WESTLAKE VILLAGE RESIDENTS In Waldorf awoke last Monday to a scene of coniferous carnage along St. Patrick’s Drive at the Towne Centre South worksite. Instead of the usual thick mass of young pines and oaks, Dorchester neighborhood residents now have an unimpeded view through to the big box store off nearby Smallwood Drive.
Then on Tuesday, as if to add insult to injury, morning commuters discovered an enormous bonfire fueled by enormous piles of disembodied branches. Fed by heavy machinery and raised to intense temperatures by two “blowers”, the bonfire raged day and night until Friday at 2 p.m.
However cruel the whole process seems to our environment and the site’s neighbors, it’s not the site crew’s fault. The Facchina crew is simply readying the land for construction using a combination of legally prescribed methods and industry “best practices.” Hacking and burning to clear a development site for construction is so jarring to the senses that Charles County residents often wonder aloud how such a practice could be legal.
The 2004 Charles County Forest Conservation Ordinance states that a high-density, mixed-use (lots of houses/apartments with business/commercial buildings on the same parcel) project like Towne Centre South only needs to keep 15% of its green space. Inspectors from Charles County’s Department of Planning and Growth Management (P/GM) must evaluate the worksite and its plans before approving the permit to clear the site.
Not only is burning legal, but contractors say it’s a recently adopted practice the county imported from Prince George’s County, which has used it for years. In 2005 the county commissioners, at the recommendation of P/GM, adopted the current burning policy. The Bay Net was not able to reach Chuck Beall, P/GM Acting Director, for his comments on the policy and its history.
According to Mark Williams of the Charles County Health Department’s Division of Environmental Health Services, the local burn policy is more stringent than the state’s regulations; but if residents want the burning stopped, they have to get county government to do it.
The county Health Department issues burn permits. For a fee of $25, nearly anyone can receive permission to burn non-hazardous debris for a period of up to 60 days. They must not burn on weekends (5 p.m. Friday – 6 a.m. Monday), holidays, nor from June through August. For a traditional heaping bonfire, the burn site must be 1,500 feet from the nearest occupied structure (other than their own). If they’re only 600 or more feet away from nearby structures, the bonfire must be contained in a pit.
“Frank”, a construction manager at the Towne Centre South worksite who didn’t want his surname used, told The Bay Net that Facchina tried to do everything possible to avoid inconvenience to the project’s neighbors. According to Frank, after all the trees useful for lumber leave the site, there are few options remaining for the unwanted scrub pines, bushes and undergrowth. He personally thought burning preferable to a week of the awful sound of tub grinders or “just filling up a landfill”.
He explain
