The recent lifting of a building moratorium in effect in Bel Air for about a year and a half has relatively few repercussions with regard to development in and around the county seat, but it has substantial repercussions with regard to the development of a growing bureaucracy relating to the water supply in Harford County.
Bel Air and some surrounding communities outside the municipal borders receive their water from the private Maryland American Water Co., which relies to a large degree on Winters Run. The stream is fairly small, and has come to be regarded as potentially unreliable during times of drought. In recognition of something that has been a matter of reality for decades — the precarious nature of Winters Run as a water supply — the town imposed the recently-lifted building moratorium.
As a practical matter, much of Bel Air has long since been developed and much of the land and population in the two Bel Air ZIP code areas actually is outside the town's borders. The building moratorium could have remained in place for a lot longer with relatively few people taking notice.
From a development perspective, relatively little has been accomplished. The moratorium was lifted after the town government, the water company, the county government and two state agencies — the Department of Environment and the Health Department — came to terms on a sharing arrangement. While nominally the town and the water company have identified a so-called new source of water, that source has long been in place. It is the county water supply, which has been tapped in the past by Maryland American during times of drought.
The recently-reached agreement does do something that probably should have been done decades ago. It makes a provision that obliges new developments to pay for securing a future water source, even if that source is the county water system.
There is, however, another potential issue. As explained by a Maryland American spokesperson, the private company's long-term goal is to create some sort of a water reservoir for storage, as a means of dealing with drought-related stress on Winters Run. If so, that begs the question of where will such a reservoir, if one is conceded to be necessary, be located. For sure, it won't be in the Bel Air town limits, and that brings a whole host of other variables and issues into play.
The circumstances in the latest Bel Air water arrangement may be new, but the overall idea of formalizing the arrangement under which the county acts as a backup water supplier for a municipality isn't. The City of Aberdeen concluded a similar arrangement with the county several years ago, so it could officially serve as the water supply for the Aberdeen Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground.
Essentially, the county, which in theory anyway has access to enough raw water to meet its needs as well as those of the water systems serving the three municipalities, has become the official backup supply for two of those municipal systems.
It is worth reiterating, however, that the systems were built with interchange valves, so the systems have always been linked with each being able to back up the other. The more recent arrangements simply put this reality on paper and assign dollar amounts to various components of it.
What this means is the county is well on its way to growing a de facto unified water bureaucracy whose component parts are devised to deal with problems as they arise.
Meanwhile, the county has taken steps in the direction of what is billed as a methodical unification of the existing water and sewer service bureaucracies not only in practice, but also in management.
It remains to be seen which option will better serve the public. The idea of consolidating the county's water and sewer service has the potential to turn over a key aspect of land use planning — the making of decisions of what areas are served by public water and sewer service — to an appointed board or, perhaps, even to private managers, if the united system were in turn privatized. The idea of water system consolidation is beset by this and other potential pitfalls.
The piecemeal arrangements made to date, however, are an indication that water system unification in some form is bound to happen. It remains to be seen if those served by the various systems are better served by addressing big picture issues as they arise, or by bringing the system together under a single organization.