BETWEEN WHITE MARSH and Chase lies a 1,000-acre wood that is about to be breached by a highway, an extension of Route 43. Plotting a path for the road, says Gary Setzer, a wetlands administrator with the Maryland Department of the Environment, "is like pointing a loaded gun into this area."
Once the asphalt leads south from burgeoning White Marsh, with its collection of superstores, you can forget about keeping the woods intact. On the heels of the road crews will come the developers.
Baltimore County, eager to revive its southeastern corner, wants to encourage building on the site. Neighbors, who have resisted earlier development plans (including a proposed NASCAR track) are wary of any bright ideas coming out of Towson, especially those that carry a whiff of gentrification. Conservationists are concerned about the effect on approximately 300 acres of wetlands within the site, and about the destruction of habitat.
Right now the woods are surrounded by some vegetable farms, a collection of churches, some junked-car lots, a gravel quarry, a tire farm and Amtrak's main line. The county has targeted the two main parcels there - one owned by the heirs of A.V. Williams, the other by the University of Maryland Foundation - as a growth area for light industry, and environmental officials on the county, state and federal levels have accepted that as inevitable.
For the past two years, in fact, they've been negotiating with the property owners on an agreement that would, in effect, define restricted areas for the entire parcel - wetlands, in other words - before it is divided up and sold off. The idea, an innovative one that could become a model for certain kinds of development in Maryland, is to issue wetlands permits ahead of time for the whole site, rather than waiting for each individual buyer of a plot to come in and ask for the OK to build.
David Carroll, director of the Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection, argues that trying to save resources on a lot-by-lot basis, with everyone asking for a little exception here and another there, is the worst way to do it, even though that would be the usual way. This site, he says, offers the opportunity to outline no-go areas and then sell deeded property with the restrictions made clear up front.
It seems to make sense. The catch? The county, the state and the Army Corps of Engineers will coordinate the issuing of permits, which means there will be only one set of hearings instead of three and the process will move more quickly. Of course, for the developer that's no catch at all. But environmentalists and suspicious residents can't help but think this is being railroaded through. Is there something fishy going on?
No, no and no, say officials on all three levels. Each agency will still be issuing its own permit.
True, opponents will get only one chance in public to try to derail the project. But officials say all the usual safeguards will be intact. And they argue that the alternative - piecemeal oversight - would be far worse.
Potentially, they have a good idea on their hands. But they have an obligation as well, which is to demonstrate to those who are understandably skeptical that they can make this process a good one.