Alex Winter of Bryans Road gestures while telling the Charles County Commissioners during a public hearing on the proposed comprehensive plan, “Urgent, bold action is needed.”
La Plata, MD – If the Charles County Commissioners’ public hearing on the proposed Comprehensive Plan Tuesday, May 17 is any indication, the project—which has already taken five years of slow, deliberate work—still needs a lot of tweaking before citizens are satisfied.
Prominent among the 56 opinions brought before the commissioners: not enough is being done to protect environmentally sensitive Mattawoman Creek and the county is growing too fast for its own good, especially in Bryans Road, where residents repeatedly said they’d rather see development focused on struggling Indian Head instead of their village.
It sets the stage for what the Charles County Commissioners hope will be their legacy, a complete update of the 2006 plan—but will it be enough?
One area of focus was the set amount of runoff an estuary such as the delicate Mattawoman Creek can tolerate from impervious surfaces. Many, including Ken Hastings of Mason Springs Conservancy, a frequent speaker at Charles’ public hearings, said that the state established that number at 10 percent.
“The existing impervious surface is at 9.8 percent, and here we are only two percent from that magic threshold, where you are beginning to see things go wrong with the estuary,” Hastings said. “We should have no problem maintaining a 10 percent threshold. The plan doesn’t say that, but the slides did. I doubt staff is saying hold the line at 10 percent. Something is wrong in the data flow. The plan says one thing and the overview says another.
“Numbers really don’t mean anything anymore, because we’re already at the tipping point,” he stressed.
“This process was an opportunity to establish permanent protections for Mattawoman Creek,” Austin Doherty said. “This plan has failed to do that.”
“Unchecked growth has changed Mattawoman Creek,” Dr. Jim Long of Accokeek agreed. “We should stop impervious surfaces at their current level. It’s time to protect the county’s stream valleys.”
Long was among many who weighed in on future plans for Bryans Road.
“It is a poor choice to support a new urban center that competes with Indian Head and relies on a cancelled highway [the recently nixed Cross County Connector] for its existence,” he noted.
“We are all opposed to this Bryans Road urban development plan,” said Edward Joell of Indian Head. “You increase this kind of development, you also increase the amount of impervious surface. It’s at the tipping point right now because we’re increasing the impervious surfaces. Any more than that and it’s going to destroy Mattawoman Creek.”
“The Bryans Road plan needs to be scrapped and replaced. The town hasn’t been developed according to any plan,” said Bob Lukinu who lives there. “These developers came in and added these little high density developments wherever they wanted. This marketplace is pie in the sky. They can’t even get one intersection right in Bryans Road.”
“Bryans Road should remain a village,” agreed Dennis Murphy. “Development should be encouraged in Indian Head.”
“We have to assume this board of commissioners wants to make things better,” said Alex Winter of Bryans Road. “Urgent, bold action is necessary.”
Chris Dudley told the commissioners, “We’re here because of a hijacking.
“We had a lot of discussion about the comprehensive plan and big promises and then [the developers] came in and we ended up with a plan completely opposite of what the people wanted,” he said.
Attorney Roger Fink of La Plata and Edward Fleming of the Walton Group in Alexandria, VA both asked the commissioners to restore 1,160 acres, which the Charles County Planning Commission voted to include in a watershed conservation district earlier this year.
“Staff made some recommendations that this property remain in a priority funding area and that it remain in Tier 2 on the Tier Map,” Fleming said. “There was a school site which was part of this 1,160 acres placed in watershed conservation district. The planning commission decided to place this property into WCD and later put only 46 acres from the school site back in the priority funding area. This puts the county in funding jeopardy from the state.”
In addition to the many speakers who almost always come to public hearings to vent or express their opinions, sometimes it’s good to hear a fresh perspective, like Takako Mato of Bryans Road, a newcomer to the area who pretty much took county leaders to task for allowing the degradation of its pristine waters and woodlands in the first place.
“Charles County is developing too fast for me,” Mato said. “I’m really concerned. I feel this comprehensive plan will destroy the beauty of Charles County. More cars, more trash, contaminated air and water. When the water quality goes down, there will be no more fish in Mattawoman Creek.”
Mato explained her therapy group, Healing Waters, takes patients fly fishing as part of its therapy.
“What a pity if our therapeutic work should be lost because of our carelessness,” she asserted.
The next step for the proposed plan will have the board of county commissioners look it over to see where adjustments may be necessary.
Perhaps while those work sessions are underway, they will remember the words of Beverly Johnson of Waldorf, who said when she and her husband first came to the county, they found all of the hotels packed with fishing boats and trailers.
“We came from upstate New York where people who fish were very familiar with Charles County,” Johnson said. “We thought that the bass fishing tournament was a great economic boon to the county and that its natural resources were very highly prized.
“First impressions can be deceiving,” she said.
“Our river streams are deteriorating because of overdevelopment,” she stated. “There is no protection for environmentally sensitive areas.”
Johnson said she was heartened by the fact that there are a new set of commissioners in town who will have an opportunity to review and amend the plan.
“I hope you will be mindful of all the public input you have received here tonight,” she said.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com