MASSEY -- The Kent County planning board has approved plans for building an asphalt plant in a cornfield on the edge of this town near the Delaware line. Neighbors fear an environmental disaster.
The approval came last week after the county commission rewrote the zoning law in July to accommodate David C. Bramble, a prominent Eastern Shore paving contractor.
Opponents say a plant at the headwaters of Swantown Creek, a tributary of the Sassafras River, would destroy wetlands and habitat for salamanders, pollute water and affect the flavor of the milk from Lester "Bucky" Jones' cows on an adjacent farm.
They call the changes made for Bramble, who contributed $100 to each commissioner's campaign, cronyism at its worst. They have papered the Kent County Circuit Court with suits objecting to each bureaucratic step in this drama and lined the streets with yard signs opposing the plant.
The commissioners say they merely fixed language that wasn't clear.
"I thought it was permitted there in the first place," said W. Michael Newnam, one of the commissioners. "So we just cleaned it up."
Added Commissioner Larry Beck: "If there's an environmental concern, that's what the Maryland Department of the Environment is for."
Bramble says the change in the zoning law was the only sensible thing to do for the third-biggest employer in the county.
"All my life I've been told people can't stay here on the Eastern Shore because they can't get a decent job," says Bramble. "I provide 300 jobs, and most of them are good jobs."
`Fundamentally unfair'
J. Carroll Holzer, the Baltimore County lawyer who represents the citizens' group, sees it differently.
"It's fundamentally unfair how this guy has been able to manipulate the system," he says. "The citizens got jobbed."
Bramble, who has asphalt plants in Wye Mills, Easton, Ridgely and Kingstown, bought the 225-acre farm at U.S. 301 and Route 313 in August 1998. He applied three months later for planning board approval to move the Kingstown plant to Massey, arguing that it is the same as a cement plant, which is permitted under the planned industrial district zoning on the land.
After hearing 13 hours of testimony over two nights, the planning board disagreed and Bramble appealed to Kent County Circuit Court, where he lost. He asked the Court of Special Appeals to review the case.
The case is pending.
