A Bay Journal blog post (2018-02-08) announced the release of a new documentary that details the challenge Dorchester County faces from land subsidence, erosion, and sea level rise. The documentary, titled “High Tide in Dorchester,” highlights the thousands of acres of land in the county that are now submerged in just the last few decades, saltwater intrusion that is killing trees and threatening the Blackwater Wildlife refuge, how the loos of land is threatening both homes and cemeteries. The documentary was produced by Bay Journal photographer Tom Horton, Dave Harp, and Sandy Cannon-Brown.
From the blog post:
High Tide starts with the image that inspired it: Horton standing waist-deep in water — in what was once a field outside his father’s hunting cabin on the Honga River, where he played baseball as a child. That field is long gone, as are thousands of acres of land that have been lost in recent decades to a mixture of rising seas, erosion and high tides across the county. …
Though the numbers are startling — projections suggest that half of the remaining land in Maryland’s fourth-largest county will be underwater in a century — the scenes portrayed across the screen lend them gravitas. …
“You hear [local] people say, ‘I don’t know if the sea level is coming up, but I know we’ve got tide on the land more than we used to,’” [Horton] said. “A lot of times we’re saying the same thing in different languages.”
The article stated that there will be preview screening of the film open to the public on February 21 at 7:00 pm at Salisbury University in Wicomico County. The official debut of the documentary will be on March 22 at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington, DC.
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