Excerpt from MPT's SPRAWL: A Tipping Point

BRAC: If you build it, they will come

Jeff Salkin: Michael Lombardi, a civilian software and chemical engineer, came to work at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County to help others move to Maryland from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, as a result of BRAC, the Base Realignment And Closure Act of 2005.

BRAC shut down some military installations throughout the country and expanded others, including Aberdeen Proving Ground and Fort Meade.

BRAC will increase Maryland's population by 25,000 new households by 2011. That's a small percentage of the State's projected future growth, but a concentrated pulse in a very short time for impacted areas like APG.

So BRAC is a test case for whether the principles of sustainable smart growth can really succeed.

Dru Schmidt-Perkins: Maryland has a pop quiz before us. Are we going to grow smart or are we going to grow dumb? And that is around BRAC. Imagine 60,000 new people on our roads, already congested, or using this opportunity to structure new communities, restructure existing communities so that people can use transit more.

That is the opportunity we have with BRAC to refocus our State dollars towards this infrastructure, rather than paving over our farmlands.

Jeff Salkin: Aberdeen Proving Ground, or APG, lies in Harford County, near the top of the Chesapeake Bay. It's already one of Maryland's fastest growing areas, a county that has felt the impact of sprawl way before BRAC.

Michael Lombardi: Anything south of here, you're going against traffic and that helps considerably.

Jeff Salkin: Commuting was on Michael Lombardi's mind when he looked for housing.

Michael Lombardi: Part of my logic and reasoning for moving into the area we did was to minimize my commute, I wanted to stay about 20, maybe 30, minutes -- no more than 30 minutes -- out.

I work late quite a bit and I didn't want to be on the road for an hour, hour and-a-half, and then get home after my son went to bed. And that's important, as it is to many people who are involved in a BRAC move.

Also, we're 15 minutes from the Bush River, which leads into the Chesapeake Bay, we were lucky enough to join a boat club there. We definitely feel we at least got the quality of life and, in a lot of areas, improved the quality of life from where we came from.

Jeff Salkin: Marylanders do enjoy a high quality of life. Lombardi made a smart growth choice by settling in an established community, but he almost doubled his commute. Options for transit are limited.

The City of Aberdeen, bordering Aberdeen Proving Ground, has an under-utilized aging MARC commuter rail station. Service is limited and there's no connection to the base. There is great potential. One BRAC idea is to redevelop the station here or at another larger site into a multi-modal transit center with expanded train service, more parking, buses, and shuttles to APG.
Such a station would be an ideal site for transit oriented development, or TOD. An example of which is this mixed-use plan for the Naylor Road Metro Station in Prince George's County.

Andy Scott: People who live near transit stations drive about 40 percent less. It's a more dense compact development pattern so it reduces pressure on sprawl, reduces pressure on traffic congestion and it also saves families money.

What's under discussion here in Aberdeen is an example of what we can do across the State to promote smart growth.

Jeff Salkin: Even with compact transit oriented smart growth, natural resources are an issue. Fewer trees would be cut down in such a development, but just as much water is needed. And just as in Western Maryland, that presents challenges.

David Craig: Harford County is going to be the recipient of about 8,200 Federal jobs, about 10,000 ancillary jobs that come with that, which means a population increase of about 20,000 to 25,000 people. We need to get ready and build infrastructure -- schools, water, sewer, those types of things.

We're here today at the Abingdon Water Treatment Plant in Abingdon. It's a 10 million gallon a day water treatment plant. We are in the process of doubling the size of it. That should carry Harford County's needs for water through the year 2015, which, obviously, means that it carries us through the BRAC process.

Jeff Salkin: The upgrade won't be cheap -- about $70 million. And much more water will be pumped from Loch Raven Reservoir and the Susquehanna, a river that provides half the Bay's fresh water.

David Craig: Even though the Susquehanna is one of the largest rivers on the East Coast, we do have to be concerned because there are dams along there that need certain flows for hydroelectric power generation and also for environmental protection because in drought situations you can't withdraw too much water at one time because it endangers the fish and the other wildlife that depend on that river also.

So even though it seems like it's a super abundant source of water, we have to be very careful of how we use it and preserve it.

Jeff Salkin: Governor O'Malley and the Maryland General Assembly have launched new initiatives to help localities support smart growth projects. In 2008 the BRAC Subcabinet was created to coordinate locate and State BRAC efforts. It's led by Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown.

LT Governor Brown: One of our big initiatives recently was the creation of BRAC Revitalization Zones. We worked with the General Assembly, local government and the private sector, where we have created much like an enterprise zone -- a program where local governments identify zones within priority funding areas where the State will partner with local governments to provide financial incentives for development and redevelopment in these priority funding areas.

Jeff Salkin: The City of Baltimore has won the designation of BRAC Zoned for Westport and the City of Aberdeen plans to apply, too.

Also in 2008 the Maryland General Assembly passed the Transit Oriented Development Bill, which authorizes the Department of Transportation to use its property and resources to promote TODs.

Recently, the MDP's Task Force on the Future For Growth and Development published its smart growth and land use report. The State also launched a new Maryland Smart, Green and Growing initiative to link revitalization, transportation, economic development, smart growth and natural resource restoration.

Key is GreenPrint, an interactive mapping tool to guide land conservation and growth.

In every corner of our State there are tensions over growth, how fast, where to put it, smart growth or sprawl. There are a million new neighbors on the way to our beautiful State. The question is when they get here what will be our quality of life.

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