Connector foes pressure O'Malley

Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008

According to spokesman Robert Ballinger, the Maryland Department of the Environment is scheduled to issue one of two statements Friday. The agency will either issue a decision on a permit to allow the county to extend the cross-county connector across the Mattawoman Creek or extend the decision-making period.

A coalition of groups calling itself the Smarter Growth Alliance of Charles County, meanwhile, is encouraging its members to appeal directly to Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) to tell MDE to deny the approval, claiming that the highway would destroy the environmentally sensitive Mattawoman Creek.

"The target here is to convince the governor that is not an example of smart growth," said Jim Long, a member of the Mattawoman Watershed Society, a member of the Smarter Growth Alliance and a county-based group that has strongly opposed the highway.

MWS has joined in the alliance with larger statewide organizations such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Sierra Club to convince O'Malley that there are better options than building the highway.

"We're very concerned," said Bonnie Bick, a member of MWS and the Sierra Club and a frequent critic of the highway project. She said the alliance's pressure campaign "is something that is absolutely necessary, since the commissioners … and the citizens are dedicated to protecting the Mattawoman."

While opposition groups did take their opportunity to speak to MDE at a July public hearing, Bick said she did not believe this latest push on the governor is sidestepping MDE's approval process.

"This is part of the process," Bick said. "It's not going outside the process."

Local officials might have said they want to save the Mattawoman, but they have also said they want to protect the county's economy, especially the Indian Head Navy base.

The county announced details Tuesday for an Energetics Technology Center campus to be located in Bryans Road, which aims to concentrate research and development of propellants and explosives in the county and protect the base from closure. Commissioner Gary V. Hodge (D) said the campus is "the most important economic development project in the history of the county."

Officials have previously identified the connector highway as a vital transportation link for the campus. Its construction, so far, has consisted of an expansion of Billingsley Road from the Route 5 intersection to Middletown Road in Waldorf. The remaining phases would deviate from Billingsley, taking the highway across the Mattawoman to Bryans Road.

Commissioners' President F. Wayne Cooper (D) said that if opposition groups have been pressuring the governor, he has seen no evidence of it.

"No one has contacted me from the governor's office," Cooper said.

Linda Redding, a Nanjemoy resident who has frequently lobbied local officials against the highway, said she also sees opposition to the highway as an economic issue.

"We are hoping we can move the county in a more prosperous direction," Redding said. "The more we destroy the natural resources that provide services for free, the more we impoverish ourselves. … The [Chesapeake] Bay can only be as healthy as its tributaries."

Redding said county government should focus more re-investment into Waldorf, helping the town grow denser, more vertical architecture with more public transportation.

The cross-county connector will also need a federal permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. Corps spokeswoman Chanel Weaver said the corps has not set a date for making a decision and is still reviewing comments from the July public hearing.

Environmental watchdogs showed up in force at the hearing to urge the corps to require the county to conduct a lengthy environmental impact statement study before allowing it complete the last three northern phases of the highway.