La Plata, MD – The Maryland Airport in western Charles County has quietly been the elephant in the room while discussion surrounding the 2016 Charles County Comprehensive Plan and Watershed Conservation District (WCD) wove its way through the process of being passed into law.
It became evident at the Charles County Commissioners’ town hall meeting Tuesday, June 20, the issue isn’t likely to go away.
At the very end of the county process, as the WCD was about to be passed into law June 6, Charles County Commissioner Ken Robinson [D-District 1] proposed an overlay zone be placed around the Maryland Airport, which the board approved by a 3-2 vote.
The designation is a regulatory tool that creates a special zoning district placed over an existing base zone, in this case the WCD. Natural resource protection overlay districts can manage development in or near environmentally sensitive areas, such as groundwater recharge areas or floodplains and may include building setbacks, density standards, lot sizes, impervious surface reduction and vegetation requirements. Structure requirements could also restrict floor height minimums and flood-proofing to high water levels.
On one hand, county leaders have touted the airport as an economic benefit to the county, but the new zoning restrictions seemed counter to any efforts by the late Gil Bauserman, whose family founded the airport before World War II.
Before his death, Bauserman called the WCD “shortsighted” and said it ignored the input of the county’s federal and state partners, the county’s own staff, and the land use experts that crafted the county-funded Airport Land Use Study.
Charles County Commissioner President Peter Murphy [D] said June 6 the county had to vote the way it did. “So much of that land around the airport is very [environmentally] sensitive,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t feel there is value in the airport. In the future, we intend to have discussions about how do we help the airport develop. I don’t see it as an either-or situation.”
Bauserman’s daughter, Tammy Potter, said she would like to see Robinson’s amendment to the WCD in writing.
“I really would like to see the amendment,” Potter said. “The county has been very supportive of the airport from the beginning. Several of our delegates and the county support us. The WCD has kind of put a damper on things. Commissioners [Debra] Davis [D-District 3] and [Bobby] Rucci [D-District 4] have been very supportive of us.”
Those on the other side of the fence, including local environmentalist Bonnie Bick, worry that relaxing restrictions around the environmentally sensitive areas would negatively impact Mattawoman Creek.
“The question is, wouldn’t the county be better off keeping the WCD designation around the airport and directing industrial growth to areas that already have the needed infrastructure already in place?” Bick asked. “One can see that all of this land is surrounded by preserved land, not a good place to destroy the green infrastructure nature has created and replace it with storm water ponds and other expensive man-made infrastructure, like sewer.”
That debate is likely to continue as county staff prepare to implement the new controversial zoning text and map amendments into law.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com