Rising Chesapeake Bay endangering cemetaries...

[Virginia Dare]

-snip-

Around the Chesapeake, death is still forever, but graveyards increasingly are not. Rising water levels -- an old problem, apparently accelerated by climate change -- are threatening to erode away a number of historic burial sites. Some are already gone, leaving bones and coffin handles as ghoulish flotsam.

Eventually, experts say, rising seas could worsen flooding in the D.C. area and redraw maps of the Eastern Shore. But first, to the outrage of historians and surviving relatives, the water is evicting the dead.

"There's quite a bit of history being lost, almost as we speak, because of the waves," said Court Stevenson, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who studies the bay's geography.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021201674.html

[Javaman]

1. Gives a whole new meaning to the phase, "dead sea". nt