Purple Line Opponents File Third Lawsuit Over Maryland Light-Rail Project

Opponents of Maryland’s Purple Line project have filed a third federal lawsuit aimed at stopping the rail line’s construction, arguing that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers improperly allowed work that will harm streams and wetlands.

The plaintiffs — the nonprofit Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail, and Chevy Chase residents John M. Fitzgerald and Leonard Scensny — alleged in a lawsuit filed Jan. 10 that the corps permit allowing dredging and other work in streams and wetlands is illegal under the Clean Water Act. The agency, they said, should have required the state to demonstrate that it couldn’t improve east-west transit in other ways, such as by supplementing bus service, that would have avoided streams and wetlands. The lawsuit says the corps relied on the Maryland Transit Administration’s analysis and did not independently verify it, as required under federal law.

“They [should] go back to the drawing board and find a project that improves mass transit without messing with streams that are protected,” Fitzgerald, who is also an environmental lawyer, said in an interview.

Sarah Lazo, a spokeswoman for the corps’s Baltimore district, said she couldn’t comment on a pending lawsuit. However, she said, the agency evaluated the construction’s potential permanent impacts to a half-acre of non-tidal wetlands and 5,100 linear feet of streams, including from 40 stream crossings. The state is required to mitigate those impacts by restoring Paint Branch Stream in College Park and creating wetlands in the area of Ken-Gar Palisades Park in Kensington, she said.

Click here to read the rest of the article written by Katherine Shaver over at the Washington Post

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