Honorable Members of the Prince George's County Council:
I am writing on behalf of Sprawled-Out Accokeek, a civic group with approximately 100 members, to express our support for CB-5-2006.
It is imperative that the Council pass this bill to preserve the rural and environmentally sensitive areas of Prince George's County, and to put development only where adequate public services exist.
We know that, as residents and representatives of this county, you share our desire for a strong, viable Transfer of Development Rights program, and that CB-5 comes out of your efforts to meet our common goal of creating smart growth and land conservation policies in recognition of the value and myriad benefits of untainted land.
We appreciate the steps you are taking to meet these goals, and especially applaud your decision to include mandatory downzoning in CB-5.
Nevertheless, we are concerned about some of the exceptions allowed in the bill. Of particular concern are those made for
* Mining, especially wet-mining
Mining means endless traffic jams of dump trucks (like the one many of us sit in every day between Aggregate Industries' plant and Rte. 5); water, noise, and air pollution; and far more pounding than our little roads can take, but, most importantly, they threaten our water supply.
Wells in the rural tier are drying up at an alarming rate, and projections done by David D. Drummond as part of the Maryland Geological Survey [http://www.mgs.md.gov/hydro/somdreport.html and http://www.moyaone.org/aquifer/frame.htm] show things going from bad to worse in the immediate future.
A new well can cost anywhere from $7,000 to $20,000, but only as long as the aquifers are still available to tap. Once they've reached maximum draw-down, they can take a century or more to recharge. In the meantime, we can't flush our toilets.
* Large-scale churches and other places of worship
While we fully support everybody's right to worship or not as they see fit, and are proud of the diverse options we boast in Accokeek (including a Jehovah's Witnesses palace, a Protestant church, and a Buddhist temple), we object to the scale allowed in the current bill, and ask that the allowable total impermeable surface area on the property of new places of worship be decreased to 10,000 square feet
* The conversion of Wilmer's Park into a Rural Entertainment Park as described in the bill
We recognize the historic importance of Wilmer's Park, but feel that this is being exploited rather embarrassingly to create an inappropriate center of activity in an extremely rural area.
The size and scope of the project is more than can be supported by existing infrastructure, and will permanently destroy the region's rural character. To revive Wilmer's Park's live music scene, reflecting its historical use and audience draw is something we support. I, like many members of SOA have enjoyed many concerts there. Some of our members have even performed at Wilmer's Park!
We encourage the revival of Wilmer's Park as a venue for performers who will draw an audience of about the size it always has. We object to the construction of recording and film studios, and especially senior housing. South County is inundated with it, and it is a classic example of inappropriate mixed land use.
Finally, we ask that you
* Include language specifying that density will not exceed master plans in receiving areas
* Make TDRs mandatory; a voluntary program is a useless one, and this is too important for the greater good to make it anything but mandatory
* Include green infrastructure sending areas in the Developing and Developed Tiers
Again, we applaud your efforts to fulfill your promises of adopting laws that manage out of control growth. This is in line with the county�s General Plan. CB-5-2006 recognizes that it is unfair to residents in established areas to divert public resources to serve new housing projects in far-flung rural locales.
While we wish that the bill had not changed from its original form, we can support the "density increase" approach if you pass CB-5 with the points listed above included. Thank you for your kind consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Kelly Canavan
President, Sprawled-Out Accokeek