[va-richmond-general] article from Washington Post today on Maryland's Eastern Shore

From: "Kathy Kreutzer" <k-kreutzer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Va-Richmond-General@Freelists. Org" <va-richmond-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 10:36:59 -0500
From Kathy Kreutzer, Chesterfield

Planned Development Prompts Fears of Chesapeake Congestion

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 19, 2006; A01

On spongy land near a muddy river on Maryland's Eastern Shore lie a
thousand vacant acres and a battle that invites this question: How many
people should live on the Chesapeake Bay?

If the city of Cambridge has its way, a new residential golf course
development overlooking the Little Blackwater River will lure 10,000 new
residents -- nearly doubling the city's population -- over the next two
decades. For Cambridge leaders, Blackwater Resort means needed tax
revenue and new life for a hard-luck area that hasn't grown much in
three decades.

But the view from across the bay, at the headquarters of the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation, is different. Environmentalists there see an outsize
development that would be built upriver from a wildlife refuge
considered a national treasure, adding more sewage and polluted runoff
to an already unhealthy bay.

The foundation has launched a campaign, drawing thousands of signatures,
letters and e-mails from as far up the Chesapeake watershed as New York,
to urge Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) to stop the project,
which has gained a number of key approvals. The fray has spawned at
least two slow-growth bills in the state legislature, even as
development plans inch forward.

The fight, both sides say, hinges on the difference between how many new
residents are good for Cambridge and how many are good for the bay.

People -- their waste, industry, roads and cars -- are a chief enemy of
the nation's largest estuary. The federal government and jurisdictions
around the bay, including Maryland, Virginia and the District, have
spent billions over three decades to restore it, but the tide of new
residents threatens the effort. Between 1950 and 2000, the population in
the bay's watershed -- a 64,000-square-mile drainage basin that
stretches from Virginia to New York -- soared from 8 million to 15
million.

About 100,000 people move into the massive watershed region every year.

So far, scientists have no clear idea how many people it would take to
overwhelm the bay eventually or how few would ensure its health. The
Chesapeake Bay Program, a consortium of federal and state governments
leading the cleanup, is working on a model to help guide development,
but results are years away.

"The population increases by about a million every 10 years. Is that
fast? Is that slow? Is that good? Is that bad? I don't know," said Lee
Epstein, who studies growth issues at the nonprofit bay foundation. "We
already may be at the place where the bay can't take too many more
people."

One recent morning, the waters under the Malkus bridge into Cambridge
shivered dull green. The underwater visibility there, watermen say, is
five inches. Before World War II, seafood and packing companies made
Cambridge a busy company town, fed on bounty from the bay. Then came
lower harvests and layoffs, and race riots in the 1960s. To hear the
local people tell it, that was the last time Cambridge got anybody's
notice.

For three decades, Dorchester County residents watched the commuters and
the summer people spread wealth to the counties around them. Then,
slowly, modest salvation came in the form of a new Hyatt conference
center, a couple of subdivisions -- and plans for Blackwater Resort
Communities, a 3,200-unit project that promises to boost the tax base by
as much as $1 billion. In 2004, the city annexed a 1,080-acre farm along
the Little Blackwater River for the project, which has won several
rounds of city and county approval.

"In 1960, the city of Cambridge had 12,500 people. Forty years later,
that population had dwindled to below 11,000," Cambridge Mayor Cleveland
L. Rippons said.
"Now, how do you know that you've got too much growth?"

The Blackwater Resort community would go up a couple of miles from the
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, a 70-year-old tidal marshland whose
27,000 acres shelter the bald eagle, peregrine falcon and other
threatened species. Flooding and farm runoff already create problems for
the preserve, which empties into the bay.

But houses present a host of different problems. More people drive more
cars, and new studies show that even relatively small flows of polluted
pavement runoff can disturb waterways, especially such small rivers as
the Little Blackwater. But without more study, it is hard to say
precisely what impact the Blackwater development would have.
The ability of a place to accommodate people and nature is called
carrying capacity, and it can be a slippery concept. In the bay region,
carrying capacity "is how much pollution a population can stand," said
Epstein, the bay foundation growth expert.

For a waterman, too few crabs might equal too many people. To a
slow-growth advocate, one new subdivision tips the scale. To some
builders, as long as there are home buyers and open land, there's room
to spare.

In his cubicle in a waterfront Annapolis office, Peter Claggett searches
for scientific ways to gauge the effect of people on the bay. He is a
U.S. Geological Survey geographer, funded by the Chesapeake Bay Program,
which is led by Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District and a
dozen federal bodies.

Better technology -- sewage treatment, runoff management and wildlife
restoration -- can postpone the day when the watershed won't withstand
any more people, maybe indefinitely, Claggett said.  His computer showed
multicolored maps of Dorchester, with population and housing, types of
soil and trees, cropland, wildlife habitat and building hot spots.

But can he calculate how many people should live there?  He sighed.

"There's no estimate of capacity that we can foresee," he said. "I'm not
sure it's possible to determine an absolute limit."

What he hopes to do, he said, is help local decision makers, such as
Rippons, choose more precisely where to build and where to preserve
land.  "There's no mandate for counties to plan regionally," Claggett
said. What bay communities need, he said, is "a collective vision that
everyone buys into, that has both growth and environmental protection
aspects."

Maryland's "smart growth" laws were one attempt to do that. The laws
attempt to direct development to areas where it is least harmful to the
environment, in part by allowing state planners to scuttle development
deemed unsuitable for the existing infrastructure.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation said that the Blackwater project is a test
of the laws and that the state, by signing off on the project in the
summer, has failed.
This is Maryland's chance to show how serious it is about helping
farmers while helping local governments encourage environmentally
sensitive growth, said foundation President William C. Baker. Instead,
foundation officials said, the project as proposed would occupy more
protected waterfront land than has any other in the state.

"We haven't seen a project of this size and scope in a long time," Baker
said. If it's built, "It's going to be open season on the Eastern
Shore."

Farming is no longer an option on this land, said William "Sandy"
McAllister, the attorney for Duane Zentgraf, Blackwater Resort's
developer. A dapper man who drives a black Jaguar, McAllister is a
former city attorney and grandson of the former state's attorney. Like
some others who have grown up here, he objects to come-lately
"Birkenstock knuckleheads" dictating what's best for Cambridge.

"We've had three years of approvals from people who have been elected to
give them," he said. "If the Chesapeake Bay Foundation had participated
in nearly three years of design hearings and approvals, perhaps they
would share our conviction that this is a well-designed project that
will be terrific for Cambridge and which in no way will adversely affect
the bay."

Two weeks ago, McAllister, Zentgraf, bay foundation officials and
legislators sat down, for the first time, to talk. They shared points of
view, hinted at lawsuits and then spoke about compromise. But what a
compromise might be, nobody could say.

"It might be one of those things you can make less worse -- maybe not
perfect or not very good," said bay foundation director Kim Coble, who
attended the meeting. "But with 100,000 people moving in every year, I
feel as if we have to do something ."

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[va-richmond-general] article from Washington Post today on Maryland's Eastern Shore

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