Village Green: Federal Stimulus Threatened to Overrun Small Town with Sprawl

by F. Kaid Benfield - The Huffington Post May 15, 2009

Just last week, my NRDC colleague Nancy Stoner pointed out that the federal program that provides water infrastructure to local communities is essentially subsidizing sprawl.  This is because the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (an atrocious name if I've ever heard one) "continues to fund new sewage treatment plants and new sewage and stormwater collection systems in greenfields, i.e., currently undeveloped or working landscapes."  Apparently the problem would remain even under a generally progressive new bill in Congress.

Brava Nancy for pointing that out.  New development should pay its own way, or at least make a justification as to why the subsidy is in the public interest when all factors, including the consequences of sprawl, are considered.

The problem is vividly illustrated by a controversial new development recently proposed for a 924-acre site near the small village of Trappe, Maryland, in a rural area east of the Chesapeake Bay.  Trappe, whose current population is 1,146, sits about 80 miles southeast of Washington, DC, on US Route 50, the main highway through Maryland's Eastern Shore, in between the larger towns of Easton (pop. 11,708) and Cambridge (10,911).  Trappe's population was about to increase more than fivefold with a new development that would have been made possible by some $18 million of federal taxpayer money for wastewater infrastructure, in this case from the federal stimulus package. Read more »

Md. Town's Bid for Economic Stimulus Starts a Fight
U.S. Funds Sought for Development Project's Sewage Plant
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 11, 2009
TRAPPE, Md. -- The 2,300 homes that a developer plans to build on cornfields on the outskirts of this Eastern Shore hamlet (pop. 1,146) were becoming increasingly remote as the economy soured. Then $120 million in stimulus money for Maryland water projects seemed to drop from the sky, and a local feud began to rage over sprawl and its cost.

Trappe -- whose motto is "19th-century charm, 21st-century progress" -- rushed to request federal money to fund an $18 million wastewater plant to treat sewage for the development's 5,800 planned residents.

"People in the state of Maryland are killing themselves to save the [Chesapeake] Bay," said Barbara Padden, a preservationist with Friends of Trappe, which is fighting the housing development. "This is all being done to help the only developer who wants to build 2,300 houses in a cornfield." Read more »

Bailout for Trappe East Developer?