Backs against a wall and facing defeat, activists in groups such as the Mattawoman Watershed Society, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the southern Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club made a desperate lunge.
“That’s when a line was drawn in the sand,” Hastings said. “We went after the permit.”
The groups filed public information requests during the permit process to get the county to answer questions about the impact the road would have on the creek.
“Every time the county made a response about how they would lessen the impact, we the activists picked it apart, found it lacking, and reported our findings” to the Maryland Department of the Environment.
As a result, the state asked the county for more details, which required the county to spend tens of thousands of dollars on consultants to conduct engineering surveys and return with answers.
Late in 2010, four newly elected county commissioners entered office with concerns about the growing cost of applying for a permit, the road’s impact on the watershed and the $31 million it would cost to complete the road if they prevailed.
“No one on this board wanted to spend more money condemning land for this road,” said Candice Quinn Kelly, the board’s president.
“They had spent $35 million,” then dropped the ball on studying its feasibility, Kelly said of the county and her predecessors on the commission. Money needed to answer the state’s questions dried up.
In a November letter, state environment officials announced the inevitable. The application for a non-tidal wetlands and waterways permit was denied because the county failed to address basic concerns.
“The decision to abandon [the connector] because of extremely well-organized and opinionated environmentalists is a crime against Charles County,” said Jim Whitehead, a board member on the county chamber of commerce.
“This is an astronomically important road,” Whitehead said. “I don’t think [Mattawoman Creek] would have been harmed in any measurable way after the road was built. Nature is so powerful compared to humanity. It recovers remarkably well by itself.”
Reports by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources indicate the opposite. Twenty years ago, when the Cross County Connector was on the drawing table, the Mattawoman was a picture of health.
Between 1971 and 1991, researchers saw little change in the fish that swam from saltwater to freshwater to spawn. But four years ago, the fishery went into a troubling decline.
In addition to decreases in perch and herring spawning, the state fishery service has expressed concern over a possible decline in the creek’s lucrative largemouth bass fishery as the county’s development increases. Anglers spent an estimated $568 million in Maryland, mostly for black bass, according to the report, which cited a 2008 U.S. Fish and Wildlife study.
“In Charles County, fishing, boating and water-related activities generated more than $40 million per year and were the largest visitor and local resident activity under tourism,” Uphoff’s report said. The county Office of Tourism estimated that largemouth bass tournament fishing pulled in $7 million in 2010.
On a rainy Wednesday, John Page Williams of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation started the engine on his skiff and motored downstream on the Mattawoman to demonstrate how it is important to more than just anglers and tourists.
Williams pointed a finger high toward a barren tree. “There’s one,” he said, his eyes on a bald eagle searching for prey fish. Within 10 minutes, the boat passed another three bald eagles.
Over two hours, talking almost nonstop, Williams pointed out thousands of black ducks, mallards, great blue herons, white swans and geese, all dining on the creek in winter.
“There’s no bad time to be out here,” he said.
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