The General Assembly should curtail spending on a proposed Washington bypass until its environmental effects are studied more, the Chesapeake Bay Commission recommended yesterday.
State Sen. Gerald W. Winegrad, D-Annapolis, said he will introduce legislation to carry outthe commission's recommendation and halt spending on the bypass whenthe General Assembly reconvenes Jan. 9.
The commission's Maryland delegation nominated Winegrad as its chairman yesterday.
The 21-member panel, which met in Annapolis this week, is expected to approve his nomination today. The commission is an advisory panel of lawmakers and citizens from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Commission members said at their Sept. 7 meeting that a two-year environmental impact study released last April is "inadequate and insufficient."
At the meeting in Irvington, Va., several commission members noted that the study considered only six routes for the highway and a seventh option of building nothing.
They passed a resolution urging both the Maryland and Virginia legislatures to provide no more money for a new bypass until alternatives to building the highway have been more fully explored, and until plans are drafted at state and local levels to cope with development that will accompany the new route.
The commission also urged consideration of other commuting aids, such as high-occupancy vehicle lanes and massand rail transit.
Ann Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, said the panel unanimously approved an outline yesterday for draft legislation to be introduced in both Maryland and Virginia to carry out the resolution.
Maryland and Virginia transportation officials, who are considering either an eastern or western route around Washington, say the $1.5 billion bypass would divert traffic off the congested Capital Beltway.