ICC Whitepaper Details How Proposed Highway Project Would be an Ecological Juggernaut

Project would smother parts of eight watersheds with 260 acres of pavement.

On February 24, 2005, Diane Cameron sent this whitepaper to Mr. Wesley Mitchell, ICC Project Manager for the Maryland State Highway Administration in Baltimore, as a formal public comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. This comment forms part of the official ICC decisionmaking record.

• Read the whitepaper.
• More on the ICC

Summary

II. The proposed ICC would cause unacceptable environmental and ecological harm to our region, including huge forest and wetland losses, both from direct project-related destruction, and from secondary and "induced" development.

III. Montgomery County’s watersheds would be unacceptably damaged by the added imperviousness and the additional stormwater pollution that the ICC would bring.

IV. The Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMP) plan proposed in the DEIS is overly vague and sketchy and, in several respects, inadequate to protect local watersheds. Wet detention ponds are no longer used for new development in Montgomery County; infiltration and other alternative approaches are now state-of-the-art here. By ignoring infiltration for the 6 non-SPA watersheds, SHA would be taking a giant step backward in stormwater policy.

    a) SHA should be issued an individual NPDES stormwater Phase II permit for the proposed ICC, given the project’s size and ecological impact. Protective water quality standards, in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of the federal Clean Water Act, should be fully translated and implemented via this permit.

    b) The implementation of water quality standards should include the full use of Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), as required by the federal Clean Water Act. TMDLs, and other water quality standards-based protections and BMP suites, should be included for all watersheds in the proposed ICC corridor(s). In addition to the regular TMDL drafting and public review process, the draft TMDLs should be published in a Supplemental DEIS.. The TMDLs in this individual stormwater NPDES permit to the SHA should follow current EPA policy and use a detailed, specific, iterative BMP approach tailored to treat, prevent, and reduce the specific pollutants for which TMDLs are calculated.

VI. Other Water Quality Standards issues related to the ICC:

    a) The proposed down-grading of Maryland’s system of water quality standards as MDE proposed in the fall of 2004 in its Chesapeake Bay WQS proposal is unacceptable and probably illegal in that it violates the letter, spirit, and intent of the Clean Water Act to protect and restore the biological, physical, and chemical integrity of our nation’s waters.

    b) MDE must fully exercise its 401 certification authority to ensure that the ICC project’s discharges, including all of its stormwater discharges, will meet all applicable standards.