After four long decades of delay, the federal government finally gave Maryland the green light last May to start construction of an 18-mile road running east and west, and linking Interstate 95 near Laurel with Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg. The required environmental impact study for the Intercounty Connector was the most exhaustive one ever done for a transportation project in the state, but it’s still not good enough for environmental groups now challenging the project in court.
A Dec. 20 lawsuit filed in Greenbelt against the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Army Corps of Engineers by the Audubon Naturalist Society, the Maryland Native Plant Society and a family whose property is on the proposed route claims that government officials failed to consider all “reasonable alternatives.” To their way of thinking, “reasonable” means never building the ICC at all. Another lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., by the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense questions the project’s air quality analysis.
Earlier this month, however, Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler made clear that Maryland is intervening in the suits on the federal government’s side. Gansler is familiar with these bogus objections to the ICC. As state’s attorney for Montgomery County from 1999 until being elected to his current statewide office last November, he’s heard them all before. The fact is that the ICC not only meets — but exceeds — all state and federal environmental regulations, as determined by the environmental study killed by former Gov. Parris Glendening in 1999 and later revived by his successor, Gov. Robert Ehrlich.
Much of the 87 acres of “parkland” in Montgomery County that environmental activists claim will be destroyed by the new road was originally purchased by the county specifically as right of way for the ICC. Furthermore, $370 million — 15 percent — of the project’s budget has been set aside to mitigate any damage caused by construction, which is scheduled to begin this spring.
Besides the traffic congestion relief, which will actually improve the Washington region’s air quality, this controlled-access highway project will provide 700 acres of reforested land, 775 acres of new parkland, 21 restored streams and 11 miles of new bike trails, not to mention much-needed improvements in water quality and local storm water management. Such a reasonable, responsible approach sounds likewholesale environmental degradation only to ideological extremists who oppose any form of individual mobility and who want to force Americans out of their cars altogether.
Gov. Martin O’Malley should continue to resist political pressure from environmental extremists to scuttle the ICC and forge ahead as planned. Local commuters have waited for 40 years for this road, and that’s far more than long enough.
