I haven't heard of anything like this happening in Iowa, but forwarned, etc.
Tom
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Subj: MD DOT wants to destroy Sierra Club activist's home
Date: 04-05-13 10:06:53 EDT
From: [log in to unmask] (David Orr)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Transportation Chairs
Forum)
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Chairs Forum)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61489-2004May2?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Md. Activist Won't Give Up Fight -- or Home
By Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 3, 2004; Page B01
Bonnie Bick is well-known in Prince George's
County for being an outspoken opponent of the
proposed National Harbor resort, a project that
she fears will spawn casino gambling and flood
her Oxon Hill neighborhood with traffic.
Now Bick has another reason to protest: Prince
George's officials want to demolish her house.
The county's stated purpose for the demolition is
to widen Oxon Hill Road, in part to accommodate
the traffic to be generated by National Harbor.
Bick acknowledges she has no evidence that the
county has an ulterior motive, but she can't help
but think that the effort to remove her is
payback for fighting the road and the resort.
Bick's suspicions were reinforced when she hired
an engineer, who told her that her property is a
poor site for a drainage basin, which is what the
county plans to build. Her situation is all the
more perplexing because National Harbor developer
Milton Peterson has told county officials he does
not think Oxon Hill Road needs to be widened.
"I think they're trying to silence me, quite
frankly," said Bick, 60, leading a tour of the
two-story brick house with a veranda overlooking
the Potomac and a driveway entrance where signs
read, "What is National Harbor?" and "Another
Family Against Slots."
In a letter to County Executive Jack B. Johnson
(D), Bick's attorney, John Britton, called the
county's plan to raze the house "harsh and
unwarranted."
"The irony is not lost on Miss Bick and others in
the community that Miss Bick's property will be
condemned for a project she opposes and which, at
least in part, will accommodate the National
Harbor development, another project Miss Bick
publicly opposes," he wrote.
Jim Keary, a spokesman for Johnson, said there's
nothing personal about the county's interest in
Bick's house. Three other Oxon Hill Road
properties are slated for demolition, he said,
though he declined to identify their location or
owners, citing ongoing negotiations.
Bick, an environmental activist and Sierra Club
member, has fought National Harbor since the
mid-1990s, when Peterson bought the 500-acre
parcel on the banks of the Potomac.
She and her allies with the Campaign to Reinvest
in Oxon Hill have expressed their opposition at
community hearings, hung protest signs in the
neighborhood and filed a series of lawsuits that
have entangled Peterson in court proceedings.
The delays have caused no small amount of
frustration for the developer, who complained to
community leaders last fall that Bick commandeers
enough press attention to create the perception
that "Bonnie Bick represents south county. Bonnie
Bick actually sets the agenda."
"I think I do sometimes, and you sometimes might,
but she really sets the agenda," Peterson told
the crowd.
For months, National Harbor's opponents have
accused Peterson of plotting to build a casino at
the resort, an issue that has been put to rest,
at least for now, with the defeat of gambling
legislation in Annapolis last month.
In an interview last week, Peterson said the
Gaylord Entertainment Co. is scheduled to break
ground on its 1,500-room hotel and convention
center this year.
More immediately, though, Peterson is to return
May 11 to Prince George's County Circuit Court as
the project's opponents try to force him to
commission environmental studies on how the
resort would affect the area.
Still, relations between Peterson and his
principal adversaries appear to have thawed. The
most striking evidence of the detente was a
letter written jointly to the County Council this
week by Peterson and Donna F. Edwards, another
opposition leader, in which they recommended that
plans to widen Oxon Hill Road be revisited.
Peterson said he and Edwards agreed to write the
letter after talking extensively "two or three
times" in recent months, mainly about the road.
Edwards declined to talk in detail about their
discussions, except to say, "It's a useful thing
that we have been able to come to some accord on
Oxon Hill Road."
Bick learned of the plans for her home last fall
when an appraisal firm retained by the county
notified her that it wanted to inspect her
property. In March, an engineering firm wrote her
that the Oxon Hill Road project "will require
that this property be acquired and the house
demolished."
A month later, the county offered Bick $200,000
for her property. Bick said she's not interested.
"It's not about money," she said. "It's about
saving my house."
As a shrewd political operator, however, Bick is
also well aware that public attention on her
house could boost her broader agenda, which is
stopping National Harbor. Part of her welcomes
the strategic opportunity.
"Poor little Bonnie," she said, smiling as she answered her front door.
Yet Bick also said the experience of fighting
for her property "has had a chilling effect."
"I'm very active as a civic-minded citizen, and
everything I do I wonder if it's going to help or
hurt me with my home," she said, sitting on her
porch, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses propped atop
her white hair.
Bick is not alone in suspecting the worst.
Edwards, her partner in agitation, said the
county can "ill afford to be perceived as
developing a plan that turns an activist senior
citizen out of her home."
"To turn into a drainage ditch the person's
house who has been the most oppositional to you
-- it smells like a rat," Edwards said.
Bick's father, a scientist at the U.S. Naval
Research Lab, bought the one-acre property in the
late 1940s and designed the house. She was 6 when
the family moved in, and it's where she lived
until she left for college.
After marrying and living for years in New York
City and Charles County, Bick returned to the
house in 1999 after the death of her parents and
husband. She moved in with her two cats and
sleeps in the bedroom she had when she was a
child. She hopes to eventually pass the house on
to her son, David, 27, an artist.
After learning of the county's plans, Bick got
feisty. She refused to allow the appraiser onto
her property and called in an engineer to assess
whether her lot was appropriate for what is known
as a storm water management pond.
The engineer, Joseph Behun, said in an interview
last week that the location is "somewhat
precarious from an engineering safety point of
view" because it would be located on a slope.
"You don't usually see them build on hilltops
with a slope downstream," he said. "If there's a
slope failure, it would send a lot of water
downhill into the adjacent subdivision."
Keary said the road project is still being designed.
"There are discussions that are continuing that
include the width and composition," he said.
In the meantime, Bick last week notified the
county that she's not willing to negotiate. Not
now, not ever.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "This is my home."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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