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Issues >
Transportation
> Printer Version $1.1 billion
The Inter County Connector (ICC) is a proposed six to twelve lane, 18-mile highway running from I-270 near Gaithersburg, Maryland to U.S. Route 1 near Laurel, Maryland. The ICC would be part of a sprawling "spider web" of highways around Washington, DC, including most or all of an Outer Beltway. This entire road network would cost at least $20 billion. The ICC would cost at least $1.4 billion, destroy precious forests and wetlands, damage communities, degrade Potomac River tributaries, worsen air pollution, encourage sprawl, and increase automobile use. Taxpayers have spent over $6 million dollars over the past six years studying and restudying the ICC. Since
the State and Federal Highway Administrations published their
1997 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), local, state
and federal decision makers have rejected or criticized all of
the routes studied in the DEIS. In 1999, Governor Parris Glendening
declared he would not pursue the ICC, but would build its eastern
and western thirds, and reserve its middle third for transit.
The State Highway Administration (SHA) declared in 2000 that
it would suspend studying the western segment. Current Status Though
the ICC was on hold until after the 2002 local and state elections,
ICC and Outer Beltway supporters have launched an aggressive
campaign in the Maryland legislature to reopen the obsolete 1997
DEIS. Corporate special interests have vowed to spend millions
of dollars to convince lawmakers to build the ICC and its western
extension, known as the "Techway." The Techway would
include a new bridge across the Potomac River and a new Outer
Beltway segment into rural Virginia. In 1997, the SHA and Federal Highway Administration estimated that building the ICC would cost over $1 billion. In December 2000, regional transportation planners increased that price tag to nearly $1.4 billion. In addition to not providing any real relief to the Capital Beltway, I-270, or I-95, it would worsen congestion on critical north-south commuter routes, therefore negating any proposed benefit of project construction. The ICC would also encourage suburban sprawl, forcing state taxpayers to pay for expensive new infrastructure and services. Project Hurts the Environment The ICC would bisect dozens of communities, destroying local businesses, scores of homes, devaluing many other homes, and increasing noise, air pollution and traffic. The ICC's direct physical impacts, and the air pollution and toxic runoff generated by its traffic, would undermine local, state and federal efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. To build it, the SHA would clearcut forests, bulldoze stream valleys, and obliterate wetlands in the headwaters of major tributaries to the Anacostia River, Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. The ICC threatens populations of at least 20 plant species that are rare, threatened or endangered in Maryland, and it would destroy mature interior forests that shelter at least 27 migratory songbird species. The
Washington region has never met the federal clean air standard
for ground-level ozone. On nearly one out of
four days in the summer of 1999, regional ozone levels were unhealthy
for children, the elderly and people with respiratory disease.
This project would only further exacerbate the region's air pollution
problem.
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