Sprawling News
D.C. Sprawl Crosses Into A New State:
Pennsylvania
Eighty Miles Away, A Suburb Percolates
By David Snyder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 2, 2003; Page A01
LIBERTY TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- Joyce Saunders was in the cereal aisle at the
Jubilee grocery store, somewhere between the Froot Loops and the apple
juice, when she heard the news about Washington coming to town.
The city, that is -- the nation's capital, located about 80 miles south.
From the vantage point of a small town three area codes removed from the
District, it all seemed a bit surreal: a massive suburban development,
filled with Washington area commuters, dropped right in the middle of
Saunders's quiet southern Pennsylvania valley of orchards and hedgerows.
"A suburb of Washington is what they're trying to make it," said
Saunders,
recounting her shock when she first heard the rumor at the market near
here
last summer. "There's nobody around here that's going to pay $500,000
for a
house."
If the proposed project goes through, it would be the first major
Washington-oriented housing development north of the Mason-Dixon line --
a
step in the metropolitan area's ever-widening expansion that planners
have
long anticipated. Just not quite this soon, and not quite of this
magnitude.
There is still plenty of open and developable land in Frederick County,
which begins about five miles south of Liberty. But just as Montgomery
County did in the 1960s and 1970s, the Frederick government in recent
years
has clamped down on construction, sending developers elsewhere to fill
the
region's voracious appetite for housing.
The same is happening in Virginia, where booming Loudoun and Prince
William
counties are tightening development restrictions. Developers in search
of
more lenient zoning and greater profit margins are leapfrogging farther
out
where laws are more permissive and local governments less experienced.
For local governments in the throes of rapid growth, "[housing] density
is a
four-letter word," said Stephen S. Fuller, a public policy professor at
George Mason University. "The consequence is they're pushing the problem
to
their neighbor, and developers are having to go further and further away
because they can't meet the demand for housing closer in."
In July, Frederick-based Wormald Development Cos. proposed building more
than 1,100 houses in Liberty, adding about 2,000 residents --
practically
tripling the size of this township of about 1,200 people.
Before construction can start, the project must be approved by the
township's three-member Board of Supervisors. But many in this idyllic
valley already are bracing for the arrival of batteries of townhouses.
Wormald has mounted an aggressive campaign to get the development
approved.
The company has produced a slick PowerPoint presentation detailing the
amenities of the proposed Community of Liberty. A contingent of company
officials and attorneys regularly attends Board of Supervisors meetings,
which have drawn as many as 300 residents. The town has had to rent the
local fire hall to accommodate spectators.
For Wormald, big money is at stake: Housing is in such demand around
Washington that the company anticipates having little trouble selling
the
houses, said Ken Wormald, a vice president.
"Obviously, price is a huge driver for why these folks would want to
come to
Pennsylvania," he said. "What we sell for the mid-$300,000 range, we
would
be selling for the high-800s in Rockville."
Though some of the marketing effort will be aimed at retirees, Wormald
said,
his company's research shows that people who live in lower Montgomery,
and
even the District, would be willing to buy houses as far away as Liberty
for
the right price and commute to jobs in and near Washington.
The 60-mile drive from Rockville to Liberty takes about two hours during
the
evening rush. Even on an average day, it is a long slog up Interstate
270,
one of the region's most chronically clogged roadways, toward Route 15.
At 5 p.m., as thousands of workers leave jobs in Bethesda, Silver Spring
and
Rockville to head north, the road often resembles a long, narrow parking
lot.
A Washington Post reporter leaving Rockville at 4:55 p.m. on a recent
weekday arrived in Liberty almost exactly two hours later, at 6:54 p.m.
Traffic on I-270 came to a complete stop nine times during the ride. The
first full stop in traffic came a mere 14 minutes into the commute,
where
the highway narrows from 12 lanes to eight.
As the sun began to set, and I-270 narrowed to four lanes near the
Montgomery-Frederick County line, the rearview mirror was filled with a
solid column of white headlights. Ahead lay a continuous strand of red
brake
lights.
The morning drive from Liberty to Rockville was easier -- just 90
minutes,
beginning at 6:15 a.m.
At Mason-Dixon Oil Co., a gas station and coffee stop near the proposed
Wormald development, just before a commuter gets on Route 15 for the
long
drive toward Washington, cashier Bill Usilton said he has a regular
customer
who leaves Liberty for Bethesda at 5:15 each weekday morning.
"That's unusual," he said, "but not unheard of."
Usilton said traffic heading south past his gas station has increased
over
the past year as more Washington region workers have moved to southern
Pennsylvania in search of inexpensive housing.
"Sales here have increased," he said, referring to his gas station.
"It's
amazing."
The closest commuter rail station with parking is Monocacy Junction,
just
south of Frederick, about a 45-minute drive from Liberty. From there,
MARC
trains reach Rockville in just over an hour.
Some local residents have banded together to fight the planned
construction,
making pleas to town officials that would have sounded familiar in
Montgomery and Fairfax counties in the 1950s and '60s, or Frederick and
Loudoun in more recent decades. The residents' group, Save Our Liberty,
worries that the proposed development would cause massive increases in
traffic and a need for higher school taxes and would destroy the
valley's
idyllic character.
"The development is parachuting [a large number of] people into an area
with
very, very few facilities," said Bill Packer, a member of the group and
owner of a restored farmhouse within view of the proposed development.
"Suddenly we're going to have a threefold increase in the number of
inhabitants in the township, and the township is going to have to
maintain
all these additional services."
The size of the Wormald proposal far exceeds any development proposal
that
Liberty's Board of Supervisors has seen. Town officials and opponents of
the
development agree that the town is ill-equipped, even in basic staffing
terms (the township has no full-time planning staff), to tackle the
legal
and policy intricacies of approving major housing developments.
The threat of a lawsuit by a company with deep pockets weighs heavily on
the
town fathers, said Leonard Sites, chairman of the Board of Supervisors.
"If they're doing what's legally right, how can you say no?" said Sites,
73.
"If you say no, you'll probably get sued."
Wormald's proposed community would be "a huge development wherever you
put
it in Pennsylvania," said Susan Smith, a lawyer and planner representing
Save Our Liberty. "It's the kind of project you'd see north of Philly,
but
even in more sophisticated, fast-growing areas, this would be huge."
In Frederick County in the 1970s, local officials had similar
inexperience
with growth. But as the county has grown, officials there have become
more
savvy about development and more willing to demand that developers pay
for
the increases.
So while planners for years have expected development to move north into
Pennsylvania, many figured it would come after Frederick County was
largely
"built out." That is not the case. Much of Frederick's land still is
open
for development. But county officials have become much more wary of
development and have a better understanding of the hurdles they can
erect to
slow large developments.
"It's getting harder for a developer to walk in and get a 1,000-unit
subdivision approved," said Lennie Thompson, president of the Frederick
Board of County Commissioners. "There's a greater awareness, not just
among
the public officials but among the electorate, of the downside of
development."
Compounding this increasing resistance to development is the fact that
most
of the open space near Frederick has been essentially off-limits to
developers. The 2000-02 drought prompted a two-year moratorium on
development, which is only now lifting -- and slowly.
"People have always envisioned growth [extending] to Frederick" from
Washington, said Jeff Zyontz, chief of countywide planning for the
Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and a 25-year
observer of Washington area development trends. "But I'm not sure anyone
explicitly imagined commuting to Pennsylvania."
Rather than struggle against increasing resistance to developments in
Frederick, Wormald officials decided this spring to take the leap north
into
Pennsylvania's hilly farmland.
Pennsylvania's zoning generally is more permissive than Maryland's, and
townships such as Liberty, though small, often have much more authority
over
development proposals than towns of similar size in Maryland. Developers
like that because it keeps county governments, with their greater
resources
and experience, out of the process.
In an attempt to compensate for the town's lack of resources and
experience,
Save Our Liberty has raised more than $30,000 to hire lawyers to oppose
the
plan.
"These are ordinary folks, with no formal training," Packer said of
Liberty
Township officials, "and they're being asked to make these decisions
when
faced with a battery of lawyers from the developer and the landowner."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Bay Renewal
The Patriot-News
Pennsylvania and the other trib utary states to Chesapeake Bay have
until
2010 to make significant reductions in the amount of nitrogen,
phosphorous
and sediment flowing into the nation's largest estuary.
For now, the Rendell administration is leading the effort in
Pennsylvania,
which contributes 50 percent of the freshwater to the bay, through a
newly
announced strategy that includes limiting expansion of
sewage-treatment
facilities and upgrading existing facilities. The price tag for
these
efforts is unknown, and actual funding is limited. But if the
deadline isn't
met, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could step in to force
compliance in five years.
Among the early manifestations of the state's bay strategy is a
moratori um
placed on Cumberland Coun ty's Middlesex Twp. It will pre vent the
township
from building a sewage treatment plant that would add to the
chemical load
in local waters that eventually end up in the bay. The immediate
impact of
the moratorium appears to be negligible, in that a major new
1,000-home
development in the township will connect to Carlisle's treatment
facilities.
And while the new policy could eventually stall the rapid pace of
development in parts of Cumberland County, local officials question
whether
the end result won't be more sprawl, with new housing to include
on-lot
sewage facilities. A "nutrient-trading" program that is in the works
may
ameliorate the issue by granting credits for gains in reducing
agricultural
runoff, but that could be a year or more down the road.
Improving the quality of Chesapeake Bay after nearly four centuries
of
depredation has been an announced goal for more than three decades.
While
progress has been made on a number of fronts, the population growth
of the
region and the attendant development has only served to increase the
pressure on this invaluable resource.
Despite more than 30 years of restoration efforts, the health of the
bay has
continued to decline, according to report released last week by the
U.S.
Government Accountability Office.
In 2000, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New York, West
Virginia, the District of Columbia, EPA and 11 other federal
agencies agreed
to cut pollution in the bay in half by 2010. But as the GAO report
noted,
the effort has been plagued by a lack of funding, a situation that
continues
today without any sign of it being fixed, despite a proposal for
federal
matching-grant funding.
About $6 billion has been spent on bay restoration since 1995,
according to
the GAO, but much more needs to be spent to achieve the stated
goals.
The certainty is that the Chesapeake can't heal itself, not when it
is
treated as the end point of one vast sewer that takes care of waste
generated in its enormous watershed. Here is another example where
budget
cuts have real consequences. A tremendous natural resource is being
sacrificed to public apathy and lack of leadership.
Instead of looking to a federal government that's a fiscal shipwreck
waiting
to happen, the tributary states need to look to their own
capabilities to
protect and restore their resource. Consideration should be given to
creating a modest annual "bay fee" on every residence, business and
farm in
the Chesapeake watershed to be used to improve treatment facilities
and
otherwise prevent pollution from diminishing this irreplaceable
natural
asset.
©2005 The Patriot-News
Fast-growing county grapples with
unsafe trucks
With More Trucks on Roads, County Steps
Up Efforts to Catch Unsafe Rigs
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 15, 2006; Page LZ01
A white sun rose over the traffic jam on Route 9 in Hillsboro as the
tractor-trailer was directed to a patch of roadside gravel. There,
Chris Rizzo and his crew were ready to give it a once-over. Brakes,
suspension, steering and weight -- the four-man truck-safety
inspection team would check it all.
If recent history was any indication, the truck had better than a
1-in-3 chance of being sidelined for the day.
Rizzo, a Loudoun County sheriff's deputy, peered into a
camcorder-like contraption pointed toward the truck's wheels. Called
a thermal imager, it would tell him the condition of the brakes, the
source of most violations: A white glow meant good. No glow meant
bad.
"They've got a real good glow to them," Rizzo said.
The driver got good news: One rear brake light was out and a thick
chain was poorly secured on the exposed truck bed, but he would get
off with a warning. Two trucks that followed would not.
In fast-growing Loudoun County, one of the most vexing law
enforcement problems is not murder, graft or carjacking.
It is trucks.
As new buildings sprout, speeding cement trucks and overburdened
semis follow. On average, Rizzo said, at least 35 percent of trucks
inspected at checkpoints by Loudoun deputies are too dangerous to be
allowed to go farther.
Violations can have serious consequences. Unsecured loads fall off.
Overweight trucks rip up roads. And failing brakes cause trucks to
plow into other vehicles, which can be particularly deadly.
According to Rizzo, a car-on-car collision has about a 1-in-1,200
chance of being fatal. A truck-on-car collision raises those odds to
1 in 9.
In recent weeks, at least four crashes have been caused by trucks
with bad brakes, and all sent motorists to the hospital, Rizzo said.
"They all had several defects," he said of the trucks. "Any one of
[the accidents] could have been a fatality."
The Sheriff's Office has stepped up enforcement to deal with the
problem. Ten years ago, it had no full-time truck inspectors. Last
year, it had two. This year, it has four. "We could probably keep 10
people busy," Rizzo said.
When the inspectors are not at checkpoints, they are on the lookout
for violations. And there are many: Rizzo said that up to 60 percent
of the trucks he stops are taken out of service, which means that
unless the driver makes fixes on the spot, the truck must be towed.
After 16 years of truck inspections -- eight in Fairfax County --
Rizzo speaks of violations in understatements.
I've gotten some pretty good overweights here," he said at the
Hillsboro checkpoint before mentioning a truck recently slapped with
a $5,000 fine for being 17,000 pounds overweight. "They do quite a
bit of damage to the roads," he said, adding that a truck that is
15,000 pounds overweight causes the same wear and tear as will be
caused by 122,000 smaller vehicles such as cars.
But local officials talk about trucks in superlative terms.
Hillsboro Mayor Roger L. Vance, who is trying to get trucks banned
in town, has spoken of a "real fear" of trucks. Loudoun Supervisor
Stephen J. Snow (R-Dulles) said he has "literally been scared for my
life" by trucks crowding him out of a lane. Loudoun Sheriff Stephen
O. Simpson has characterized speeding by deadline-driven truckers as
"a nightmare."
Rizzo said the percentage of trucks with violations has remained
steady since he began inspections in Loudoun. But the number of
trucks has exploded, while the number of roads has not.
Most complaints involve country roads now used as construction
thoroughfares, roads that "never were designed to have these big
20-, 25-ton trucks going 50, 60 miles an hour," Snow said.
One of those is Gum Spring Road in Arcola, where, in August, 17 of
30 trucks inspected at a checkpoint just south of Route 50 were
taken out of service.
In a nearby neighborhood of sparkling townhouses, auto mechanic John
Vizzato, 32, spoke of baseball-size stones littering the road, the
wake of overloaded trucks. "If you're trying to go somewhere, you're
always sitting behind a truck," he said.
Local officials are looking for solutions beyond enforcement or new
roads -- a touchy issue in Loudoun. One idea, said Supervisor Jim
Clem (R-Leesburg), is stiffening fines, which currently can be as
high as $5,000 for a second offense. Snow has proposed reducing
speed limits in some areas.
Officials in Hillsboro, where the two-lane Route 9 is the tiny
town's main street, are taking a more aggressive approach: They're
seeking a state approval of a truck ban.
"A tanker truck coming through this town, getting out of control and
. . . causing an explosion would be a catastrophe," Vance said.
"Knowing that so many of these trucks are unsafe . . . it just
really heightens the issue for us."
On the shoulder of Route 9, Gary Howell popped the yellow hood of
his dump truck and turned his steering wheel left and right as a
deputy instructed.
"I tell 'em, I don't mind the . . . checks, because they might find
something I missed," Howell said, a cigarette hanging from one
corner of his mouth as he spoke out of the other. "It's my butt
driving this truck."
Inspector Bart Foster rounded the nose of the vehicle and gave
Howell the all-clear. "Sir, you're good to go."
Four of four had passed that morning's tests. But later that
morning, Rizzo said, two trucks did not. That afternoon, the
inspection squad put out of service nine of 16 trucks inspected on
nearby Hillsboro Road.
Over in Arcola, Heather Dajani, who works at the Gateway Community
Church office, said she figures the area will face this issue for
only a few more years -- by then, development will be maxed out and
the trucks will have moved on.
Outside the church office, that era seemed far off. Backhoes and
bulldozers lined the roads. A sign propped outside a stone company
on Route 50 advertised jobs for those with commercial driver's
licenses -- the kind of license needed to operate a dump truck or
tractor-trailer.
Kevin MacLeod, a doctoral student who lives in a nearby townhouse,
took a broad view. "That's the price of progress," he said.
