State rips Chaney rezoning request

Official says plan not Smart Growth

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

In a letter to the Charles County commissioners last week, a department official stated that the proposed rezoning is ‘‘inconsistent with the county’s Comprehensive Plan and the state’s Smart Growth principles.”

The letter comes on top of a boisterous public hearing last Wednesday, in which Hughesville residents roundly panned the rezoning request and urged the county commissioners to deny it.

The commissioners have left the record from that hearing open until July 9 for written public comment.

Stephanie Martins, the state planning office’s director of land use planning and analysis, provided three pages of comment. She argued that the rezoning request is ‘‘not located within the sewer service areas for the county’s Comprehensive Water and Sewer Plan nor is it located within a Priority Funding Area.”

Martins said the truck traffic resulting from the rezoning would also hamper efforts to develop Hughesville as a rural village, as in the revitalization plan created by its citizens during the construction of the Route 5 bypass around the village.

‘‘The designation of heavy industrial zoning and the subsequent development of this site will have a negative impact on the county’s ability to preserve Hughesville as provided for in the Hughesville Village Revitalization Plan,” Martins wrote. ‘‘The uses permitted under the heavy industrial zoning district, such as a truck wash plant, will not contribute to preserving the character of the village center.

‘‘The additional traffic and noise brought on by the truck washing facility will have a negative impact on the village character and the county’s ability to make the community safe for pedestrian access that is vital to the success of Village Center,” Martins continued, presumably referring to the rumored relocation of Chaney’s gravel wash plant from its current location in Waldorf.

Martins further pointed out that the county’s comprehensive plan called for new industrial zones to be located near infrastructure hubs or existing industrial zones, such as Waldorf, White Plains, Pomonkey Airport, the Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge or the towns of Indian Head and La Plata. Hughesville is not near any of these.

Frank Chaney, president of Chaney Enterprises, said that Martins’ sentiments were ‘‘left over” from the Smart Growth initiative of Gov. Parris N. Glendening’s administration and did not take the Chaney point of view into account.

‘‘I’m sure she only heard from one side,” Chaney said, asserting that, if his representatives had met with her, she might have a different view of the rezoning.

At last week’s public hearing, Chaney told the commissioners that there was a ‘‘5 percent” chance that he would relocate his wash plant to Hughesville.

In a letter to the planning commission in April, Chaney said he wants the heavy industrial zoning in order to leave his options open for what to do with the land. He wrote that he plans to sell parcels of the land in order to finance the construction of facilities for the Red Cross and the College of Southern Maryland.

‘‘If [state officials] don’t want us there, then why don’t they give Hughesville funding for water and sewer?” Chaney asked, referring to the need for such infrastructure to carry out the plan.

Donna Cave, head of the Preserve Hughesville group that opposes the rezoning, welcomed the letter as a confirmation of the points her group made at last week’s public hearing.

‘‘They can’t tell the county what to do, but I think they have some excellent points there,” Cave said of the planning office’s comments. ‘‘We’re real glad about the letter.”

Cave acknowledged that the county’s comprehensive plan has always been regarded as a general guideline and not the law of the land.

However, she said the Chaney rezoning proposal does not even fit within that general guideline.