Sucking the ocean floor is no longer an option.

Following extensive debating of the bill earlier this month, the state Senate voted 29-18 to ban power dredging ? sucking up polluted silt along with oysters and clams from the ocean floor ? from around Ocean City and Assateague Island, back to the mainland. Despite no such measures being issued for dredging in the Chesapeake Bay, reverberations of the act by the state legislature will be felt by local organizations.