SU's Horton Earns Heart of Chesapeake Country Heritage Area Award

SALISBURY, MD---A recent documentary co-produced by Tom Horton of Salisbury University’s Environmental Studies Department has been announced as one of this year’s Heart of Chesapeake Country Heritage Area Award winners.

Horton and his co-producers of High Tide in Dorchester, cinematographer David Harp and filmmaker Sandy Cannon Brown, will receive the prize for “Outstanding Project” during a public reception 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, October 25, at the Dorchester Center for the Arts in Cambridge.

High Tide in Dorchester was screened for the first time during a special preview showing at SU last February, prior to its official premiere at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, in Washington, D.C., the next month. It made its TV debut on Maryland Public Television in April.

The film followed Horton through Dorchester County, MD, where he spent much of his youth. He revisited the tidal Chesapeake Bay landscapes of his childhood, many of which are now underwater.

“The latest projections for the Chesapeake region are two feet or more of sea level rise by mid-century and as much as six feet by century’s end,” he said. “That’s a troubling combination of higher water and sinking land around the bay.”

At that rate, Dorchester could slip from its position as the fourth largest of Maryland’s 23 counties in land area to the 14th, he added.

For the film, Horton interviewed long-time Dorchester County residents, area watermen, academics and others to get an idea what changes they have seen, how those changes have impacted the area and what can be done to help preserve the community’s landscape and culture going forward.

The documentary also featured Dr. Michael Scott, interim dean of SU’s Richard A. Henson School of Science and Technology, who “was the perfect science presence that really pulled the film together in an authoritative way,” said Horton.

An Eastern Shore native, Horton covered the environment for the Baltimore Sun for 35 years. He also has written nine books about the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. His accolades include the John Burroughs Award, one of the highest honors for nature writing.

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU website.