I haven't heard of anything like this happening in Iowa, but forwarned, etc. Tom ============================================================ 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) Reply-to: [log in to unmask] (Transportation Chairs Forum) To: [log in to unmask] 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 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp