In This Issue
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Executive Director's Message
CLA Welcomes New Board Members
Volunteer Attorneys Fight Zoning Changes in Anne Arundel County
Community Association Opposes Fort Howard Development
Protecting our Coastal Communities
CLA in the News
New CLA Matters
CLA Seeking Summer Legal Interns
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| CLA Welcomes New Board Members! |
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Chesapeake Legal Alliance is proud to announce that Rita Cavanagh and Josephine Cooper joined our Board of Directors in December. Rita is a partner practicing tax law in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins LLP and has assisted CLA as a volunteer attorney. Jo is a private consultant with an extensive background in strategy and advocacy development with major corporations and trade associations. We are confident that their skills, expertise and interest in the Bay will be of great support to CLA's efforts.
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We Need Your Support!
CLA is funded 100% by contributions from law firms, corporations, foundation grants and individuals like you.
Please support our work by mailing your tax deductible donation to:
Chesapeake Legal Alliance
67 Franklin Street
Annapolis, MD 21401
or click on the link below to use your credit card.
I WANT TO DONATE NOW!
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New CLA Matters
Ted Dunlap of Budow and Noble, P.C. (Bethesda, MD) is providing counsel to Save Your Annapolis Neck in opposing environmentally harmful development in Annapolis, MD.
Paul Smail of Persels & Associates (Towson, MD) is providing assistance with the appeal of variances granted in violation of the Comprehensive Plan in Anne Arundel County, MD; legal advice to the Annapolis Environmental Commission on development projects in Annapolis; and assistance to the Millers Island Community Association in opposing a massive planned use development on the Fort Howard property in Baltimore County.
Gregg Iskra, Supervising Engineer, Water Technical Excellence Center at Parsons Brinckerhoff (Baltimore, MD) is providing engineering and legal assistance to Save Your Annapolis Neck on proposed development projects.
David Ginsburg of Wingfield & Ginsburg, P.C. (Washington, D.C.) is providing assistance to Future Harvest - Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture with the development of contracts for a farmer training program and an employee manual.
Brian Kilgore, Associate General Counsel, Land Resources, Housing Authority of Baltimore City (Baltimore, MD) is providing assistance to Friends of Oxon Hill and the Campaign to Reinvest in the Heart of Oxon Hill on a zoning variance hearing to develop forested property in Prince George's County, MD.
Please contact CLA's Executive Director, Jacqueline Sincore Guild, at 410-216-9441 with requests for legal assistance and to join our volunteer network.
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Get Involved!
Chesapeake Legal Alliance cannot achieve our mission to realize a clean and healthy Chesapeake Bay without our network of volunteer attorneys and experts. To date, our volunteer attorneys have assisted over forty clients on a variety of matters including enforcement actions, zoning appeals, review of and comments on proposed federal regulations and legislation, contract review, mergers, and applications for tax-exempt status. To join our team of volunteers, please contact us at info@chesapeakelegal.org.
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CLA Seeking Summer Legal Interns
Chesapeake Legal Alliance (CLA) is offering unpaid summer internship opportunities to current law students. Candidates must have excellent writing and research skills. Hours and length of internship are flexible. CLA is located in historic downtown Annapolis, MD; candidates must provide their own transportation. Please send cover letter, resume and writing sample to recruiting@chesapeakelegal.org. This is a great opportunity to explore a career path in the environmental community.
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Executive Director's Message
The New Year has started off with a bang! The recent excellent coverage in
The Capital is generating numerous requests for assistance and calls from new attorneys interested in volunteering their services on behalf of the Bay. Click here to see the full article. We are pleased to report that since our last newsletter, we have placed matters with several new attorneys and a water engineer/attorney. As CLA’s work expands rapidly, we are working to increase our capacity to handle the demand. We are in the process of interviewing for a part time administrative assistant and our second class of summer legal interns. In addition, we are pleased to welcome Josephine Cooper and Rita Cavanagh to our Board of Directors. Plans are underway for attorney training on issues pertinent to our work and we are exploring opportunities to leverage resources with other Chesapeake Bay oriented organizations.
CLA is looking forward to another successful year – putting legal muscle behind the fight to achieve a clean and healthy Chesapeake Bay!
Sincerely,
Jacqueline Sincore Guild
Executive Director
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Volunteer Attorneys Fight Zoning Changes in Anne Arundel County
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Comprehensive zoning plans take years to develop and consider
. Citizens participate through hearings and the submission of data; expert land use planners render their opinions and plans are adopted and further refined through general area plans and small area plans. Then, after all of this effort, special interests propose variances to these carefully constructed plans designed to meet the needs and vision of citizens. Politicians vote to grant the variances and the citizens are left feeling disenfranchised.
This sequence of events unfolded recently in Anne Arundel County in conjunction with the county’s once-a-decade comprehensive rezoning. While County Executive John Leopold stepped forward to veto 16 of these variances, the County Council overrode 10 of his vetoes.
Now, with the help of several volunteer attorneys led by Russell Stevenson, a group of citizens are fighting back with the filing of a lawsuit. In particular, the variances in question allow the development of areas of South County where it has been a priority to protect the rural nature of the area and its environmental integrity.
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| Community Group Opposses Fort Howard Development |
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By Paul Smail, Esq.
Volunteer attorney Paul Smail, Esq., an Associate with Persels & Associates, LLC, is assisting the Millers Island Community Association (MICA) in opposing a massive planned use development on the campus of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Maryland Healthcare System on Fort Howard, in eastern Baltimore County. As envisioned by the developer, the project would include 1,300 to 1,500 active adult housing units, healthcare facilities, as well as a town center with retail, restaurants, and professional offices.
The government property will be made available to the developer through the Enhanced-Use Lease program that allows VA property to be leased for non-VA uses that are compatible with or benefit the VA’s mission. While the developer proposes that the community will offer housing to veterans at various price points, it is unclear at this point what benefits retired servicepersons will actually derive from the project.
The Fort Howard VA campus covers just under 95 acres of waterfront property, with shoreline along the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay. It contains 36 buildings, many of which have been vacant since 2002 and are considered historically significant. The campus is bordered on the east by Fort Howard Park, part of the Baltimore County Park system. The park is of historical note due to its proximity to the site where the British landed several thousand troops on September 14, 1812 as part of a campaign to capture and burn the City of Baltimore. The park contains wetlands and riparian forest, and provides recreation opportunities to visitors.
The entire Fort Howard campus falls within the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area. Shoreline and adjacent lands are identified by state and local land planners as constituting a valuable and sensitive component of the estuarine system, where development could have an immediate and adverse impact on water quality and natural habitats of the Bay and its tributaries.
MICA opposes the proposed planned use development due to its impact on the environment as well as to the infrastructure of both the Fort Howard and North Point peninsulas. Residents are certainly not opposed to the continued use of the VA campus to serve and honor the Nation’s veterans. In fact, their objective is to preserve the historic significance of the campus and provide housing, medical, and rehabilitation services exclusively to veterans in a park-like setting that can be enjoyed by anyone wishing to honor the men and women who served in the Armed Forces.
As of this date, MICA has filed comments to the Environmental Assessment (EA) published by the VA as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Even though the EA was deficient in the consideration of alternatives, as well as the potential environmental consequences of the proposed action and its impacts to the Chesapeake Bay and natural habitats adjacent to the VA campus, a Finding of No Significant Impact or FONSI will likely be issued, allowing the approval of the Enhanced-use Lease and the initiation of the development project. If this does occur, MICA has not ruled out litigating the matter. MICA has also established an alliance of individuals and organizations in opposition to the planned unit development and has garnered political support from various levels of government.
Paul Smail, Esq. is an Associate with Persels & Associates, LLC in Towson, MD and has extensive experience in Chesapeake Bay resource conservation as well as environmental law. Mr. Smail is a volunteer attorney assisting CLA on this and other cases including zoning litigation in Anne Arundel County, MD.
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Protecting our Coastal Communities
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By Mike Shay, SACReD
South Arundel Citizens for Responsible Development (SACReD) has been actively pursuing sustainable and environmentally responsible issues in Southern Anne Arundel (AA) County, particularly the coastal areas, for 16 years.
Recently, Chesapeake Legal Alliance has been a huge help in beefing up our efforts in pushing back against several of the most egregious insults to the community and our environment. In the past, our coastal community has been threatened by proposals to build big box shopping centers, several hundred speculative homes in our most sensitive, natural areas, and plans to label South County as a “primary growth area”.
After learning to combat these pressures, we now have encountered a new type of speculative developer, one I call the “Hobbyist Wetland Developer.” His campaign into our last areas of untouched marshland in Deale, MD, approved by AA County, has shown that the County’s implementation of Maryland’s Critical Area Law is almost meaningless when aggressively pursued by the Hobbyist Wetland Developer. This case clearly illustrates that decision-makers in AA County will not deny a property owner the right to develop, even if the whole parcel and proposed project is entirely in the 100-foot critical area buffer. The unspoken truth is that AA County fears being sued by the developer on a “takings issue”. Therefore, the County continues to support and enable construction in the 100-foot buffer regardless of existing Maryland laws designed to protect these areas. To add insult to citizen injury, the County sold these important marshlands for less than $1,000 at a County tax sale, knowing that the tax record property description was “marshland!”
Undeterred by the County’s decision to grant the variance in favor of the developer, SACReD, with the assistance of volunteer attorney Dirk Schwenk, Esq. of BayLaw LLC, is prepared to go the distance to fight for this wetland. SACReD extends our thanks to Chesapeake Legal Alliance and their volunteer attorneys for their efforts in helping us to protect these important natural areas.
Mike Shay is a Front Line Community Organizer with SACReD.
Wetlands proposed for development in Southern Anne Arundel County
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CLA In the News
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Feature Article in
The Capital
Chesapeake Legal Alliance (CLA) was featured recently in
The Capital, a newspaper serving Anne Arundel County, MD. As a follow up to an earlier article, Staff Writer Pamela Wood spoke with CLA's founder, Russell Stevenson, and Executive Director, Jacqueline Sincore Guild, about CLA's growth and advancement of CLA's mission in the past year. The article also takes a look at the
pro bono services provided by CLA volunteer attorneys and some of the cases on which they are working. Ms. Wood also spoke with volunteer attorney Juge Gregg, Senior Associate with Sidley Austin LLP, who leads a team representing the Potomac Riverkeeper and local citizens who are opposing quarry development and operations near their small town of Gerrardstown, West Virginia. Click here to see the full article.
Chesapeake Legal Alliance Awarded Grants in 2011
In 2011, the Chesapeake Legal Alliance made great headway in promoting our mission with the award of grants from The Abell Foundation, The Keith Campbell Foundation, Rauch Foundation and Town Creek Foundation. These funds will be used to expand CLA's services throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed community. CLA greatly appreciates their support!
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