Intercounty Connector (ICC)
AGWG Activities
This page describes AGWG's efforts to be active participants in the dialog and decisions surrounding the ICC.
AGWG Supports Sierra Club Lawsuit to Stop the ICC (January 2, 2007)
The AGWG Board of Directors voted 8 - For and 1 Abstention to provide financial support in the amount of $1000.00 to the Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club to support its lawsuit to stop construction of the ICC, which will further worsen Montgomery County's noncompliance with Federal Clean Air Act Emission Standards.For those residents who wish to make a personal contribution to this effort, please contact:
Betsy Johnson Chair, Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club 7338 Baltimore Ave., Ste 101A, College Park, MD 20740, 301/277-7111, maryland.sierraclub.org/
You can sign the Sierra Club's online petition against the ICC by visiting www.sierraclub.org/ICC-petition.
AGWG & Other Area Groups Express Concern to Planning Board Over Land Sales
Derick Berlage
Chairman
Montgomery County Planning Board
Dear Chairman Berlage and Planning Board Members,
We write to express our profound concern over recent events regarding the Intercounty Connector (ICC) and to urge the Planning Board to take a very cautious approach with respect to the ICC. Specifically, we urge you to safeguard the public interest by suspending the sale of any county-owned land to the State Highway Administration or any other entity for the ICC until certain protective conditions are met and until certain critical questions are answered.
We understand that the Montgomery County Planning Board voted on July 6th to sell 14 parcels of land comprising 130 acres to the State Highway Administration for the ICC, and that this issue is to come before the full Planning Commission for a final decision. At this point, so many critical questions remain regarding the ICC's potential design and impacts that it would compromise the public interest and your authority if you were to sell these lands to the State.
Our requests and concerns are triggered by several recent events. First, in early July, a major storm dumped between seven and 14 inches in less than two days on communities and watersheds in Montgomery County and around the Washington region. Flooding caused by this storm killed at least one county resident, wreaked major damage to homes, roads and streams, and very nearly destroyed the dam at Lake Needwood. Had the dam failed, as it nearly did, hundreds of homes could have been damaged or destroyed. Had they not been evacuated from their homes, many county residents could have been killed or injured. As you know, the ICC would cut across the Rock Creek watershed just upstream of Lake Needwood. There is ample reason to be concerned that clear cutting forests and bulldozing wetlands to add a huge swath of impervious asphalt to the Rock Creek watershed would increase damage downstream and further imperil the Needwood dam and the communities below it.
Similar concerns apply throughout the Anacostia River Watershed as well. The County has committed significant resources to protecting and restoring the Northwest Branch, the Paint Branch, the Little Branch, and the Anacostia River. Prince George's County, the District of Columbia, the State and the federal government have also set these restorations as their goals. The ICC would cut across the headwater forests of these watersheds. Even without this recent storm, significant questions remain about whether we can achieve these long-held goals or our statutory mandates if the State builds the ICC and directly destroys hundreds of acres of forests and wetlands in the headwaters of these streams. Neither Montgomery County, Prince George's County, nor the State has a clear plan for restoring lower Rock Creek, the tidal and nontidal Anacostia River, the lower Potomac River, or the Chesapeake Bay - all of which are listed as "impaired waters" under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, as are many of their tributaries.
Nearly every acre of the county land sought by the State for the ICC is forested and provides a vital storm buffer to our streams and communities. Despite being designated as "right-of-way" for the ICC, all but a few very small parcels - probably less than five percent of the land area now subject to sale - is either contiguous to forested park land or lies within the bounds of a stream valley park and could be considered prime candidates for park land acquisition.
As you probably know, the State Highway Administration's storm water systems for the ICC - within the Special Protection Areas - are designed to capture only the first 1.5 inches of rain from any storm event under optimal conditions. The protections are weaker, ill-defined and based upon obsolete technologies outside of the Special Protection Areas, meaning for the much or most of the ICC impact zone. A storm with even half the intensity and total rainfall of the recent storm could easily overwhelm these systems. Meteorological records for our region indicate that the frequency of rain events exceeding 1.5 inches may be increasing, and that rain events exceeding 1.5 inches already occur at least several times each year. Likewise, climate change studies indicate that the Mid-Atlantic region is likely to experience more frequent and possibly more intense extreme events, as well as greater total annual precipitation. In addition, a detailed analysis conducted by experts at the University of Maryland for Environmental Defense has found that the State Highway Administration has grossly underestimated the increases in impervious surface that would result from the ICC, as well as the likely storm water impacts and pollutant loadings to local watersheds.
If the State clear cuts forests and bulldozes forests in the Anacostia and Rock Creek watersheds, what impacts would severe rain events have on our watersheds and our communities? What impacts would they have on our downstream neighbors in Prince George's County and in the District? These same vital questions apply to the 5000 to 20,000 acres of new sprawl that the ICC would trigger. The Planning Board and the public have the right and the responsibility to know the answers to these and other questions before selling county land to the State and before taking one more step toward construction of the ICC.
Second, the State Highway Administration has only recently - in the 59th minute of the eleventh hour - informed hundreds of county residents and homeowners that the State plans to take parts of their properties for the ICC. This late notice is deeply unfair to these individuals and families. It also raises serious questions about how thoroughly the State has planned the ICC and about how fully and fairly the State has disclosed the ICC's potential impacts on the county's communities.
Third, the public and members of the Planning Board have raised significant concerns about the substantive and legal adequacy of the State Highway Administration's ICC Mandatory Referral Application. In addition, individuals and organizations have protested quite strongly that the current ICC Mandatory Referral process has been flawed and has hindered the public's right and ability to provide the Board with complete and timely comments.
Given these three major factors and others, we urge you to take the following actions:
1. Suspend the sale of any county property to the State Highway Administration until all legal issues related to the ICC are resolved in the courts.
2. Urge or require the State Highway Administration to fully and more rigorously assess and disclose the potential storm water impacts of the ICC and other projects during and after major storms.
3. If you choose at some point to proceed with the sale of these or other parcels, include iron-clad stipulations that:
a. the State shall not harm trees, forests, wetlands, streams or any other resource until all issues are fully resolved in the courts; and
b. the State shall sell these lands back to the County in their current condition and at the current price if for any reason the ICC is halted by the courts, the State or the federal government.
4. Find the current Mandatory Referral Application and process deficient and instruct the State Highway Administration to submit a new, legally and substantively sufficient Application. Then schedule an evening public hearing on the Mandatory Referral application and directly notify all interested parties.
These issues are of vital public concern. Please take advantage of this opportunity to step back and proceed with due caution in protecting our communities, our parks, and our natural resources. The public must rely upon the Planning Board to stand as a strong and independent steward of our communities, our parks, and our environment.
Thank you for consideration and your attention to these concerns. Please contact us if you have any questions, and please inform us of your intent.
Sincerely,
Greg Smith
Robert Boone
President
Anacostia Watershed Society
Andrew Fellows
Chesapeake Program Director
Clean Water Action
Bob Ferraro
President
Eyes of Paint Branch
Pat Labuda
President
Greater Shady Grove Civic Alliance
Rick Levine
President
The Longmead Crossing Services Association
Paulette Hammond
President
Maryland Conservation Council
John Parrish
Vice-President
Maryland Native Plant Society
Janet Millenson
President
Maryland Ornithological Society
Daniel Wallace
Co-Chair
Montgomery Intercounty Connector Coalition
Arnold Gordon
Presiden
t
Norbeck Meadows Civic Association
Betsy Johnson
Chair
Sierra Club - Maryland Chapter
Joel P. Mazelis
President
AGWG Civic Association
AGWG Testifies Before Montgomery County Planning Board (July 13, 2006)
Testimony of Ernst Benjamin to the Montgomery County Planning BoardJuly 13, 2006
Good afternoon, my name is Ernst Benjamin, my wife Judy McCombs and I reside in Willson Hills. I'm here to speak on behalf of the Allenwood-Gayfields-Willson Hills-Gaywood Estates Civic Association of which I am vice-president. Our president is at work, like most of our adult neighbors and so, like most Montgomery County residents, is unable to be here. I respectfully suggest that an evening hearing, as well as lengthier notice and opportunity to study your reports, would improve the quality of participation and make these hearings more valuable to you and the citizens of Montgomery County.
Although our Association is opposed to the ICC toll way and especially the lately introduced interchange sited at Layhill park, I appreciate the difficulty that confronts you. Committee work is often compared to making sausage. Trying, as you must, to mitigate the impact of the ICC toll way on our parks and natural environment is better compared to trying to make a silk purse of a sow's ear.
The woods behind our house in Willson Hills adjoin the woods, wetlands and parks of Northwest Branch. So the ICC will be, so to speak, in our back yard. But we are of an age such that we are unlikely to suffer it's direct effects, such as aggravation of my wife's asthma, or if so, not for long. What we bring, rather, is the experience of enjoying the ambience of the Northwest Branch parks for some 20 years. My wife, a widely published nature writer, teaches nature writing at the Writer's Center and has several times had her work displayed in the Civic Center in Rockville. We chose our house so she could walk in the woods and keep in touch with the natural environment. Even as a commuter, I could return home to the calm and quiet of woods, fields and streams. We appreciate the ever diminishing green space and wonder at those who don't understand the difference between drawing a line on a map 50 years ago, and destroying the last mid-county woods. streams and wetlands today; whether those of Northwest Branch, or Upper Rock Creek, or Paint Branch.
If, however, the ICC goes forward, we would like to preserve for others what little we can of the parks we have enjoyed. We would like, for example, to minimize the noise pollution as cars and trucks rumble across the three elevated ICC segments needed to cross Northwest Branch and its wetlands and parks. We appreciate the recommendation for concrete piers to reduce reverberation, but we note that though low balustrades, with high wrought iron railings, may improve the view for speeding motorists or bridge appearance, they will not reduce the sound pollution of six lanes of truck traffic. Can anything be done to provide higher, sound reducing walls-which might also somewhat diminish debris though not, I suppose the air pollution. The noise pollution, from the elevated and surface level segments of the highway through the park will especially affect our neighbors on Longmeade Road, who so far have no assurance of sound barriers, as well as all who use the parks. When you traded parkland for ICC land, did you really consider what the ICC would do to the quality of remaining parks?
We appreciate that the three ball-fields sacrificed to the ICC will be replaced with new ones 2 miles north on route 28. Since these are used primarily by folks to the south, this will, of course add four miles round trip to their SUV gas consumption-a fact you neglect. You note the susceptibility of our ball fields to flooding, which reached at least 5 feet above ground level in the recent storms and overturned most of the sapling tubes protecting the riparian area between the ball fields and the Northwest Branch-and I thank whomever has attempted to right them. Yet, I note that the water mitigation proposals call for the diversion of Paint Branch watershed and other excess rain flow into the Northwest Branch watershed and I wonder whether this will cause back-up into our area or destroy the recent improvements to the streambed to our South. The State's decision to control only the first 2.6" off rainfall on impervious surfaces within the parks would scarcely have mitigated the 10" to 15" we experienced 10 days ago.
The ICC will divide our parks, as well as our community. It appears that you have not yet determined whether, or in what form, there will be connecting trails west of the Northwest Branch, as there should be, under the elevated roads, between what are now Northwest Branch Stream Park and Layhill Recreational Park. The S Curve that is supposed to mitigate the damage to our wetlands, will none the less cut through our forests: of the five sections, 3 are classified as category A mature interior forests-it is difficult to believe that the road, even elevated to some 40 feet, will not impair the connectivity essential to protect the interior forests and their fauna.
The ICC will also divide our community as it crosses under Layhill Road. The bridge design provides two sidewalks but no bike lane, despite the fact that a bike lane currently runs up Layhill from Georgia to the point at which the ICC would cross. Since such a lane would be needed to access and leave the northern side of the ICC it seems odd to leave it out of the design. Because stoplights will probably be required to permit left turns onto and from the ICC, I assume that pedestrian signals rather than grade separation will be used to permit us to cross Layhill Road but the study does not resolve this issue. We are very concerned, however, that there is no plan to widen Layhill north of the ICC, where two two-lane bridges lack any shoulder whatsoever, and skeptical of the claim that traffic to and from the North will not increase.
Finally, I note with appreciation that your staff persevered to express their concern that the proposed design build approach lacks the specificity to enable them to ensure compliance with environmental standards. I share also their concern that in your haste to meet the Governor's deadline, you are proceeding without firm agreements on the staff's authority to halt construction if environmental or other mandated standards are slighted. And I fear that the same pressures that cause this haste and lack of adequate planning to ensure compliance, will enable contractors to secure concessions that undermine even the best intentions. Haste now can only increase disappointment, litigation and cost later.
