June 28, 2010|By Paul West, The Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON — — The federal government has abandoned plans to build an anti-terrorism training center on the Eastern Shore, a project that attracted determined opposition from local residents and conservationists.
Already running behind schedule, the $100 million-plus security facility — which was to have included test tracks for evasive driving manuevers, shooting ranges, a bomb explosion pit and a mock urban neighborhood for counter-terrorist drills — faced the prospect of additional delays and an approval process that could have taken years.
"After further analysis," 2,000 acres of farmland in Queen Anne's County "will no longer be considered" for the State Department's diplomatic security facility, the head of the government's real-estate arm wrote in a letter Monday to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, an early supporter of the plan.
General Services Administrator Martha Johnson said preliminary environmental studies "showed that, among other potential concerns, there would be a significant change in land use and considerable noise and traffic impacts."
Those objections, and others, were raised at the outset by critics of the project. It was to have been built in Ruthsburg, a quiet rural crossroads about 30 miles from Annapolis and half an hour from the eastern end of the Bay Bridge.
In the letter, Johnson singled out the "input" of Queen Anne's County citizens during a six-month review process and said she was "confident it led to the proper conclusion."
No new site — or timeline for selecting one — has been announced. Mikulski's office said she still wants it built in Maryland and has spoken with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about considering other locations in the state. Speculation about possible alternate sites includes Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County.
Federal officials "are actively engaged in a site selection process and look forward to opening this essential national security facility and being good neighbors," GSA and the State Department said in a joint statement.
Supporters of placing the facility on the Shore, including local business and development interests, maintained that most area residents favored the project. With $70 million in ready money from the stimulus program for startup costs, it offered the prospect of construction jobs and 400 permanent positions, including food service, maintenance and security work.
Critics attacked the site-selection process as politically motivated, despite government claims that only objective criteria were used. In particular, they claimed that Rep. Frank Kratovil's home county was chosen in order to help one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the House.
Kratovil, who backed local officials in their efforts to land the project, dialed back his initial enthusiasm for the facility after opposition surfaced. So did other federal and state officials, including Mikulski and Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley.
In a statement, Kratovil expressed disappointment that the decision to pull the plug on the security center meant his district had "lost out on this economic opportunity."
Opponents say the facility should be built on existing federal property in the capital region.
But federal officials settled on a collection of privately owned grain fields across from Tuckahoe State Park as the preferred site. As recently as January, top Washington officials expressed confidence that they would begin acquiring land for the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center within six months.
It soon became clear that those expectations were unrealistic. Members of the Queen Anne's County Commission reversed course in the face of citizen opposition and dropped their support for the campus-like facility.
"Some of us felt a little bamboozled," said Eric Wargotz, a county commissioner and Republican Senate candidate against Mikulski, who was among those who switched sides after having worked to attract the federal facility.
"Jobs are important," he said. "But it was the wrong place for this project."
Mikulski met privately in Ruthsburg Monday with about 15 local critics of the project to inform them personally about the decision. In a prepared statement, she said she had "fought hard for this process to work and for the voices of the residents of Queen Anne's County to be heard."
Late last year, she hailed selection of the site as "good news for three reasons: jobs, jobs and more jobs for Maryland." But after bureaucrats from Washington bungled an initial Queen Anne's public hearing in January, the senator condemned their performance as an "unmitigated disaster."
Kratovil and others also backed away as the controversy threatened to become an election-year issue.
Republican senators, eager to target the issue of budget deficits, recently singled out the Ruthsburg project as an example of politically motivated pork-barrel spending and sought unsuccessfully to remove the funding from the stimulus program.
