Mattawoman Creek: Waterway vs. roadway

Cross-county connector’s potential impact debated

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

However, a debate is intensifying between environmental watchdogs and county officials over who and what should be allowed to go pleasantly through the Mattawoman.

The Mattawoman Watershed Society, a citizens group, would like to see migratory fish continue to return to the creek to pleasantly spawn the next generation of the Chesapeake Bay’s most vital food chain links and prized sport fish. However, Charles County leaders are planning to build the western section of a cross-county connector highway across the sensitive stream so commuters can pleasantly avoid Waldorf traffic.

Moderating this debate is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which must decide whether the county can begin construction on the six-mile, four-lane highway later this year or submit to a lengthy environmental review process.

At stake, say the environmentalists, is one of Maryland’s few remaining pristine watersheds, a creek that shelters the most prodigious growth and production of 54 species of fish, including shad, herring and bass.

‘‘It’s the best creek in the Maryland Chesapeake Bay system,” said Bonnie Bick, a member of the Mattawoman Watershed Society, referring to a 1992 report by the Maryland Department of Environment that strongly urged preservation of the creek.

The stakes are high for the county as well. Officials are attempting to re-order traffic patterns across the county to reduce choke points on U.S. 301 and Route 228 in Waldorf as well as take traffic off of the most winding and dangerous parts of western Billingsley Road. The current two-lane road runs dead center through the county’s planned ‘‘development district,” where officials plan to direct future development in the county.

‘‘The entire length of the cross-county connector is within our development district,” said Melvin C. Beall, chief of the county’s capital projects division.

‘‘The development is coming whether the road is improved or not,” said commissioners’ President F. Wayne Cooper (D), who lives on Billingsley Road. He said the road sees at least one accident a week because people are using it as a main thoroughfare at high speeds.

The county is also facing a ticking economic clock as the cost of road construction continues to soar. The county’s road program has already once run $20 million into the red, and officials hope to complete the cross-county connector by 2009, before inflation raises the price of the project beyond its current budget.

The county has applied for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees development around the nation’s navigable waters. The corps is currently studying the county’s application, and, according to corps officials, plans to hold a public hearing on the application in late summer or early fall.

‘‘We have to review the application, which included a big, thick environmental study,” said Paul Wettlaufer, acting chief of the corps’ Southern Maryland section.

Once the review is complete, Wettlaufer said the corps would release its findings to the public for a 30-day review, hold a public hearing and then allow for a 10-day comment period. Then it will issue a decision on whether the highway would have ‘‘no significant impact” or if the county needs to complete a more exhaustive environmental impact statement, detailing the impact of the road on the Mattawoman.

‘‘An EIS can easily take a year and a half to two years, starting from scratch,” Wettlaufer said, but added that the volume of information that the county has already submitted for its application would likely reduce the process to six to nine months.

The county would like to avoid any delay in the western phases 5, 6 and 7 of the connector, which it hopes to start constructing by the end of the year.

‘‘If [the price of] oil continues to drop, it may not be any more expensive” to delay construction of the connector, Cooper said. However, he noted, the recent reduction in construction costs from oil ‘‘hasn’t been passed to us yet.”

‘‘I would prefer to take the additional money and put it into [stormwater runoff] engineering controls,” Cooper continued. ‘‘Right now, Billingsley has nothing for stormwater controls.”

However, members of the Mattawoman Watershed Society say the county’s new controls will do little to stem the runoff from the residential and commercial development they believe will inevitably follow the new road.

‘‘Highways are well-known to induce growth,” said Jim Long, a member of the group. ‘‘The highway will induce large growth in Bryans Road.”

‘‘We are concerned that the county is in too much of a rush,” said Bick, who favors a full EIS study. ‘‘We don’t know what the impacts will be.”

Despite their differences of opinion, both the county and the watershed society have remained civil. Bick said, ‘‘The county is wonderful in that it wants to do the right thing” and listen to the concerns of environmentalists.

‘‘I appreciate the people who brought this to our attention,” Cooper said. He added that he hopes the county’s recent efforts to move development back from the creek and directly enforce stormwater controls will satisfy environmentalists’ concerns in the long run.

E-mail Jay Friess at jfriess@somdnews.com.