The outcome of a nearly 20-year battle over a massive development on the Eastern Shore could hinge on whether the Maryland Department of the Environment allows the project to go forward as planned.
That’s exactly what worries critics of the development and the agency’s recent record of policing the state’s water supply and protecting the Chesapeake Bay. They fear long-term damage to the local watershed and the bay if the regulatory agency signs off on plans to spray treated wastewater from more than 2,500 proposed homes across nearby fields.
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The MDE’s spotty oversight, they argue, has already allowed the town of Trappe and a Northern Virginia developer — which are partners in the Lakeside at Trappe development — to obtain water and sewerage permits that kept the project alive despite opposition by Talbot County officials. The MDE, the town and the developer, Vienna-based Rocks Engineering, have repeatedly denied the accusation.
This Maryland town needed growth to survive. Nearly 20 years later, some say development could kill it.
Last spring, however, the agency greenlighted the developer’s plans to hook up 120 new homes to the town’s antiquated wastewater treatment plant. The plant was then discharging excess amounts of pollutants into a tributary of La Trappe Creek, which empties into the Choptank River and eventually the bay. With the MDE permissions in hand, developers broke ground last summer on the project’s first phase.
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MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said in an email that the agency has been aware of concerns with the town’s existing plant, which violated the terms of its discharge permit from January to April 2021 and continued to have problems as late as June. But he also said an inspection in August found that the plant was operating properly and that future inspections and oversight would ensure it’s capable of taking on additional service.
Talbot County’s Planning Commission — which only learned of the existing wastewater treatment plant’s discharge violations after it certified Lakeside’s plan to hook up new homes to it — voted to rescind its approval. The Talbot County Council is likewise engaged in a fierce debate about how — or whether it’s even possible — to reverse its approval, which was granted in August 2020.
Meanwhile, the MDE is considering whether to reissue an unused 2005 permit allowing Lakeside’s developer to build a new wastewater treatment system that would serve the entire project and discharge as much as 540,000 gallons per day of treated wastewater through spray irrigation on nearby fields. Opponents, including environmentalist organizations, have warned that the system would pose a threat to Miles Creek, which also flows into the Choptank River.
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Thomas T. Alspach, an attorney who has battled against Lakeside on behalf of a group of citizens since the project’s inception, said he believes the MDE’s role in advancing the project is consistent with a pattern of inattentive and sometimes questionable oversight.
“What’s happening in Trappe is absolutely part and parcel of what you’re seeing elsewhere,” Alspach said.
In recent months the MDE has come under fire for lapses around the state. In November, the agency did not alert the public about a sewage spill that sickened at least two dozen people in St. Mary’s County.
In August, Blue Water Baltimore, a nonprofit behind the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, reported that it found high amounts of bacteria-polluted wastewater coming from the city-operated Patapsco and Back River sewage treatment plants, which the MDE is supposed to monitor. The nonprofit went to federal court in December alleging that the plants have been violating antipollution laws at least since 2017. The MDE filed a complaint in Baltimore Circuit Court against the city-operated plants last month.
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The MDE has also been criticized for slow-footed enforcement regarding Valley Proteins, a poultry-rendering plant in Dorchester County that allegedly has been discharging pollutants into a tributary of the Transquaking River since April 2019. The company did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Valley Proteins was allowed to operate for years on a “zombie permit” without careful monitoring, said Alan Girard, Eastern Shore director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He said there are hundreds more facilities that also operate with outdated MDE permits that obtain administrative renewals every five years without rigorous review.
“That’s not what the citizens expect of the department and the department needs to be held accountable,” he said.
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A bill has been introduced in Maryland General Assembly that would expand the MDE’s enforcement powers and increase financial penalties on violators.
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Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, appearing before the state Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 18, warned that the MDE is putting the state at risk of a disaster like the one that struck Flint, Mich. Frosh, citing a consultant’s report about chronic underfunding and staff shortages in the MDE, said its Water Supply Program needs more than twice as many inspectors to carry out the agency’s duties.
“Marylanders expect the State to ensure our drinking water is safe,” Frosh told Gov. Larry Hogan (R) in a Dec. 1 letter. “The EPA has warned the Administration that years of underfunding and understaffing of the Department of the Environment’s Water Supply Program have compromised its ability to conduct adequate inspections and oversight, threatening the health of millions of Marylanders.”
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A growing number of reports suggest that, despite two decades of effort, Maryland and other bay states will be lucky to reach a 2025 goal to reclaim the bay. Much of the effort has been focused on reducing phosphorous, nitrogen and sediment whose buildup triggers a biological chain reaction that creates algae blooms and dead zones in the bay.
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Ben Grumbles, the MDE’s secretary, acknowledged missteps in the Jan. 18 committee hearing. Though the MDE has sought court-ordered injunctions and financial penalties against Valley Proteins, he said the agency’s slow-footed regulatory response to the Winchester, Va.-based firm had been “inexcusable.” But he also told lawmakers that the agency has made progress filling vacancies and pledged to focus greater scrutiny on the agency’s permitting process.
“Our department has the people, plans and requirements in place to ensure water supplies continue to be safe and protected,” Grumbles said this week through an MDE spokesman: “[We] have made real progress, but some continue to mischaracterize the issue and overstate the risk. With respect to Trappe, we appreciate the range of views and concerns and are focused more on gathering public input, including the county’s perspective, before announcing any timeframe for decisions.”
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At an MDE hearing in October, more than 100 residents spoke out against reissuing the 2005 permit for a new wastewater treatment plant for Lakeside. Many questioned why the MDE had approved it in the first place.
In 2005, the MDE issued the permit less than a year after the Talbot County Council voted unanimously against it. The council produced a 21-page report that depicted the project’s application as hasty, contradictory and lacking in important, legally required information, such as a documented source of funding for a new wastewater treatment system.
A year later, however, MDE also approved plans to hook up as many as 250 new Lakeside homes to Trappe’s existing plant. Opponents only learned of the MDE decision several years later when the town applied for $18 million in federal stimulus funds. Alspach, in a July 2009 letter to the MDE, urged the agency to nullify the permits, saying they had been obtained on the basis of “inaccurate and misleading” information. MDE officials responded that a review would be conducted to see whether the permits had been validly issued.
The review never happened, however, because the town and the developer abandoned the idea of building a new wastewater treatment system — until several years ago when the project was revived and the MDE’s role once again became critical to its outcome.
Dan Watson, a retired real estate professional who has marshaled opposition against Lakeside through op-eds in the online news site Talbot Spy, said he believes the MDE ignored several instances of inaccurate or misleading information submitted by the town and developer in their permit applications.
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“It could be innocent, it could be confusion, it could be a mistake, it could be an error, it could be a lie, or a purposeful representation,” Watson said in an interview. “It doesn’t matter.”
Ryan D. Showalter, an attorney for the project, has forcefully denied the allegations made by Watson and other opponents as “meritless” and expressed confidence that the MDE will issue a final permit allowing Lakeside to proceed as planned. Fears of environmental harm have been exaggerated, he said.
In a 12-page letter to the county council, Showalter urged the council not to rescind its August 2020 approval. He also asserted that the MDE had properly granted approval for its water and sewerage plans and attacked “the many unfounded and spurious claims that the integrity of the local system has been corrupted by ‘falsehoods’ over a 20-year period.”
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“Even though Mr. Watson has recently unearthed a voluminous amount of historical documents and announced his sensational theories about [the project], this so-called ‘information’ is neither accurate nor ‘new,’ ” he wrote.
The MDE also defended its role in the permitting process.
“MDE’s authority does not extend to land use decisions, which are made at the local level,” MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said in an email. “MDE does require a permit applicant to demonstrate that a proposed facility has received any relevant county or town land use approvals.”
Trappe Town Council President Nicholas Newnam and Lyndsey Jones Ryan, Trappe’s town attorney, did not respond to email and telephone messages seeking comment.
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.