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Transmission Lines Proposed 

to Cross the Sugarloaf Plan Area

 

According to a Frederick News Post (FNP) report, the Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) has been contracted “to build a new 500,000-volt transmission line across parts of Frederick, Baltimore and Carroll counties to accommodate growing power needs in the region. Click here to view the proposed route alternatives (note, you do NOT need to fill out their questionnaire – just scroll to the bottom).

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Frederick County’s District 4 delegation in the Maryland General Assembly is planning a public forum at the end of the month to hear residents’ concerns. The forum will be held in Linganore High School’s auditorium from 6-9 p.m. on July 31. Please plan to attend and bring your friends and neighbors!

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FNP continues: “The project, the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP), will extend from northern Baltimore County through Carroll County and into the Doubs substation in southern Frederick County, according to a website about the project. It is expected to start delivering power in June 2027.

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“It is being built to update the regional power grid operated by PJM Interconnection as a result of predicted increased power needs in the future for the region.”

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As you may be reading elsewhere, the escalating demand for power in this region comes primarily from Data Center Alley in northern Virginia. Costs for these proposed transmission lines will be shared among Maryland rate payers.

The Carroll County Board of Commissioners voted to oppose the project. They said, “The board upholds the principles of protecting property owner rights, local control and land use and permitting authority. The proposed project does not respect any of these concepts. For these reasons, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners opposes the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project.” The Frederick County Council has not yet taken a position.

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There are two citizen groups forming in opposition to the transmission lines.

  • STOP MPRP:  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1510723046526047

  • Marylanders Against Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project

https://www.facebook.com/groups/806625921626645

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Frederick County and Maryland public officials need to hear how you feel.  Here’s how to contact them:

 

 Advisory Group Aims at

"Comprehensive Rezoning"

 

Wait… Is Frederick County Really Talking About Rezoning Here? Yep. 

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The Frederick County Planning Office and the county’s Division of Economic Opportunity have teamed up to create the “Investing in Workers and Workplaces” (IWW) advisory group, populated primarily by folks in the business of property development. The county website says: “This plan…will increase land designated for targeted economic opportunity uses through the review of select growth areas and current land use designations…. A comprehensive rezoning will follow Plan adoption to implement the Plan’s recommendations.”

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Sugarloaf Alliance signed onto a letter to County Executive Fitzwater composed by the Climate Change Working Group:

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“It is our understanding that you have placed all county comprehensive plan land use designations and zoning “on the table” for review by your newly created Investing in Workers and Workplaces Advisory Group (IWWAG), with the intention of identifying additional county land for residential, business and/or industrial expansion. This effort appears to be similar in scope to a Livable Frederick small area plan, but without some of the process elements that we consider important. For example, there is no community outreach built into this process to notify county residents, and the composition of the group lacks the appropriate diversity of stakeholder participants.

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 “According to the Planning and Permitting Office, the soon-to-be-completed Water Resources Element was to be immediately followed by a Green Infrastructure Plan as described in Livable Frederick. In creating the IWWAG ahead of the Green Infrastructure Plan, you have given the green light to development and industrial expansion, before establishing protection for environmentally sensitive areas. This jeopardizes not only public health, clean drinking water, and valued agricultural lands, it discounts the local impacts of both climate change (heat/drought) and loss of biodiversity that are critical to sustaining our local environment.

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“Additional concerns include:

·       Lack of transparency: The meetings are neither televised nor recorded and there is no opportunity for public comment. Offering a Microsoft Teams option beginning July 9th hardly makes up for the lack of a televised option thus far, and excludes anyone who cannot access Microsoft Teams. Zoom is universally accessible. The Sugarloaf and South Frederick Corridor plans had their advisory and scoping group meetings recorded and both took public comments early in their drafting.

·       Ethics: At least one of the members of the Advisory Group owns, but does not reside on significant acreage currently zoned Agricultural that if rezoned to Commercial or Industrial could provide the owner a considerable profit.

·       No IWWAG members reside in the Adamstown area—an area that stands to be greatly affected by rezoning.

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“It is our recommendation that you withhold support of any recommendations that come from the IWWAG, and that you pause further development of this plan until a Green Infrastructure plan is approved and implemented. Once the functions of our local ecosystems are protected, the County will be in a position to identify where and how to accommodate the unprecedented growth that we are experiencing now and into the foreseeable future. This would be fair to the citizens of Frederick County.”

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Sugarloaf Alliance suspects this IWW advisory group was created in part as a mechanism to redo the Sugarloaf Plan boundary and begin the process of data center development as projected in 2021.  Our advocacy on behalf of the treasured landscape must continue.

 

SA Requests Documents re Moratorium Leak

 

You may have read the editorial in the Frederick News Post regarding Council Member Duckett's leak of Council Member McKay's proposed building moratorium legislation. While no written rules were violated, breaking protocol to release the document early to building industry representatives is exactly the kind of backdoor access Sugarloaf Alliance has been fighting for the past several years. For that reason, SA filed two Public Information Access (PIA) requests with the county - one to learn the source of the leak and the second to learn how the county handled the protocol issue when they learned of the leak. We are reviewing the responsive documents and will post them to the website soon.

 

The Price of Advocacy

Speaking of PIAs, believe it or not, we still are in court over the Amazon PIAs we filed two years ago, and your volunteer board still owes more than $10K for the privilege of unearthing the data center planning map and related materials.

Thanks to those of you who have contributed to the fundraiser so far. A contribution of $50 from many more of you would allow us to take care of that debt and address the threats that the "Investing in Workers and Workplaces" project is about to impose.

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Please consider making your tax deductible contribution today to preserve our treasured Sugarloaf landscape.  Here’s a LINK to our website donation button. Alternatively, checks may be sent to "Sugarloaf Alliance, Inc." and mailed to Sugarloaf Alliance c/o Nick Carrera, 2602 Thurston Road A, Frederick, MD 21704.

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