Peter Shaw, of Ridge Hill, Dartmouth, writes:

MJ Bowden's outburst of uninformed myth regarding the delay to the building of a new public slipway in Dartmouth, Letters, February 10, needs countering with a little fact.

Firstly, Natural England is not seeking to protect 'some worms or other creatures in the mud', as your correspondent claims.

A survey was carried out looking for the tentacle lagoon worm, a rare species on the Government's biodiversity action plan list, but none were found.

Secondly, Natural England was only one of the bodies represented at the consultation about the slipway. The others were Devon County Council, South Hams Council, the Environment Agency and South Devon AONB Estuaries Partnership, which includes the Dart Harbour Authority, among others. The ultimate decision on how to proceed sat with our elected representatives on South Hams Council, which is right and proper.

The original plan was to construct a slipway on the foreshore, but it became clear that this had a significant drawback: it would remove yet another piece of bed from the estuarine system.

Why is that important? Because the management of sediment is key to the health of the estuary.

It works like this: silt that is washed downstream by the river is trapped in the lower reaches of the estuary and becomes estuarine mud, which locks up carbon and provides a surface for seaweed and bacteria to grow. These bacteria are at the bottom of the food chain for crustaceans, fish and ultimately mammals like seals and dolphins.

In other words, by taking small steps to minimise damage to the foreshore we help protect the health of the whole marine environment – an environment that helps to support us.

Reducing the footprint of the slipway by constructing it on piles not only does this but also provides a new habitat under the slipway which increases the biodiversity of the estuary.

So, we get a new slipway – I'm a boat owner who uses the slipway for launching – and we help protect the estuary we all love or say we do.

Is it worth a bit of extra cost, even in these straightened times? Yes.

Does a few more months delay after waiting for years make a critical difference? No.

If you're going to do a job, do it right. In any case, the delay in building the slipway has, as I understand it, nothing to do with the environmental issues.

South Hams Council should be the one to explain why it has decided to do the work at the same time as it rebuilds the Lower Ferry slipways later this year. I assume it has something to do with keeping costs down, which I think your correspondent thinks is a good thing. I agree.

Two further points.

Firstly, most people just see 'a load of mud' when they look at the river at low tide and as a result estuaries are undervalued. They decline by a thousand small cuts resulting in a huge, permanent loss of foreshore over the years, in the case of Dartmouth over centuries. Eventually the losses lead to the estuaries being choked and their value, in every sense, undermined.

Secondly, in the populist clamour to put quangos on a bonfire, we should not lose sight of the fact that many of them earn their keep.

They are a cost-effective way of making essential expertise available nationally. Bodies like county and district councils could not afford to employ such experts themselves.

If a quango is not adding value, to use the jargon, it should be abolished. I am of the view that Natural England, despite its shortcomings, does.

I am not sure about the references to the Second World War.

That was a national emergency of the most severe kind. Are we in one now? Have I missed something?