Groins, on the merits

Regarding your April 16 editorial "Idea's ebb tide":

It was typical yellow journalism to compose an article that leaves out key facts to lead a reader to an incorrect conclusion.

You write that terminal groins "might" cause erosion problems elsewhere. No kidding! Frogs "might" bump their butts when they hop, too.

It "might" have been appropriate to mention that the scientific study that was directed by the General Assembly to be completed was done to answer the questions of "perceived" negative impacts to coastal systems by terminal groins. It was based on facts by engineers who live by facts, not by politics.

Its findings clearly indicated and reported that groins do in fact function as designed and do in fact provide positive results and do not in fact create the "the sky is falling" conditions that naysayers grandstand about.

We all love our coast as a wonderful natural resource. But when the Intracoastal Waterway was built, the "natural coastal conditions" for whatever negative or positive results were changed forever.

The Coastal Resources Commission got it right when it voted to allow consideration of use of groins on a case by case basis. Let's let each project stand or fail on its own merits.

Tony Withers, P.E.

Raleigh