Don't allow 54 tiny home lots

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The St. Mary's County commissioners are considering a request to extend sewer and water service to support a development so dense that it would make a sardine claustrophobic.

This proposed development of 54 homes on tiny lots is within the 1,000-foot critical area buffer between two tributaries of the Patuxent River; Mill Cove on one side and Sam Able Cove on the other.

The sewer line would open the rest of the 100-acre neighborhood to dense development allowing for hundreds of additional homes in the environmentally sensitive area.

The justification the developer provided is jobs creation. Jobs will be created short term during the construction process; however this project is a destroyer of jobs and an anathema to small business. The impervious surfaces from roofs and driveways will be around forever, accelerating runoff and degrading water quality of the Chesapeake Bay as lawn chemicals, pet waste and automobile drippings get a fast track to tidal waters with every rainstorm.

Small businesses such as The Tackle Box, Ridge Marine Sales, and the Rod and Reel directly depend on sales of bait and fishing gear. Nascent aquaculture enterprises like Circle C, Oyster Project Piney Point and Johnny Oysterseed as well as the many harvesters of wild oysters, crabs and fish need clean water. The list of water-dependent small businesses could fill the page of a newspaper and would include charter boats, restaurants, marinas, boat dealers, watermen, seafood packers and anyone who sells a crab cooker or a fishing lure.

Many local small businesses depend directly our stewardship of the waterways and they provide good long-term jobs that cannot be outsourced overseas. This is where we should look for job growth because the Chesapeake Bay is an estuary unique in the world; an asset available only to us.

The business community and government should oppose this project and similar developments as homes can be sited in less environmentally sensitive areas already serviced by adequate roads and sewers.

Robert Willey, California