Urgent News: Upcoming wetland permits hearing for a damaging new highway proposal

Cross County Connector Extension

The bumper sticker above says it all. Mattawoman Creek, recognized as “the best, most productive tributary to the Bay” by state fisheries biologists, is under attack by overdevelopment.

The most urgent issue is Charles County’s proposal to build a new four-lane highway through a lightly populated and forested region of the Mattawoman watershed important for fish spawning. The massive additional growth of the highway would irretrievably harm the Creek and our environment.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Department of Environment are both responsible for signing off on permits to fill wetlands. The Corps says that a wetland hearing will be held in July. While the date is not yet known, please send us an email and we will inform you as soon as we have the date (info@mattawoman watershedsociety. org) Please plan to attend and speak out in favor for full study of the impacts through an Environmental Impact Statement. It is inappropriate to consider permitting a 6.5 mile, four-lane highway through one of the Chesapeake’s most valuable and vulnerable watersheds without an EIS.

Originally called the Western Connector in the early nineties, this highway proposal is a bad idea that only gets worse as we better understand the impacts of urbanization on aquatic resources. Occasionally disguised as a “realignment and widening” of Billingsley Road, and now termed part of the Cross County Connector, this highway proposal would stimulate additional traffic, increase air pollution, dirty our waters, and overburden services to our citizenry. The sprawl it would induce would replace forest with urbanization and engender long commutes, all factors that contribute to increased emission of the global-warming gas CO₂. (See the latest issue of the Maryland Sierra Club Chesapeake newspaper or www.mattawomanwatershed.org for more on the connection between proper watershed management and reduced global warming.)

What you can do:

Get informed: www.mattawomanwatershed.org

Get involved:

(1) Get on the mailing list of the Mattawoman Watershed Society by sending a request to info@ mattawomanwatershedsociety.org

(2) When alerted, attend and speak at the wetland hearing, and ask for an EIS.

(3) Display a bumper sticker. We will send you one if you request.

Just because the highway would be fully county funded by Charles County is no reason to avoid the full scrutiny of an EIS.

These funds* would be better spent on needed services such as our strapped school system or for appropriate transportation: a top priority should be providing matching funds to federal and state dollars to connect a light rail line between Waldorf and the Branch Avenue metro station.

*The cost per Charles County household for the proposed Cross County Connector extension was computed by dividing figures in Charles County’s 2008 budget for Capital Improvement Projects by the number of County households, estimated from data at http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/24/24017. html. The actual cost is likely to be much higher.