The Sierra Club, a major environmental group, endorsed Baltimore mayor Martin O?Malley for governor on Tuesday.
The mayor used the occasion to send a letter to Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, calling on him to intervene in the Blackwater Resort development on the Eastern Shore, and buy up two-thirds of the sensitive parcel.
The governor rejected the proposal out of hand. “We suggest Mayor O?Malley tend to his own zoning failures in Baltimore City before lecturing others about local zoning matters on the Eastern Shore,” said Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell in an official response to the letter.
Blackwater Resort is a 1,000-acre development outside Cambridge where more than 2,700 homes are planned not far from a national wildlife refuge along sensitive coastal waters.
The Cambridge City Council approved the master planned community Monday, but the project must still be approved by the state Critical Area Commission since it is within 1,000 feet of a Chesapeake Bay tributary.
Ehrlich told a Maryland Association of Counties meeting Saturday that he disagreed with the amount of state intervention under Gov. Parris Glendening?s Smart Growth process, and preferred the stateplay a supporting role in local zoning decisions.
Jan Graham of Sierra Club, in endorsing O?Malley, said they hoped “the office of Smart Growth is going to be fully opened and fully staffed” in an O?Malley administration, which, the group expected, would fully enforce environmental rules and regulations for clean air and water, unlike the Ehrlich
administration.
Both O?Malley and his running mate criticized Ehrlich for taking $400 million from the open space fund, and they promised to restore the money. But in an interview, the candidates conceded that Ehrlich had already restored much of the money after raiding the open space fund to balance the budget in 2003 and 2004.
Fawell said after the two lean years, Ehrlich spent more than $550 million to preserve open space and farmland, a record amount, preserving an area the size of the city of
Baltimore. O?Malley promised a group gathered at Centennial Park in Ellicott City he would increase tax incentives for farmers to keep their land in agriculture.
He also promoted his BayStat plan to establish measurable goals on progress for the Chesapeake Bay. “Things that get watched are things that get done,” O?Malley said.
