Calvert Recorder Speaks

By MEGHAN RUSSELL

Staff writer

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After formal plans went public last month of Pepco Holdings Inc.'s desire to build a 34-acre converter station in Port Republic, a group of about 25 citizens banded together in opposition.

In order to complete its Mid-Atlantic Power Pathway, a $1.2 billion project that will run from Virginia to Delaware but will not service Calvert County, Pepco plans to construct two large switching stations and an open air substation in Calvert County to convert electricity from alternating current to direct current. Each switching station would be the size of a football field and roughly six stories high, according to a Nov. 16 presentation on the project.

Because Pepco's original site at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant did not work out due to the plant's anticipation of a third reactor, MAPP project manager Robert Jubic Jr. said, the proposed buildings and substation instead would consume more than 30 acres at the headwaters of the longest tributary to Parkers Creek.

This is upsetting news to the growing new group, Calvert Citizens for Safe Energy.

"When we heard it was happening in the headwaters of Parkers Creek, we just said something has to be done," Marcia Tripp, the group's chairwoman, said. "And at the [Calvert County Board of County Commissioners'] meeting, the people from Pepco made it seem like they had no opposition to it and that the American Chestnut Land Trust was fine with it. That's not true."

In fact, ACLT President Ted Graham spoke out against the company's decision to use the Parkers Creek location as the construction site for its converter station. At the same commissioners' meeting, during public comment, he asked, "Why is [Pepco] proceeding with a single candidate site when no environmental assessment of the proposed site has been done?"

Graham said the site selection process should have addressed water quality impacts, habitat, noise, traffic, air quality, deforestation, loss of wetlands, aesthetics and electromagnetic radiation before making a decision.

Members of the ACLT have joined the citizens who live along the Parkers Creek watershed in taking part in the CCSE group. The ACLT also issued a press release last month in opposition to the MAPP converter station site, calling the proposed switching stations "intrusive facilities."

ACLT's Executive Director Karen Edgecombe said in the release, "[g]iven the public interest and investment in land conservation in the [Parkers Creek and Governors Run] watersheds, it only makes sense to utilize available land that has already been dedicated to energy production and transmission in Calvert County."

She and CCSE wish to see Pepco return to its initial site plan at the power plant and work out an agreement with Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, the plant's owner. Tripp even said she would like to see the Federal Energy Regulation Commission "go down to the people who can't agree at the plant and talk to them. … It seems so silly when they have all that industrial space down there."

Tripp added, "I think this is so important. Everybody's put in a tremendous number of hours on fighting this. We don't want to be ‘nimbys,' or ‘not-in-my-backyard' folks; we just say not in our watershed, not in our protected land."

Although Pepco plans to work with the Calvert County commissioners, who strongly expressed their disapproval of the site location at their Nov. 16 meeting, the utility company also is moving forward, said Matt Likovich, a spokesman for Delmarva Power, owned by Pepco, and for the MAPP project.

"We are continuing to have discussions with Calvert County officials to address their concerns regarding our site selection," Likovich said in a prepared statement. "Meanwhile, the site we have selected will be included in the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity filing with the Maryland Public Service Commission."

Pepco recently filed a modified application for a CPCN for the MAPP construction, Likovich said. That file includes the details regarding the Calvert County converter station site selection.

After analyzing approximately 30 sites for the converter location, he said, Pepco chose Parkers Creek near the intersection of Routes 765 and 2/4 because the site is in close proximity to the Baltimore Gas & Electric transmission line corridor that provides viable interconnection access, the site already contains an access road and the necessary work to clear trees and other vegetation will be less "extensive as it would be if one of the other sites was chosen."

However, plans to keep the location at Parkers Creek are not set in stone, as Pepco has not officially purchased the rights to the property yet. "The details of the land acquisition for the Calvert County converter station are still being worked out at this time," Likovich said in an e-mail.

According to the ACLT, the Parkers Creek watershed is designated in the Calvert County Comprehensive Plan as a "priority preservation area" and in the Calvert County Zoning Ordinance as the "Farm and Forest District" intended to "protect and preserve prime farming regions, lands in proximity to agricultural preservation districts, large contiguous forested areas, and to maintain historic and scenic landscapes," the release states.

One CCSE document contains the history of preservation of the Parkers Creek and Governors Run watersheds, dating back 35 years. "By contrast, the 92 acres already purchased or under contract to [Pepco] in Port Republic is particularly valuable for preservation because it occupies the headwaters of Parkers Creek's longest tributary, and is in fact also the headwaters of Parkers Creek," CCSE states as its summary analysis at the close of the document. Additionally, "The tract is in a particularly scenic rural area — clearly visible from Routes 2/4 and 765."

Furthermore, CCSE contends the construction of a large converter station in the proposed location "will severely and destructively impact an important cultural landscape that is part of the Maryland Star Spangled Banner Byway," one of 19 routes highlighted for its historical significance during the War of 1812.

In a letter forwarded to several government officials and the parties involved with the MAPP project, two scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory expressed their opposition to the proposed converter station site in Port Republic, as well.

Placing the site there jeopardizes the CBL's studies that ultimately help meet the conditions of the Clean Water Act, Margaret Palmer, professor and laboratory director, and Lora Harris, assistant professor, wrote.

"Our research in this area includes evaluating the effectiveness of available restoration practices while also considering climate associated impacts on hydrology and temperature. In order to best assess these impacts in the complex context of changing land use, we need a research location to collect data for comparison with more urbanized sites where the watershed is still forested and impact is low," the letter states. "As a consequence of the efforts of the American Chestnut Land Trust and its partners, the [Parker's Creek] watershed is one of the only locations left in the Coastal Plain of the Chesapeake Bay watershed where these conditions have been preserved."

In addition, the scientists wrote that pollutant loads will be much harder to gauge and much less reliable during the "large construction efforts" sure to come with the building of the converter station.

They, like the ACLT and CCSE, concluded with a plea for elected officials and Pepco to explore alternative locations.