! What a great idea, how could anybody object to this?

I will ignore questions of process for the time being and state that I have been motivated and found joy in some of these same thoughts—working long, cold hours in wet and dirty surroundings for little or no pay, but warmed by feelings of helping restore oysters to the Bay and keeping my Mathews County waterman’s heritage alive. I am not complaini...