BOWIE -- Fourteen months after the stream stopped flowing through his pasture and his well dried up, farmer Joseph Mills is still watering his cattle with the help of a fire hose hooked up to a hydrant beyond his fence line.
Oasis Farms, the Mills family's patch of green on the outskirts of booming Bowie, is surrounded on three sides by a sprawling planned community of 1,800 homes, stores and offices. General Growth Properties, the developer, says on the Fairwood community's Web site that "careful attention has been paid to the ecology of the land" in preparing it for construction.
But a six-acre pond, created by the developer to prevent storm water from polluting nearby streams, has blocked and diverted the stream from which Mills' cows used to drink. The well he had as a backup water supply went dry at the same time.
"It's beautiful," Mills says of the pond, bordered by a paved pathway and newly planted trees. "But it's kind of at my expense."
Mills' predicament might be extreme, environmental advocates say, but it illustrates the harm being done to Maryland's waterways by the state's lax oversight of sprawling suburban development. Environmentalists support a bill introduced this month in Annapolis that would strengthen the state law requiring control of storm-water runoff.
"Our current practices are just not cutting-edge anymore," says Jennifer Bevan-Dangel, staff attorney for Environment Maryland. "And they're not doing enough to keep our bay and the streams healthy and the flooding under control."
The problem, according to experts, is that the current storm-water law focuses mainly on preventing flooding from developed land and gives developers too much leeway in deciding how to control runoff.
While state and local governments do encourage "low-impact development" that would minimize changes to natural drainage, it is not required. Often, building one large pond to collect runoff is the easiest, least costly method -- even if it means altering stream flow and ground water.
Storm-water runoff has impaired nearly 1,600 miles of streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, causing flooding, erosion and loss of wildlife habitat, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's bay program office. With the rapid pace of development in the region, it is the most extensive and fastest-growing source of water pollution, contends Bevan-Dangel, who called Mill's situation "a nightmare."
"There's no worse position for someone with livestock than to be without water," she said.
Government regulators, who approved the pond and once pledged to help restore Mills' water, now say either that they are still working on it or that there is nothing they can do for him.
"He'd like it back the way it was. I can't blame him," said Sandra A. Zelen, enforcement program manager in the Baltimore district office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "Just, I can't get there now."
Mills has been able to keep his cows watered courtesy of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, which allowed him to tap one of its hydrants. But come April, the utility has advised him, it will start charging him for the water.
The stream that once flowed through Oasis Farms feeds into the Patuxent River, a bay tributary. Little "headwaters" streams like that form an essential part of a river system, scientists say, helping to filter out pollutants and control flooding.
Yet such streams, often too small even to warrant a name, do not receive the same legal protection as larger bodies of water under state environmental laws.
"Even a small amount of development can cause a big impact," said Sally Hoyt, a water resources engineer with the Center for Watershed Protection, a nonprofit consulting group in Ellicott City.
Mark Thompson, General Growth's vice president for land sales, says the developer did nothing wrong, pointing out that local, state and federal environmental agencies all signed off on the company's plans for collecting rainwater runoff on the 1,000-acre development site, a former turf farm.
Spokesmen for each of the agencies acknowledge they approved at least some aspect of the developer's plans for the pond, but insist that the pollution control measure should not have deprived the Mills farm of its water supply. Each spokesman suggested that a different agency was primarily responsible.
Fred Tutman of advocacy group Patuxent Riverkeeper, who has attempted to help Mills, contends that government regulators are largely to blame for allowing the diversion of water -- and for the failure to have it restored promptly.
"The developer is emboldened by the lack of regulatory diligence on this," Tutman said. "These guys are the original source of the problem," he said of the regulators. "Mr. Mills seems to have fallen through the cracks.
Records obtained by Tutman from the Corps of Engineers indicate that the agency, which regulates disturbances of streams and wetlands, approved the developer's plan to create the pond. The plan pointed out there would be both temporary and permanent changes to the way in which water drained off the land.
"We're aware of that particular situation and are working to resolve the problem," said Susan Hubbard, spokeswoman for the Prince George's public works and transportation department. But she said that it is "really something that stems from a developer and a state permit."
Robert Ballenger, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said, "There's not a lot of action we can take." He said enforcement of the state storm-water law is up to the county.
Regulators have forced the developer to restore water to a wetland downstream of the Mills farm that also dried up when the storm-water pond was built. The wooded marshy area became so parched last spring that turtles, snakes and frogs abandoned it en masse. Many of them were smashed by vehicles on the road in front of the farm as they apparently sought to cross over to the pond.
But officials say the stream's flow cannot be restored simply by draining water from the pond because it is polluted now.
Instead of restoring the wetland by unblocking the stream's flow, the developer has been ordered to drill a well to pump ground water to the surface and flood the area again. The well has been installed and is awaiting an electrical hookup before being turned on.
Zelen of the Corps of Engineers directed the developer last spring to drill a new well for Mills, too. But she backed off after the developer's lawyer challenged the agency's legal authority over ground water.
Another government plan to restore water to the stream by channeling all road runoff into it was thwarted by Mills, who objected that the water would be tainted with oil and other pollutants and unfit for his cows.
"They made a mistake," Zelen said of the developer, "but to undo it is very difficult."
She said she hopes the wetland well will produce enough water that some will eventually reach Oasis Farms .
State officials have encouraged the developer to help Mills, according to the MDE spokesman, but have no authority to require it. If talks do not pan out, the spokesman said, the farmer's only recourse is to take General Growth to court.
General Growth has at various times in the past year offered Mills up to $60,000 to drill a new well, proposed giving him the wetland adjoining his pasture, and even offered to swap other open land for his property.
Thompson, the company vice president, said General Growth recently made another offer to Mills, but he declined to say what it was. He said the firm does not admit any liability for depriving the farm of water but has offered to help him to be a "good neighbor."
Mills, though, said each of the developer's offers has come with strings attached that he found unacceptable. Though the company offered him money to drill a well, he said it was unwilling to guarantee he would find a reliable source of water to replace the two he lost.
Mills said he is worried about his water and about the future of the wetland next to his farm, but government regulators and others have urged him to come to terms with the developer.
Mills, 45, said that the ordeal has been so frustrating that at times he was inclined to "take the money and run" but for the responsibility he feels to his parents, who are in their 70s. They bought this land 35 years ago, he recalled, and despite failing health, still visit.
"It's not much in the big scheme of things," he said. "But that's what they worked for. ...Until my parents move on to greener pastures, I'm going to try to keep that habitat."
tim.wheeler@baltsun.com