The three members of Maryland?s Board of Public Works are expected to give final approval this morning to a land sale that saves more than 750 acres near the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge from development.
Chesapeake Bay activists said they would attend the meeting to support the $10 million sale, considered an importantvictory in their battle against what was originally proposed as a 2,700-home resort community near Cambridge in Dorchester County.
Under the agreement negotiated with former Gov. Robert Ehrlich days before the 2006 election, the developer will still build more than 600 homes on about 325 acres, less than a third of what was first proposed.
“We would have liked to see no development, but it?s a great compromise,” Kim Coble, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation?s Maryland executive director said.
That agreement was supposed to be approved before Ehrlich left office; however, state officials said the deadline was never firm.
“Land transactions, especially complex ones, take some time,” said Aaron Kraus, spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources. “It had to go through the process, and it took a few months.”
