Day: October 11, 2011

Wicomico County loses a fighter

Wicomico County Council District 4 member Bob Caldwell passed away this morning. He was 70.

Caldwell leaves behind a grieving family and community, since he touched the lives of thousands from his term as a Salisbury City Councilman from 1992-96 and his participation in other charitable works around Salisbury as a community leader. After a political hiatus of over a decade – spanning the time he was first diagnosed with cancer – Caldwell ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Salisbury in 2009, finishing third in a four-person primary.

But Bob won his County Council seat in 2010, enduring one of the most closely-fought elections and recounts in memory as he prevailed over incumbent Democrat David MacLeod by just two votes out of over 4,000 cast.

Continue reading “Wicomico County loses a fighter”

In print: Don’t put politics above security

This is a column I submitted to the Daily Times. A slightly longer version was submitted to another Maryland outlet.

In the 2011 session of the Maryland General Assembly, members of the House of Delegates tried and failed to get the Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Act of 2011 through the legislature. Undaunted by that legislative defeat, in early June Gov. Martin O’Malley signed an executive order to study an oil and natural gas-field process called hydraulic fracturing, with a final report not required until August 2014. It’s a demand to study a process used in more than one million U.S. wells during the past 60 years.

In layman’s terms, “fracking,” as the procedure is better known, uses a solution forced into hard underground rock formations to create tiny fissures. The fissures allow energy resources — in Maryland’s case, natural gas — to be released and extracted.

(Continued at delmarvanow.com…)