James River

Theodore A. "Ted" Dietz, a retired shipyard electrician who earned the sobriquet of "40-Watt Dietz" from fellow volunteer crew members aboard the Liberty ship SS John W. Brown, died Feb. 3 of heart failure at his Severna Park home. He was 91. Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Dietz was a 1942 graduate of Franklin K. Lane High School. "He enlisted into the Navy before he formally graduated from high school and his mother received his diploma," said his wife of two years, the former Mary Bartlett.

For 30 years, the Chesapeake Bay Program - a partnership including the six bay states, the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies - has been measuring and assessing the bay's health and working to restore the ecosystem. In many of those years, the health findings were troubling. This year, as we release our annual Bay Barometer summarizing the bay's condition and our restoration progress, there remain many results related to water quality that reinforce our need for continued action.

We've got eagles to the side, eagles above, eagles ahead; eagles flushing like coveys of quail; eagles rampant on a forested shoreline, their snow-capped heads festooning the resplendent greens of giant cypress.The sight seizes the spirit, lofts the soul. Raptor (bird of prey) and rapture: no wonder those words have the same Latin root.Between midmorning and lunch, we'll count more than a hundred bald eagles, a pretty average day. This is not Alaskan wilderness. You'd have a hard time seeing as many in one place there.

Go fly a kite in Lewes, Del. Cooperation and weather are two terms that don't often go hand in hand, which makes the feats at the Great Delaware Kite Festival all the more impressive. The event, recognized as one of the Top 10 kite competitions in the country, takes place tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Cape Henlopen State Park in Lewes. More than 200 people take part in stunt, homemade and store-bought competitions in child, teen and adult divisions. The event also includes a stunt-kite exhibition, recreation, food and refreshments.

OUT OF sight and out of mind would be the way this nation treats its fleet of aging, contaminated government ships if the U.S. House gets its way. Given the sordid record of foreign ship breakers, as documented in The Sun's 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning series, this is an indefensible policy. Proponents of sending these ships abroad argue the nation cannot wait any longer to begin disposing of its large fleet of mothballed government ships. Many, moored in waterways such as the James River and San Francisco Bay, have severely rusted hulls and are barely able to float.

Services for Robert Emmett Robertson Jr., a retired major from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and consulting engineer, will be held at 11 a.m. today at Old St. Paul's Church, Charles and Saratoga streets.Mr. Robertson, who was 83, died of heart disease April 1 at his home in Baltimore.Born at Avalon on the Patapsco River, Mr. Robertson graduated from private schools in Philadelphia, Colgate College and the Georgia Institute of Technology.Later, as a civil engineer for the American Bridge Co., he worked on the Spuyten Deivel Bridge -- the first modern connection between Manhattan and the New York mainland.

The effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay moved upstream yesterday, with the setting of pollution-reduction goals for each of 10 river systems in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia that feed into the troubled estuary.Bay-region officials announced they had agreed on how to divide responsibility for making a 40 percent reduction by the end of the decade in the amount of nutrients from sewage and farm runoff that are fouling the Chesapeake.An overabundance of nitrogen and phosphorus causes massive "blooms" of algae in the bay during spring and summer.

RICHMOND, Va. - Battering wind and record-setting rain from Tropical Storm Gaston caused at least five deaths as a deluge washed away roads, flooded houses and businesses, and sent vehicles floating down the streets of Richmond. Five people were confirmed dead by late yesterday, and several others were reported missing. On Monday afternoon, rushing waters replaced rush-hour traffic in downtown Richmond where a flood wall, built in 1995 to contain the James River in such storms, stood with its gates open because powerful rains had outstripped the river's rise and raced downhill.

You can't visit Richmond without confronting the Civil War. The city is so rich in Civil War history that you can't miss it, even if - like me - you're not a Civil War buff. In fact, a weekend visitor invariably confronts one of two pickles: If you aren't particularly interested in the War Between the States, you'll feel guilty bypassing what is just about Civil War Central. And if you are a war buff eager to immerse yourself in the subject, you won't have enough time to do it justice.

Fewer oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are dying from the diseases that have devastated the bivalve population in recent decades, leading some to believe they may be developing a natural resistance, according to a new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Dermo and MSX, the two parasites that have been killing oysters, still afflict them throughout the bay — but scientists are seeing more oysters surviving, the Annapolis-based environmental group reports. Citing data from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the report says that disease-related oyster mortality in the upper bay declined from 2005 through 2009 to 17 percent a year, down from 29 percent on average from 1985 through 2004.