An untapped reservoir near Westminster has residents questioning why county officials say Carroll faces a water shortage.
Commissioners have called the shortage the county?s most pressing challenge.
In Carroll, the fastest-growing county in Maryland, development has stalled in several towns because of a lack of water, Commissioner Julia Gouge said.
But some residents aren?t buying that argument.
Piney Run Reservoir in southernCarroll was built in 1974 and it spans 300 acres.
It is an untapped drinking source.
“If you?ve got one that was designed and built for drinking water and you?re not using it, well, you know, why not?” asked Steve Reynolds, a Westminster resident. “You built that one and you?re not using it. Why did you built it?”
The reservoir sits 14 miles from Reynolds?s home in Union Mills, and that is too far for it to be connected, Commissioner Dean Minnich said.
Seven miles was not too far for Westminster to begin building a pipeline connecting Cranberry Reservoir to the Medford Quarry to pump water into the town in droughts.
Steve Horn, the county?s planning director, said Piney Run is part of the county?s long-term plans, but commissioners voted more than six years ago to bring water in from Baltimore instead of tapping their own reservoir.
The county continues to push the Maryland Department of the Environment to allow it to build three more reservoirs, which officials say would solve Carroll?s water woes.
Horn said the MDE is beginning to warm up to costly reservoirs.
Butsome residents are not.
John Chambers lives on a National Historic Landmark farm where Whittaker Chambers, his father, hid documents that he gave in 1948 to then-Rep. Richard Nixon that outed Alger Hiss as a Communist spy. Chambers believes his farm would be flooded and destroyed by the proposed Union Mills reservoir.
“It just doesn?t make sense if you need water and you haven?t tapped any of the resources,” Reynolds said. “They didn?t seem real open to any suggestion and they continue to go down the same path.”
