Felling Oak Hill

Yesterday's Sun had an interesting piece on the expansion of the Oak Hill Juvenile Detention Center in Laurel. The facility, nominally a branch of the Washington, DC public school system exists in a precarious position, both physically and philosophically.

Its history goes back to 1929, when the federal government granted the 888 acre tract, which is located between Fort Meade and the National Security Agency (NSA), to Washington, DC. The juvenile detention facility, which houses up to 188 incarcerated middle and high school youth, was built in 1967.

The current expansion flies in the face of Senator Cardin's persistent efforts to shut the facility down, and his arguments that the center should be moved back to the District because, the location is too remote and prevents close interaction between the youths and their families.

District officials have argued that because the center houses youth whose stay is often months at a time, the rural facility gives them the opportunity to spend time outdoors. The City's other juvenile detention center, in northeast DC, has no outdoor recreation space. In the past, the City has also expressed that it would be willing to part with much of the land beyond what is immediately being used, about 40-60 acres.

With BRAC and large-scale development planned for the area, expect this issue to heat up even more over the coming years.

WB&A Trail Extension Opening Delayed

Ask anyone who lives in Anne Arundel County, particularly anyone who lives along the Route 2 corridor, what they think of the WB&A Trail, and chances are, they think it's a tremendous community resource. Sure, there were initially reservations about whether or not it would bring "unsavory" elements into the neighborhoods that abut the trail, but those concerns were largely unfounded.

An extension from Odenton to Bowie, which will connect the Anne Arundel and Prince George's County trails, is now nearly complete. The opening of the final segment, which includes a footbridge over the Little Patuxent River, is now being held up, in part, because of an enormous dump site of plastic waste adjacent to the trail. The County has already spent $47,000 removing 230 tons of plastic from the site, but several hundred more tons still remain. At least some of the plastic trash bears the logo of Nevamar, a plastic manufacturer that was based in Odenton from 1943 to 2004.

Let's hope the County pursues compensation for these remediation efforts if a culprit can be pinpointed. And, kudos to the County for pursuing this expansion of our well-traveled trail network.

Below is a map of the Anne Arundel County portion of trail's current configuration.



UPDATE: Sun coverage.

Patuxent 20/20

Yesterday, the Patuxent Riverkeeper released its latest report [pdf] on the health of the Patuxent River.

Among the recommendations the report makes to restore the health of the river, are:

• Implement low-impact development strategies based on the Stormwater Management Act of 2007 [pdf].
  
• Create a dedicated fund for stormwater retrofits.
  
• Increase permit staff overseeing sediment and erosion control and stormwater management.
  
• Reduce use of fertilizers.
  
• Limit the use of septic systems in new developments.
  
• Maintain full funding for Program Open Space.
  
• Increase impact fees and wetland permit fees.
  
• Ensure that major wastewater treatment plants are upgraded by 2010.
  
• Increase funding for, and use of agricultural best management practices (BMPs).
  
• Increase public transportation options.
  
• Adopt total maximum daily load limits (TMDLs) for the river and enforce them.
  

Wal-Mart Ups the Ante

Unsatisfied to simply fill in 13-acres of the Little Patuxent's floodplain, Wal-Mart has decided to upgrade its original plans for a store on Route 3 in Crofton to include the construction of a "Supercenter". In Wal-Mart lingo, a "Supercenter" includes not only conventional retail options, but grocery goods as well. This, despite the fact that Wal-Mart has repeatedly denied an interest in providing grocery shopping at the location in the past.

The Sun article repeats misinformation propagated by the development team that the project calls for "filling in at least 3,500 cubic yards of nontidal wetlands along the Little Patuxent River." Actually, in this case, the Sun conflates two different pieces of information: The fill (volume) will be used on the Little Patuxent floodplain, to bring the 13 acres up to a flat grade with the existing, upland piece of the property. The amount of fill is not 3,500 cubic yards, but instead something like 37,000 cubic yards, about 3,700 dump truck loads. The non-tidal wetlands (area) that will be destroyed is something on the order of .6 acres.

Needless to say, Wal-Mart's change of plans has even gotten the normally docile Ed Reilly worked up, "They made a fundamental change to the character of the project without consulting us and notifying us, and that concerns us. I am very disappointed that they didn't contact us." Watch out folks, he's disappointed. I suspect that when hundreds turned out against Wal-Mart late last year, the handwriting on the wall was in large enough font that even Councilman Reilly could make it out.

Councilman Benoit, whose district includes the site of planned store, offered: "The message that Wal-Mart is sending: They don't care what the residents of this county think. I don't know what they are trying to do. If they are trying to incite major, major community resentment, they are going to succeed."

Is this hubris on Wal-Mart's part, or a high stakes game of chicken?

Blogging the Patuxent

Check out the Patuxent Riverkeeper's blog, Patuxent Ripples.

Stormwater, Stormwater Everywhere, and Not a Drop for the Cows to Drink

Sunday's Sun relays the unfortunate, though not uncommon, consequences of poor stormwater design, and the comedy of errors that can ensue trying to correct it. It's a tale about a Prince George's farmer, Joseph Mills, whose creek dried up after a development went in upstream, and who has been forced to resort to watering his cattle from a fire hydrant as a result.

The ironically named Oasis Farms, an 1,800 home, mixed use community outside Bowie, put in a 6-acre farm pond, with the Army Corps of Engineers assent, to detain stormwater runoff from the property. Problem is, the stormwater that fell on that site prior to development and was converted into groundwater provided base flow for Mr. Mills' stream, an unnamed tributary of the Patuxent River.

The developer, General Growth insists it did nothing wrong, and the regulators, who unanimously approved the plans, are falling all over themselves to pin responsibility for the matter on each other. Despite the fact that, "the plan pointed out there would be both temporary and permanent changes to the way in which water drained off the land," it was approved.

And that was only the beginning. The stormwater pond not only caused the stream to dry up, it also starved a downstream wetland of water. A wetland drained of water isn't particularly good habitat, and scores of turtles, frogs, and snakes that had inhabitated it were crushed on the road seeking wetter pastures. At this point, you may ask: "Couldn't they just drain the pond?" No, they can't, because now it's polluted.

So what is the solution proposed by regulators? Drill a well and pump up groundwater to the surface to flood the area again. Nevermind the fact that that's probably only going to worsen the problem since it originated with loss of groundwater re-charge in the first place. (Some other regulators apparently suggested conveying stormwater from elsewhere into the stream, of course a bad idea because it is loaded with pollutants).

So what is the correct solution? The right solution now is the same as it was before the development went in and what it should have been required of the development itself: Use infiltration systems, like bioretention areas throughout the community to convert stormwater to groundwater. These methods, which are one component of low impact development were actually honed in Prince George's County and, the Low Impact Development Center, a clearinghouse on low impact development, is based in Beltsville.

Maryland counties have the capacity to require that low impact development methods and infiltration be used on every new development project. Why do we continue to settle for less?

Voluntary Strategies, Regulation, and the Patuxent

Dennis King, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has published an interesting paper in the Bay Journal focusing "on why government decisions have so little influence on the millions of land and water-use decisions that do have a direct effect on the health of the [Patuxent] river." His conclusion is that, in essence, unless lawmakers find the spines to implement "hard strategies" which create expectations among individuals in the watershed that: "a) their individual decisions to comply with environmental laws will contribute to a collective effort to restore the health of the river that may succeed, and b) their individual decisions to ignore environmental laws will be detected, and that they will be prosecuted and penalized," the health of river and the Bay will continue to decline.

As Usual, Tutman Gets It Right

The Patuxent River and the environmental community in Maryland are lucky to have Fred Tutman as the Patuxent Riverkeeper. Fred is one of the most eloquent, intelligent defenders of the environment, and his piece in the Capital, "Property rights and our busted ecology" hits the bullseye. A must read.

Proposed Crofton Wal-Mart Gets Wet Reception

Today's Capital covers the ongoing drama of the Crofton Wal-Mart , a project threatening wetlands and the 100-year flood plain connected to the Little Patuxent River. The opposition to the project, lead by members of Crofton First, testified at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) hearing that, among other things, encroaching several acres onto the 100-year flood plan, which the project proposes to do, could lead to serious flooding of Route 3 south of the project.

It remains to be seen whether MDE will uphold its mission "to protect and restore the quality of Maryland’s air, water, and land resources, while fostering smart growth, economic development, healthy and safe communities, and quality environmental education for the benefit of the environment, public health, and future generations," or whether it will cave in to another wealthy developer and allow the public to bear the weight of its ineffectual decision making.

Patuxent Riverkeeper, Fred Tutman, put it best, "[The public] subsidize[s] bad environmental practices [because erosion control, flooding and cleanups eventually cost the taxpayer]. There is nothing smart about a project that threatens the Chesapeake Bay and a local waterway."

No, there isn't. And, frankly, there isn't anything smart about paying bureaucrats who are charged with protecting public resources a salary for negotiating away our natural heritage. It would be encouraging if the change in administrations at the County and State level could put an end to that practice.

Wal-Mart in the Wetlands

Friday's Sun reports that, in response to citizen outcry, the Maryland Department of the Environment is going to hold a public hearing on the wetlands filling license that has been applied for by the developer looking to put a Wal-Mart in the wetlands of the Little Patuxent River. The mounting public opposition has also caused Wal-Mart to offer to scale back the size of its store by 20%. Traffic concerns remain a major issue among opponents of the project.

Once the date of the hearing becomes available, I will post it here.

Fowler's Swan Song

On Wednesday, the Washington Post ran an interesting piece about Bernie Fowler, the former State Senator, who, in an effort to save the Patuxent River (or at least raise awareness about its plight) started, in 1988, a series of wade-ins, walking in to the water until he could no longer see his shoes. Now, two decades later, the annual wade-ins have become much publicized and well attended events. Politicos of all stripes, volunteers, and environmentally-minded folks rarely miss an opportunity to be photographed up to their knees (or in a good year, up to their thighs) in the Patuxent side-by-side with Fowler, now 82.

Problem is, despite Fowler's efforts, and those of others to clean up the Patuxent, not much has changed in those 19 years. The Patuxent still absorbs 60 millions gallons of sewage plant effluent a day. It's even been said by some that the Patuxent gets half its flow from wastewater. The nitrogen and phosphorous cause algae blooms which choke the life from the River's subaquatic plants and vegetation.

Fowler hopes one day to be able to wade-in up to his chest (63 inches) and be able to see his frayed canvas sneakers in the depths below (this year, he could only see to 27 inches). With more intense development planned on the Patuxent, it's hard to be optimistic.

Below is a poem written by Chesapeake bard, Tom Wisner, to commemorate Bernie Fowler's Wade-ins.

Bernie Fowler Day: A Guide to Wading in the Southern Maryland Waters

You just wade out in the river,
give it all you got
Right up to your chest.
And then you pick your spot.

Next you take your peepers
And cast them slowly down
On the day we see our feet again
There'll be celebration in this town.

It's Bernie's measure!
It's simple - yet profound.
We got a treasure!
You can't buy it by the pound.

The scientists had told them
Everything they knew,
Still - the folks were puzzled
And they didn't know what to do.

'Cause I ask you what's the profit
If we gain these worldly things
And foul the air and water
And all the life that brings?

Well - we should do this yearly
On Bernie Fowler Day.
Dress up fit to kill
And wade out all the way.

All the politicians gathered.
They'd come from miles around
To talk about the river
That flows by Solomons town.

Seems they had a problem
Things were looking bad.
They'd looked at all resources
And used everything they had.

"If you can't see your cloppers
There'll be trouble in this town
We oughta sue those upper counties
For the junk they're sending down."

It came 'round to Bernie Fowler
And he stood among the best.
He said, "folks, if you'll bear with me,
I think I got a test."

"I think I have a measure
That can't be beat
You just wade out in the river
And look down to see your feet."

Well - we should do this yearly
On Bernie Fowler Day.
Dress up fit to kill
And wade out all the way.

And somewhere in the future,
We'll look and see our feet again.
Could we ask for more?
That day is coming sure

It's Bernie's measure,
And it ain't hard to do.
It's a pleasure!
And it will soothe you too.