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Connector drowning in questions
Maryland, federal officials and county green activists want more facts on road
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by EMILY BARNES
Jim Long collects samples as part of an plankton monitoring volunteer project in the Mattawoman Creek near Dutton Bridge on Billingsley Road last weekend. Environmentalists say that finishing the cross-county connector will constitute a mortal threat to the creek's fish spawning habitat.
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The June deadline for state approval of Charles County's largest locally funded transportation project, the cross-county connector, is fast approaching.
Environmental groups have hammered the half-finished project, calling it and the development it will enable a mortal threat to the Mattawoman Creek fish spawning habitat. And many are openly suggesting that it will not gain approval from the state's environmental agency.
Environmentalists have achieved recent success in getting their message reported in the regional and national media with the designation of the waterway as the fourth most endangered river in America by the national conservation group American Rivers.
However, county government continues to steadfastly support the project as necessary for the county's long-term economic health and say they are planning prudently for the foreseeable future.
At a meeting last month between environmental watchdogs and the county commissioners, environmentalists laid out a case for shrinking the county's development district and abandoning the connector.
The briefing was held in the commissioners' private meeting room, rather than in the main auditorium, and it was not recorded for the county's television broadcast.
At the end of a presentation by Jim Long, coordinator for the Mattawoman Watershed Society, the majority of the commissioner board stated that they agree that the Mattawoman Creek must be preserved. But when the meeting broke up, neither side appeared to have budged an inch on their views of the project.
"After seeing that presentation, I thought there were many areas in which we were in agreement," said commissioners' Vice President Edith J. Patterson (D), whose District 2 would host the final, disputed phases of the road. Patterson said the presentation did not change her position on the connector, but she added, "Rather than look at differences [in our views], I choose to look at similarities."
Long said he did not have a new view either.
"The environmental studies have just been inadequate from the beginning," Long said, adding that he is unaware of any new information that mitigates the impacts his group anticipates from the road or changes their view of it.
In the absence of a consensus, it now appears that it will be up to the Maryland Department of the Environment to resolve the issue with its decision due June 1.
The county needs permits from both MDE and the federal Army Corps of Engineers in order to build the road across the Mattawoman Creek basin. The corps has not set a deadline for a decision.
Both agencies have indicated that they are prepared to deny the permit and require a full, multi-year environmental review — a federal environmental impact statement — unless the county can answer some very fundamental questions about the need for the project and what kind of environmental impacts it will have.
In a letter to Charles County officials in January, Amanda Sigillito, chief of the Maryland Department of the Environment's Non-Tidal Wetland Permits Office, outlined six issues regarding the project that cause her office concern, including inadequate mapping of a rare plant, the potato dandelion, and an explanation of why the county's justification for the highway has shifted from providing a new transportation link to providing a safe alternative to Billingsley Road. The letter asked the county to find further ways to avoid and mitigate wetland destruction and the creation of impervious surfaces that can cause chemical runoff.
Finally, MDE asked the county to determine if the Mattawoman contains any Tier II or high quality stream segments. If it does, then the county will have to undertake more stringent mitigation practices, possibly even moving the highway's path.
So what are the odds that the connector will survive?
High stakes showdown
The connector's survival is vital to the government's plans for the county's economic future and its defeat is vital to environmentalists' plans for restoring the Chesapeake Bay.
The stakes are high for both sides.
The connector project is halfway finished. Its southern four phases, a dualization of Billingsley Road from Route 5 to Middletown Road, are largely complete and servicing local traffic.
The remaining three planned phases deviate from the Billingsley alignment and take a more northerly path, closely skirting the eastern sides of several existing subdivisions and crossing the environmentally sensitive swamp section of the Mattawoman Creek basin with a new bridge.
The road is often mentioned as a component of a major county economic development project planned for Bryans Road, a business campus that the county hopes to make the premier center for chemical explosives and propulsion research.
Officials hope that by concentrating the world's brightest energetics technology scientists close to the Naval Surface Warfare Center at the Naval Support Facility, Indian Head, they can protect the base from a future round of federal base closures.
Officials said the road would be a valuable addition to the project, but not a critical component.
"I don't think it's vital," said Dennis Chappell, president of the Indian Head Defense Alliance. "It certainly would be a positive addition to it."
Commissioner Gary V. Hodge (D) said the energetics center is not critically dependent on the completion of the connector, but that the economic future of the county's western side could be.
"We need a connector between western Charles County and the heart of our vibrant development district," Hodge said, but added, "[The energetics center] is not going to live or die on the cross-county connector. … I can't deny it would be a nice asset."
Environmental watchdogs, including the Maryland Sierra Club and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, have labeled the connector project an environmental disaster which will usher in the development of 1,100 new homes, creating poisonous runoff that will ruin one of the Chesapeake Bay's last prolific fish spawning grounds.
Hodge, who touted his environmental credentials from working for 14 years on the Patuxent River Commission, responded strongly to those claims.
"As long as I'm sitting in this [commissioner] chair, this road will not produce sprawl," Hodge declared. "The purpose of the road is not to be a growth corridor."
Hodge said the approved developments in the area, the source of the alleged 1,100 houses, might otherwise be developed with a patchwork of privately built roads that would not be built with environmental protections.
"The environment is best served by building this road," Hodge said. "If we don't do it, I cannot pledge that we'll be able to protect the creek."
Environmental watchdogs are not convinced.
"You have to ask yourself, are we willing to sacrifice Mattawoman Creek?" said Bonnie Bick, an outspoken member of the Mattawoman Watershed Society who has opposed the road since the plan's inception. "The value of the creek outweighs the county's need for infrastructure in that area. … The future of the Chesapeake is in danger."
"It's a poster child situation," Long said. He said that if the county and the state cannot save the Mattawoman, one of the bay's most productive fish hatcheries and one of the last in anything approaching pristine condition, "then where are you ever going to protect the Chesapeake Bay?"
The connector project dodged the axe a couple of times last year. After a brutal public hearing, in which environmental watchdogs drowned project supporters with opposition testimony, both MDE and the corps sent letters to the county requiring new information. MDE noted it was prepared to deny the project if the county did not request an extension until June.
Both the corps and MDE have asked the county to justify the need for a new cross-county highway, since Route 228 in Waldorf is so close. MDE has gone so far as to ask county workers to trudge into the Mattawoman swamp to see if any rare potato dandelions are growing in the proposed path of the highway.
All bets are off
With the stakes high and the result pending, the Independent polled local leaders and groups for their bets on the connector's fate.
"I'm not a gambler," Patterson said. "I tend to think positively about [the project]. … I think we are making strides. I hope the information we provide to the agencies will suffice."
Cooper and Hodge also declined to put odds on the project approval. Cooper said, "I still have a positive outlook for it."
The county's business community is also pulling for the road, but most leaders won't venture a prediction.
"I have no clue," Chappell said, when asked for a prediction.
He added that the road would take traffic off twisting, accident-prone Billingsley Road. "I see it as a necessary thing from a safety standpoint. … There are not enough words to describe Billingsley Road, especially in the wintertime."
When asked if the connector would finally be built, Paula Martino, government affairs director for the Southern Maryland Association of Realtors, said, "I hope so!"
Martino said the association supports the road "because it is in concert with the county's comprehensive transportation plan."
David Cooksey, a local engineer and a member of the Maryland-National Capital Building Industry Association's liaison committee, didn't offer a prediction. He believes the road would be built in the right place, but suggested that the corps and MDE would string out the approval process until it is no longer economically feasible.
Referring to the potato dandelion count, Cooksey said, "That's when it looked like to me that someone was trying to throw a wrench in the project."
Long, a proponent of the dandelion count, has said the county needs to survey the plants and wildlife of the Mattawoman in person, rather than just consulting a state database of known species. Long predicted that the county will not get construction permits without a full environmental review.
"I can't see [the project] going forward without it," Long said, adding that he further doubts the project will be permitted once the results of an environmental study are made known.
Bick also dismissed the chances of the project from getting a permit without the county performing a full environmental study.
"We're not going to let that happen," Bick said. "We don't see that as a viable option."
