Patuxent River Naval Air Station. U.S. Navy photo
California, MD — An 18-month long study of land uses around the Patuxent River Naval Air Station is near completion and a draft report is now available. Public comment on the Patuxent River Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) is being solicited through November 19th.
According to an overview of the project on its website: “A Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) is a cooperative land use planning effort conducted as a joint venture between an active military installation, surrounding cities and counties, state and federal agencies, and other affected stakeholders.” The Pax River study was funded through a grant from the Department of defense Office of Economic Adjustment.
The monies were funneled to the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland, which is overseeing the work. They in turn contracted with a consulting firm called Matrix Design Group.
Ten counties in Southern Maryland, the Eastern Shore and the Northern Neck of Virginia participated. The glaring absence was Somerset County which is locked in a battle with St. Mary’s County over the proposed wind turbine farm.
There have been a series of meetings throughout the 18-month process. The TrI-County Council’s project manager for the JLUS, George Clark, said at a meeting on the Eastern Shore a number of opponents of the wind farm spoke in support of the Navy’s position against it.
Since the document won’t have the force of law, it uses instead the hammer of enlightened self-interest to the counties at a more removed distance from the base. The biggest concerns within the study area are noise and accident potential, and so those communities would be protecting their citizens by enacting regulations to protect the base, or so the theory goes.
St. Mary’s County has, on the other hand, been protecting the base through its land use regulations since the 1970s with what is called the AICUZ, or Air Installation Compatible Use Zone. But there may be something new for St. Mary’s County to embrace to protect its number one employer.
The St. Mary’s County Planning Commission has been working on the proposed Lexington Park Master Plan for over a year. One of the issues discussed was the possible need for an additional buffer just in case test requirements change. Navy officials have told the planning commission that a buffer would be nice but they have fallen short of asking for it.
The JLUS does just that by asking for an additional one-half mile buffer for noise and safety. Presumably the planning commission will factor that into their deliberations, if St. Mary’s County adopts the final JLUS recommendations.
At the first of two public meetings last week on the draft at the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center, Matrix Project Manager Mike Hrapla said the larger buffers would accommodate evolving missions. He mentioned Webster Field as an example of a place where testing requirements are likely to change.
The second public meeting last week was held in Cambridge on the Eastern Shore.
At the local meting, after a welcome from St. Mary’s County Commissioner Todd Morgan, who chairs a JLUS advisory committee, Hrapla gave a short presentation to the attendees who packed into the meeting room. He and other Navy officials then met with people individually, at the various maps depicting the buffer zones, to discuss individual impacts.
For more information on the Draft Joint Land Use Study and to download a copy of it go to http://paxjlus.com/
The contact person for this project is George Clark with the Tri-County Council of Southern Maryland. Comments may be mailed to him at P.O. Box 745, Hughesville, MD 20637 or emailed to him at gclark@tccsmd.org no later than 11:59 pm on November 19, 2014. Comments may also be sent via FAX at 301-274-1924 by the same time and date noted.