April 16, 1999

Mr. Richard Spencer
US Army Corps of Engineers
Attn: CENAB-OP-RX
PO Box 1715
Baltimore, MD 21203-1715

Dear Mr. Spencer:

Please accept the following written comments on the proposed project for the US 1 Bel Air Bypass as described in the "Location/Design Public Hearing" brochure and the "Environmental Assessment, Project No. HA888B12". We thank you for extending the comment period.

As stated in our earlier comments on the Bel Air Bypass project as proposed in the Baltimore Regional Transportation Plan, we recommend that this proposed project be rejected. We oppose all build alternatives because they: (1) will unnecessarily harm valuable aquatic resources, (2) do not address the community’s transportation needs, (3) violate Maryland’s Smart Growth laws and policies, and (4) fail to meet minimum justification under federal regulations. The current two-lane Bypass has excellent access control and does a good job of diverting through traffic from the town of Bel Air. Widening the Bypass to four lanes would simply make it a purveyor of new sprawl development to the northern and eastern portions of Harford County. The Bypass, coupled with other major road projects, such as the Hickory Bypass, appears to serve the purpose of avoiding established communities in order to conduct more growth to rural areas outside the Bel Air Priority Funding Area (PFA) and the County’s Development Envelope.

No attempt is made in the Environmental Assessment (EA) to assess the direct, secondary and cumulative environmental impacts of this project. The deleterious effects on valuable wetlands, streams and other environmental resources resulting from all the build alternatives are unacceptable because the transportation goals of the project will not be met by the proposed action. Thus, the environmental impacts are unnecessary and wholly avoidable. For the reasons described below, we ask that the permit for proposed impacts to wetlands, streams and other natural resources regulated by Section 404 of the Clean Water Act be denied.

The project proposes to further degrade valuable wetlands adjacent to Winters Run and Route 1 that were once high quality wetlands. Records of the federally-protected Bog Turtle occurring in the area and potential Bog Turtle habitat identified by Maryland Department of Natural Resources demonstrate the quality of these wetlands. This wetlands system cannot afford further disturbance and destruction, especially if habitat for federally-protected Bog Turtle exists.

Wetlands in the project area which are adjacent to Winters Run were formerly part of a high value wetlands system that has been degraded by the construction of Route 1 and County Park development. Valuable wetlands habitat, however, still remains and should be protected. The proposed project will have significant direct effects on these wetlands through disturbance, filling, and increased runoff volume affecting the hydrology of this groundwater–fed wetlands system. The EA fails to consider the hydrological effects of the proposed action.

The Environmental Assessment (EA) acknowledges that increased impervious surface cover, disturbance, and destruction of wetlands and streams and streambeds are harmful to surface water quality. The EA also acknowledges that the increased impervious surface from the project will impede groundwater recharge. Despite the availability of a number of broadly accepted methods for assessing the direct water quality impacts of such actions, the EA makes no attempt to estimate direct pollutant loadings that can be reasonably expected to be generated from the project.

The EA states that it chose the Secondary and Cumulative Effects Analysis (SCEA) boundary based on subwatershed boundaries and has much natural resource information available at the subwatershed level. Although the Maryland Office of Planning and Maryland Department of Natural Resources have well developed Geographic Information Systems to assist in specifically examining the cumulative environmental effects of the proposed project on a subwatershed basis, the EA failed to utilize these readily available information sources and analytical tools. It is unacceptable that the EA would set boundaries based on subwatersheds, acknowledge the availability of natural resource information to assist in direct and cumulative effects analysis specifically aggregated at the subwatershed level, and then not perform any kind of an analysis on the project’s environmental effects.

In the case of the Winters Run subwatershed, even more information is available regarding cumulative effects of development on water quality as Maryland Office of Planning has worked with the County to model different development scenarios and their impact on water quality. At the very least, results from Office of Planning’s "Watershed Planning System" analysis of Winter’s Run subwatershed should be used to examine the direct, but especially cumulative, effects of this project. Results from this analysis conducted by the Office of Planning demonstrate that land use or "directed growth" techniques yield the greatest benefit, and that stormwater management techniques yield the least. Thus, actions that avoid increased impervious surface coverage are much more desirable than stormwater "Best Management Practices". The EA, however, glibly states that "discharge of pollutants and the temperature increase of runoff can be controlled through the use of stormwater management practices." The EA fails to provide a serious analysis or use readily available information regarding possible water quality effects of the build alternatives. At the same time, the EA promotes an uncritical acceptance of engineered stormwater management practices as a cure to any possible project impacts on aquatic resources. We find this assessment unacceptable and inadequate as a basis for assisting the public in making an informed decision about the trade-offs of the proposed action.

The proposed project impacts from construction, numerous stream crossings, placement of culverts, other streambed alterations, and encroachment on 100 year floodplains are not adequately assessed in the EA. The proposed action will have direct temporary and long-term effects on water quality and aquatic resources. None of these are addressed in the EA. While sediment and erosion control measures for construction and stormwater management Best Management Practices are important tools for mitigating the effects of damaging actions on water quality, it is important to recognize their limitations, especially when valuable resources are at risk. Many of these practices are untested over the long-term and regularly fail for any number of reasons, including: unknown design flaws, maintenance shortcomings, vandalism, natural failure or negative influences, and gradual deterioration.

Not only does the EA fail to provide useful natural resources information and analysis in general or at the subwatershed level, but the boundary for Secondary and Cumulative Effects Areas boundary (SCEA) also fails to incorporate the most important area of influence for analysis. The boundary for the SCEA fails to incorporate the area that is most at risk of detrimental effects from this project – rural lands to the north and east. This road project which seeks to provide a more rapid link between urbanized and rural areas will clearly accelerate and encourage new development outside PFAs. The SCEA boundary must be extended to the north and east beyond the Hickory Bypass to capture the ever broadening "commute-shed" created by perceived or real reduced travel times. Higher speed travel on the road generates perceived or real reduction in travel times causing rural areas remote to major job centers to be more desirable for commuters. The secondary development induced (in the broadened commute-shed) by this project will generate a significant amount of increased impervious surfaces, new sources of polluted suburban runoff (e.g. intensively managed and compacted lawns), and new losses of natural resources such as wetlands, forests, floodplain encroachment and impacted streams.

These secondary and cumulative effects must be assessed as part of this project analysis and in combination with the Hickory Bypass process. To neglect to assess the cumulative effects of the Bel Air Bypass build alternatives along with the impacts from the Hickory Bypass amounts to segmentation, which is illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act.

We believe the build alternatives to be unnecessary and counter-productive, and thus the impacts to wetlands, streams and other natural resources wholly avoidable, for the following reasons:

Upgrading the Bypass would attract more sprawl to Forest Hill, Hickory and other heretofore rural areas in north Harford County.

Upgrading the Bypass does nothing to improve capacity or reduce congestion at the key adjacent intersections which connect Bel Air to the rest of the Baltimore urbanized area, particularly the intersection of MD 24 and US 1 Business, and the intersection of US 1, US 1 Business and MD 147.

Upgrading the Bypass ignores the more relevant and important issue of making the town center of Bel Air more livable and attractive. Solutions need to be identified and implemented which will resolve the uneasy coexistence of traffic and activity in the town center. The Bypass is not a viable traffic alternative for the vast majority of the through trips which impact the Bel Air town center, including traffic destined for Churchville and Aberdeen.

The project does not appear to provide more capacity at the locations where capacity is a major issue. Basically, the Bypass connects four specific points:

The intersection of US 1 and MD 147 west of Bel Air - This intersection operates on a three phase traffic signal. MD 147 to the west and US 1 Business to the east each have separate signal phases, while the bypass approach and the US 1 approach from the south move in tandem. This is a very inefficient way to operate an intersection and greatly reduces the overall capacity relative to a conventional two phase signal, but it is necessary because of the heavy left turn movements on MD 147 and US 1 Business. The Bypass project does nothing to increase the capacity of this intersection.

MD 24 at US 1 (Business) at the Harford Mall within Bel Air - This huge intersection also has very heavy left-turn movements and operates from a complex multi-phase signal controller. MD 24 to I-95 is now the primary connection from Bel Air to Baltimore, rather than US 1. Moreover, this section of MD 24 is now the major retail area of Harford County. Most likely due to the excellent access control on the bypass, retail development has predominately stayed in this area of central and southern Bel Air, rather than migrating outward and northward to the sprawl area. The Bypass project does nothing to increase the capacity of this or the surrounding intersections and driveways.

MD 24 north of Bel Air toward Forest Hill - MD 24 north of the Bypass is one of the latest "sprawl frontiers" in Harford County. Just north of the Bypass, MD 24 is a dualized roadway with two through lanes in each direction. Northward, as development begins to be more scattered, it becomes a standard two lane road. Both lanes of southbound MD 24 are permitted to access a two lane ramp to the southbound Bypass, while a third ramp lane is dedicated to the left turn from the northbound access point. All three ramp lanes merge into a single dedicated lane on the Bypass. Traffic wishing to continue on southbound MD 24 (see Number 2 above) must move over one lane to the left. This ramp connection would be unchanged under all of the alternatives.

US 1 at MD 23 toward Hickory northeast of Bel Air - Hickory and the area beyond it to the north and east toward Conowingo and Pennsylvania is also a burgeoning sprawl development area. An improved connection from the north end of the Bypass to MD 23 and US 1 is being planned as a separate project in the State's Consolidated Transportation Plan. However, the Bypass connection itself at this point will still have only two lanes, with no apparent increase in the overall through capacity.

In sum, there would essentially be no capacity increase to any of the Bypass connections. What would increase is the capacity of the Bypass itself, by virtue of an upgrade of its intersection with MD 24 South. It takes up more land than the entire Bel Air town center, and is over a mile long.

Since none of the Bypass connections would have greater capacity as a result, the proposed intersection/interchange improvements would translate directly into greater speed, particularly for the left-turn from southbound US 1 / MD 24 to southbound MD 24. Speed is the traffic parameter which is most acutely perceived by the motoring public. This speed increase will therefore translate most directly into acceleration of development outside PFAs and the Development Envelope.

Perhaps there actually is a bottleneck along the Bypass that prevents it from most efficiently serving the four points listed above. If so, a large traffic circle might be an appropriate solution, although there may be other solutions that are specific and limited.

We find the EA wholly inadequate for assessing the direct, secondary and cumulative effects of the project on valuable wetlands, streams and other natural resources. Furthermore, based on our above traffic operations analysis, we find that all build alternatives fail to address the transportation needs of the Bel Air area, and only serve to encourage growth outside PFAs. Thus the project’s direct, indirect and cumulative impacts on valuable aquatic resources are completely unnecessary, eminently avoidable, and would result in the violation of State Smart Growth laws. For these reasons, we ask that you deny a permit under Section 404 Authorization for this proposal.

We thank you for the opportunity to comment on this project.

Sincerely,

Alfred W. Barry, III
Chairman, Committee on the Region
Citizens Planning and Housing Association
218 W. Saratoga Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Dru Schmidt-Perkins
Executive Director
1000 Friends of Maryland
11½ W. Chase Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Michael Replogle
Director, Federal Transportation
Environmental Defense Fund
1875 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Lee Epstein
Director, Lands Program
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
162 Prince George Street
Annapolis, MD 21401

Andrew D. Sawyers
Director, Environment Program
Baltimore Urban League
512 Orchard Street
Baltimore, MD 21201