To the Editor:

The recent death of a local teenager in the Nottoway River was tragic. Drowning from recreational swimming should never happen again at the VDGIF public boat ramp on Route 258. That facility should be posted with big signs that read “Danger. No Swimming.”

Reason is that facility was built over top of where the original C.C. Vaughan bridge was constructed. It is a very dangerous place underwater. The bottom is littered with fishing line from shore fishing there that can entangle a person.

The bottom is covered in broken glass from decades of trash being dumped there as well, as it once was popular to throw bottles in the river there and shoot them. There are cable, pilings, bridge parts, old cars and on and on.

I’m not saying any of these things contributed to this tragedy this time, but if the state does not post and enforce no swimming there, someone else will get hurt or drowned there again. I have asked VDGIF to do just that. Now it’s up to them to make it known about the dangers of swimming there.

Oh, forgot to add: Both ramps there — when the concrete ends underwater — there is a dropoff there into like 12 feet of water. Which could have been what happened in this case. I can see someone not knowing how to swim wading out on that ramp, suddenly they are in water over their head. Could happen.

Jeff Turner
Sedley