Scrap the Intercounty Connector

Against this background of a Bay in peril, Gov. O'Malley is forging ahead with construction of the Intercounty Connector, an 18.8-mile, six-lane, interstate-grade toll highway through some of the healthiest forests and wetlands in Maryland's Montgomery and Prince Georges' Counties. For more than a decade, the ICC has been highlighted by Friends of the Earth, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Taxpayers for Common Sense as one of the most destructive and wasteful projects in the entire country. It was rejected by the Reagan and Clinton Administrations because of the extensive damage it would cause to communities and the environment. The ICC has come this far only because George Bush and Bob Ehrlich fast-tracked it through a deeply-flawed environmental review.

According to State studies, the road will destroy nearly 800 acres of forest (including champion trees and large tracts of mature forest), 68 acres of 100-year floodplains, 48,290 linear feet (nearly ten miles) of streams, and 75 acres of wetlands, damaging some of the healthiest streams in the region and the healthiest tributaries to Rock Creek and the Anacostia River. The devastation doesn't stop with the highway itself. The State predicts that the ICC would trigger 5,000 acres of new development (subdivisions, malls, and parking lots) and the resulting loss of more forests and wetlands, thus destroying thousands more acres of forest, farms, wetlands and floodplains. And this may underestimate the ICC's impacts, because regional land use experts estimate that the ICC could trigger more than 20,000 acres of sprawling new growth.  

The Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the U.S. and second largest on earth, receives its water from a 64,000-mile drainage basin, or watershed. The amount of forest cover in a watershed is directly tied to stream health. Forests capture rainfall, reduce runoff, maintain stream flow, filter nutrients and sediment, and stabilize soils. Studies show that when 15 to 25% of forests in a watershed are converted to development, stream health and water quality decline. Today, about 58 % of the land in the watershed is forested, and about 100 acres of forest are removed every day. Forest cover in the Washington region generally is well below the thresholds needed to keep streams healthy. The vast size of the Bay watershed compared to the volume of water in the Bay itself makes this estuary exquisitely sensitive to the condition of the land. 

Non-tidal wetlands within the watershed provide a multitude of benefits to the Bay. They are packed with nutrients and are one of the most productive ecosystems on earth. They protect and improve water quality by reducing the flow of pollutants into the bay and its tributaries. They help reduce erosion and flooding by soaking up large amounts of flood and stormwater. They store carbon and recharge aquifers.

 The value of natural capital and ecosystem services provided by the forests and wetlands in the Chesapeake watershed is incalculable. To destroy forests and wetlands in the watershed when the Bay is in such a perilous state borders on the criminal.

Not only is the road an environmental disaster, its outrageous cost --roughly $4 billion, or $200 million per mile -- makes it one of the most expensive highways ever built. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, opposed to the ICC from the outset, notes that "The Intercounty Connector typifies the worst of short-sighted, outdated thinking that has dominated past and current transportation and growth planning in the Chesapeake Bay region." 

As construction on this highway proceeds, we Marylanders are not so naïve as to miss the obvious. Why does Gov. O'Malley want to build a highway that the State's own studies prove will not reduce congestion on I-270, I-95, or the Beltway, will result in further deterioration of our air and water quality, and further deterioration of the Chesapeake Bay due to environmental destruction within the watershed? Why does he risk relying on a substandard environmental review? The answer seems to be that the ICC is a developers' dream, cheered on by powerful business interests. But it is a nightmare for those who lose their homes to the road, whose backyards are reduced to a sliver, whose property values will be decimated by their proximity to the highway, and those who have treasured their neighborhood woods, creeks, and streams only to have to witness their demolition. The ICC is a developer's dream and a citizen's and waterman's nightmare.

The Intercounty Connector is an extravagantly expensive boondoggle that Maryland must abandon if we are serious about saving the Chesapeake Bay, addressing the climate change crisis, reducing our over-dependence on oil, moving to sustainable, transit-oriented growth planning, and investing in our existing communities during these challenging fiscal times. 

As Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said on the recent program The Future of the Chesapeake Bay, "Change comes around when enough people make enough noise telling their local, state, and federal government officials that they are outraged that pollution continues, that developers continue to get permission to build in areas that are inappropriate, roads are built that do nothing to relieve congestion but simply allow more development." The Kojo Nnamdi Show, WAMU 88.5, Dec. 8, 2008.

The Chesapeake Bay does not belong to Maryland alone. It is a national treasure, part of the global common wealth, for us and for future generations. We have an obligation to restore it to the vibrant, thriving body of water it once was and to vigorously oppose decisions and actions that bring about further damage. The ICC is not a done deal. It has a long way to go. Make noise. Let your legislators know that you oppose this costly boondoggle. Tell them that your commitment to the Bay demands a rejection of this highway.