Artist’s rendering of new water tower behind the park and ride on Golden Beach Road in Charlotte Hall.
Leonardtown, MD — The Commissioners of St. Mary’s County have approved an easement that paves the way for the construction of a new water tower in Charlotte Hall. The tower has become a lynchpin in citizens’ concerns about growth in the north county area.
The motion at the commissioners’ May 24 meeting by Commissioner Tom Jarboe [R – 1st District] came a week after Commissioner John O’Connor [R – 3rd District] requested a delay and suggested that the water tower was not really needed. O’Connor said the St. Mary’s County Metropolitan Commission (MetCom) had justified the tower based on the need for additional fire suppression in the area, which O’Connor said had not been proven to him.
But Jarboe in making the motion said that a previous fire chief in a letter had supported the need for the water tower and that MetCom had based their decision in part on that. Later in the meeting MetCom Executive Director Scott Bundy said that the decision was also based on assertions from the county’s Department of Land Use and Growth Management about growth potential in the area.
O’Connor voted for Jarboe’s motion which carried unanimously. But in the subsequent meeting with Bundy on the commission’s capital improvement plan, he insisted that MetCom and the commissioners agree to have the additional water storage capacity used only for fire suppression until completion of the northern county master plan, which process has just now begun. See the BayNet story on the first meeting on the north county plan.
“To say it’s only for fire suppression is disingenuous,” Jarboe said. But O’Connor insisted for the record that any use of the tower for growth must only come after completion of the master plan, which will determine how much residential and commercial growth will be allowed in the Charlotte Hall, New Market, Mechanicsville and Golden Beach areas.
When Bundy said MetCom would only do what the county wanted them to do about making any water line extensions to tap the new tower, O’Connor said, “That statement alone is big,” O’Connor was reflecting the sentiment of many north county residents against any more residential development in their area.
Roads in Charlotte Hall, particularly Route 5, are often clogged. The commissioners a couple of years ago had to waive adequate public facility requirements for roads in order to allow some limited additional commercial development. Discussion about a parallel road is the first order of business in the north county master plan process.
Commissioner Mike Hewitt [R – 2nd District} asked for the timetable for the new tower and he was told construction would take about a year. Hewitt said the timetables for the tower and the master plan could coincide so it might work out okay in the end.
The approval of the easement came after the Maryland Transit Authority, which owns the new park and ride lot, agreed to transfer land directly to the county instead of MetCom so the county needed to accept the land and then allow the easement for MetCom to get to the new water tower.
The new tower would be 400,000 gallons. MetCom is also building a new 500,000-gallon water tower along Route 235 in Hollywood. Construction of that tower has already begun. That will serve Broad Creek and adjacent areas.
Contact Dick Myers at dick.myers@thebaynet.com