Newsflash! Public Comment Period EXTENDED Until September 15
The original deadline (August 15) to submit comments to the Army Corps of Engineers following the July 31 public hearing has been extended to September 15!
SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS ON THE CROSS-COUNTY CONNECTOR EXTENSION
CALL FOR A PROPERLY SCOPED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT
Hundreds of people attended the public hearing on the CCC-X July 31 at the Charles County Government Building, filling the auditorium. Approximately 75% of those in attendance sported our green "Save Mattawoman Creek" stickers. Over 140 persons signed up to speak, and the Army Corps of Engineers held the hearing until after midnight.
If you missed the hearing, or if you had to leave before you could speak, you have until September15 to make your voice heard! Written comments submitted by that time will count as much as oral comments made at the hearing.
Please request a full, properly-scoped Environmental Impact Statement by an impartial third party assessing the direct, secondary, cumulative, and reasonably foreseeable impacts of the proposed highway.
Please submit your comments to both:
Mr. Steven S. Harman
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District
Attention: CENAB-OP-RMS
P.O. Box 1715
Baltimore, MD 21203-1715
email: cross.county.connector@usace.army.mil
Ms. Judy Cole
Nontidal Wetlands and Waterways Division
Water Management Administration
1800 Washington Boulevard, Suite 430
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
email: jcole@mde.state.md.us
Comments may be submitted either by mail or by email.
It is critical that everyone call for a full Environmental Impact Statement.
The navigation buttons at the left of this page will guide you to information which will help you prepare your statement.
Please download our new flyer (.pdf format, 209 KB) and pass it along to your friends, family, neighbors, and anyone else who values the Mattawoman Watershed and our quality of life. (You may still download our previous flyer -- .pdf, 272 KB)
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
A telling Baltimore Sun front page article describes Mattawoman's plight in the face of the proposed Cross County Connector extension.
Please read the article, and consider commenting at:
www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.mattawoman07apr07,0,3072403.story
The reporter, Tom Pelton, has also started a blog on the article. Check it out and comment further:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/blog/2008/04/a_highway_runs_through_it.html
PROPOSED NEW HIGHWAY WOULD SEVERELY IMPACT THE WATERSHED
Charles County has reapplied for permits to fill wetlands for its proposed extension to its Cross County Connector.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Maryland Department of Environment will hold a hearing sometime in the near future. Our latest information expects the hearing in April.
Your attendance at the hearing is crucial, with the message that Mattawoman Creek, and our environment, deserve the full study of an Environmental Impact Statement.
Please use the “Contact Us” button and give us your email. We will notify you when we know more.
The Cross County Connector extension is a new, four-lane highway that would enter and cut through the Mattawoman watershed, with severe impacts due to the roadway and, especially, to its growth inducing impacts. It would impact over seven and a half acres of wetlands, a significant fraction of the annual loss in the entire state of Maryland. The growth inducing effects would magnify these impacts many fold. But only through an Environmental Impact Statement will we learn the full scope of the impacts.
Please see the Satellite Map and Briefing Sheet buttons in the left margin for more information about this unneeded highway and the threat it poses.
Announcements
The Maryland Native Plant Society has added botanically themed photos of Mattawoman Creek to its website!
Please check out the photos at www.mdflora.org. In the left margin there click "Gallery." Then click "Our Favorite Places" at the bottom of the page, and click Mattawoman.
Mattawoman watershed selected as a Regional Conservation Priority
by the Smart Growth Alliance!
From the Smart Growth Alliance announcement (www.sgalliance.org/lcrp.html):
Mattawoman Creek is recognized by Maryland fisheries biologists as “the best, most productive tributary to the Chesapeake Bay.” The Creek comprises a twenty-mile stream in Prince Georges and Charles Counties that feeds a seven-mile estuary to the freshwater tidal Potomac River at Indian Head, Maryland. Despite its proximity to the nation’s capital, the watershed remains largely forested and supports a high diversity of fish and wildlife. A fruitful nursery for migratory fish, the Mattawoman is important to the Potomac River’s internationally recognized, $40 million Largemouth Bass recreational fishery. The watershed supports the state’s largest breeding wood duck population and features wetlands rich in amphibians. Current and projected land use trends and highway projects point toward accelerating changes in the character of the watershed and threaten the existing forest cover so essential to protecting the watershed and water quality.
Because of its especially high quality, the Mattawoman poses a sharply defined test of whether we can muster the will to protect Chesapeake Bay resources. In 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers completed a watershed management plan for Charles County, which recommended environmentally sensitive design of new developments, retrofitting existing development with protective measures and, importantly, protecting the stream valleys. Despite these positive measures, the plan foresees under its best scenario a watershed with impervious cover exceeding 15 percent, an amount likely to produce severe impacts. The Mattawoman Watershed Society is working with stakeholders, including county, state, and federal agencies, to enhance protective measures, prevent destructive policies, and preserve the forested watershed. Joint efforts will be necessary to achieve the goal of maintaining the Mattawoman and its vibrant living resources as a success story in the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac restoration programs. The Alliance endorses these efforts.
Mattawoman Creek chosen as representing America's Wild Legacy by National Sierra Club!
From the Sierra Club report (www.sierraclub.org/wildlegacy/52places/):
In this report, "America’s Wild Legacy," we offer snapshots of the remaining American landscape, and of our work to protect it. We’ve whittled down the hundreds of wild places that need to be saved to a list of just 52-- one in each state as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
As our nation grows, so do the pressures to drill, log, and build these last remaining wild places...Our founder, John Muir, once said, "Every good thing, great and small, needs defense." Now, more than ever, we must continue to fight to save open spaces, leave trees standing, protect communities and wildlife, and preserve America’s Wild Legacy.
As the Chesapeake Bay faces increasing challenges to its water quality, wildlife, and shores, one of its tributaries, Mattawoman Creek, still stands out as a pristine waterway. Maryland state biologists have termed Mattawoman Creek “the best, most productive tributary to the Bay.” Yet its future is in serious jeopardy because of proposed new roads and unchecked sprawl.
Mattawoman Creek flows through Maryland’s inner coastal plain for twenty miles before forming a seven-mile tidal-freshwater estuary to the Potomac River, located just a few miles downstream from George Washington’s Mt. Vernon.
Tidal freshwater is an uncommon habitat and Mattawoman’s freshwater generates forty times more migratory fish than other Chesapeake Bay tributaries. And Mattawoman is the epicenter of the Potomac’s nationally renowned recreational Largemouth Bass fishery.
Mattawoman is also known for its vast array of wildlife and plant species, including Maryland’s largest Wood Duck population and one of the state’s few American Lotus sites.
Despite its recognized value, almost the entire Mattawoman Creek watershed is slated for development. New multilane highways are proposed through its watershed, which would pave the way for converting protective forests to even more sprawl development.
The Sierra Club is partnering with watershed and fishing organizations to protect Mattawoman Creek from immediate and longterm threats to ensure its health for future generations.