Janice Doctor’s brief, powerful and frightening commentary (“Letter to the editor: A backyard once full of birds is strangely silent this year”, July 10) brought to mind the 1960s hit “Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel. That “silent” sound is becoming very loud again.

In his July 11 letter to the editor, Art Sears tells how “fireworks are polluting Casco Bay.”

These, and recent, similarly ecologically concerned letters in the Bangor Daily News, imply that other Mainers recognize that our finite water resources are jeopardized by industrial and agricultural runoff.

The administration of our belligerent governor supports ecologically incompetent decisions, pulling the “business-friendly” designation from South Portland for passing an ordinance effectively preventing the piping of highly corrosive Canadian tar sands there by reversing the flow of an aging pipeline.

Maine’s environment deteriorated extremely during my lifetime from irresponsibility by paper mills, pollution of waterways and rampant overdevelopment of once-pristine areas. Out-of-state money and influence, encouraged by the LePage administration, leave us minimal environmental control.

In the ’40s and ’50s, I remember horseshoe crabs (unchanged for 230 million years), along with beavers, otters, muskrats, thousands of alewives and other wildlife in Maine waters.

Now, however, many areas have now been developed or polluted and have also fallen “silent.”

We must not be “silent” ourselves. Write and ask Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King to push for a clean water plan. We have already lost too much. We must all work together to preserve whatever we still have for future generations. Now even the pope is calling for action!

Jack Hayes

Portland

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