Dan Watson - Chestertown Spy

Focus On Talbot: Lakeside And The Town of Trappe by Dan Watson

November 16, 2021 by Dan Watson

Resolution 281, the Council action that in 2020 provided the go-ahead for Lakeside, needs to be rescinded completely, notwithstanding the well-intentioned effort by Councilwoman Price to modify it somewhat for the better. (Her proposal would limit to eighteen months the length of time that the developer can send sewage under Route 50 for treatment at Trappe’s inadequate wastewater plant on the other side of town.)

For some, “the problem with Lakeside” was suddenly defined only by pollution in La Trappe Creek, as if that’s the whole of it. Well, pollution there is obviously a serious problem. We easily forget that it became front page news only in September when photos showed up and ShoreRivers delivered dramatically bad lab results. (They show the plant—without violating its permit!–is discharging effluent every day with about thirteen (13!) times the nitrogen concentration allowed at a state-of-the-art plant, four times more than an old plant meeting antiquated “BNR” standards…and that the stream into which it is going is already laden with fecal coliform and E coli.)

So, yes, connecting any new houses to the existing plant should be prohibited. Ms. Price’s new proposal, a compromise, permits it, but—at least in theory–“only” for eighteen months. What happens at that point if a new plant on the east side is not operational? (Extensions, as always, would be the solution of least resistance.) And–a question that will have greater weight shortly as more facts come to light–is a compromise on this issue even appropriate?

In any event, concerns about Lakeside did not begin in September, and that enormous subdivision has been an issue in Talbot County for almost two decades, long before many in the County had given thought to La Trappe Creek. There are a host of other important issues with that mold-breaking subdivision, including (most importantly for me) actions that violated the integrity of our local (and state) land review processes. I hope these issues will see light of day in coming weeks.

But that is not what this Focus On Talbot is about. In researching the history of Lakeside and the developer’s efforts over almost twenty years to gain required approvals, I’ve read a good bit about the Town of Trappe, and I think I’ve learned a thing or two that I really did not appreciate at the outset. That is today’s focus, what I’d like to share.

The Town of Trappe has been the “Co-Applicant” with Rocks Engineering for almost two decades, trying to obtain the one and only approval Lakeside needs from Talbot County (the amendment to our Comprehensive Water And Sewer Plan, aka R281) and the permits needed from Maryland Department of the Environment (“MDE”) for the sewerage system. As the Town is allied with the developer and has always pushed forcefully for Lakeside when it could, you’ll understand my perception that the Town’s role in this affair was pretty negative. But having read and reflected a good deal, let’s just say my point of view is a good deal more nuanced at this point.

Don’t get me wrong. My view of the need for rescission of Resolution 281 has not changed at all. R281 needs to be reversed for a host of reasons, and that will provide the time and opportunity needed for Talbot County, the Town, the developer and MDE to agree on modifications that solve some fundamental problems.

Among the most basic—perhaps the root cause of the whole dangerous affair—is an intractable financial bind the few hundred families of Trappe found themselves in around 2002, and for which they have received little if any help since…and darn little understanding from people like me.

What do I know about Trappe, even today? Not much. I live off the St. Michaels road, and in twenty-six years have frequented the town just a handful of times….a few restaurant trips, a backroad drive, visits to a few acquaintances. Mostly, it’s shooting past Trappe on Route 50, hoping to miss the one stoplight.

But think about it. Trappe, we know, was a colonial era settlement, a village really. Who knows why in 1856 it was formally incorporated as a town? It had a link to the Choptank (La Trappe Creek not having silted in) and no doubt visions of prospering as a center of commerce or something. But for whatever reason, it remained a pretty small rural settlement based around agriculture. In 2002, there were only about 425 homes in Trappe, clustered of course.

That isn’t much bigger than many subdivisions: For example, Martingham in St. Michaels has 313 homes in it. Its history features a failed wastewater system (the design approved by, and then monitored and regulated by, MDE), and that problem was only solved when Talbot County took it over.

The Preserve at Wye Mills has 67 lots, only one sixth of Trappe. It was developed by a western shore outfit only 17 years ago (post-colonial, let’s just say), and has no residents tracing their roots in the community back a hundred years. In 2004 MDE approved the design of a spray-irrigation sewerage plant for the developer that never worked, that triggered pollution and erosion that has been going on for over fifteen years. (The developer left town long ago.). Although legal responsibility clearly rests entirely with community residents, that plant is going to be replaced shortly at tax-payer expense and taken over by the County.

Lakeside is rooted in Trappe’s pressing need to escape a financial squeeze that grew out of infrastructure costs that the old town just couldn’t seem to handle. Was Trappe first built with outhouses? Septic systems that lacked room? By 1953 it had built some sort of sewerage system, but it seems it was always playing catch-up and though with few resources itself, never got a lot of assistance from the State or County.

Around 2000, the 425 families—not wealthy folks—were (rightly) required by the state to upgrade the plant, to the tune of over $3mm (by loan), and they had no outside help. The result—sky high water and sewer bills that people really could not afford. (Flash ahead: problem unsolved, from 2013-17 the Trappe plant incurred cash deficits of about $200,000 per year—25% of the operating budget—wiping out all reserves.). Election time articles in the Star Democrat over the years convey the sense of it: candidates (often the same people, some elderly) trying to grapple with high water bills, higher sewer bills, big expenses, failing systems, no outside help.

All in all, is there any wonder what happened, circa 2002, when a deep pocket developer showed up with a deal for the little Town of Trappe? There should be a better way for Trappe to get out of its pickle.

Dan Watson is the former chair of Bipartisan Coalition For New Council Leadership and has lived in Talbot County for the last twenty-five years.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Call To Action — Stand Up For George Floyd by Dan Watson

May 29, 2020 by Dan Watson

I know I am not alone. A bitter, retching sickness in my stomach. Sick in my heart.

Like you, I watched in utter disbelief the slow motion video murder of George Floyd, 46 and black. What got to me most was not just the relaxed, in charge attitude of the murderer, knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck, but the casual, business-as-usual manner of the second officer strolling about, as if to keep traffic moving and everyone calm as this black man goes down.

Were I a racial justice activist, I’d throw the list at you… names of young black men (and some children) dead at the hands of the authorities, or, in the case of Ahmaud Aubrey, by racist vigilantes. In 2020. In America. But I’m not that activist, and I can’t recite the names — but I’ve watched the same news reports as you have for far too long. The horror of George Floyd’s murder broke this camel’s back.

I have no idea how to the change the world, how to make this go away. But I am not sitting still for it.

My wife Brenda and I will be standing for George Floyd with sign in hand — LET AMERICAN BREATHE — on Marlboro Road in Easton from 10 till 11 AM tomorrow, Saturday, May 30th. Why? Because we need to do something for god’s sake, not just sit here reading the paper, saying “ain’t it awful.” Will doing this change a thing? Like you, I doubt it — but Dr. King thought otherwise. I am too old to not do what’s needed, what’s right — and that’s very simple: stand up for George Floyd.

We’d welcome company. Anyone else whose sick at heart and needs to say it aloud — please come. WEAR A COVID MASK. MAKE A LINE SIX FEET APART. At 10 am, we’ll be at the corner of Marlboro Road that is the very closest to McDonald’s — because on Saturday morning, it’s where the traffic is. If anyone else shows up, let’s just make a line — everyone six feet apart — down the whole length of Marlboro Road … fall in at the end, it’s that simple.

Bring any sign you want — just make some reference to “Geo. Floyd” (so folks don’t think this demonstration relates to the pandemic, a point that occurred to my wife). Or bring no sign at all. Just come and stand for Mr. Floyd.

If you think this invitation does not include YOU, you are wrong. Elderly — all the better: you know the bitter failure of anti-racist efforts since Selma (and bring a chair). Young — great, you can help salvage the future of America, if that’s doable. Rich — I sure hope so, negating the insidious idea that some “overclass” is happy to tolerate such suppression. Poor — speak out with your own voice, too long suppressed. Black — nothing this old white guy can say will add to the urgency. White—are we not the ones who need to stand up visibly, on the roadside, for Mr. Floyd, to say his death was as wrong as wrong can be? Partisan — leave it at home; the air every American has the right to breathe is neither blue nor red. The Religious — if not now, when?

Just please come out, for all that is decent in America.

Be orderly — a vigil like this (whether 1 or 5 or 50) wields its own power; it needs no shouting, no disorder (and of course never, ever anything like violence). It’s not a march, not interfering with a soul … unless that’s the very thing that’s touched by our action.

Even here in the rural Mid-Shore, we need to stand witness to this horrid crime, refuse to be silent and accept it.

Dan Watson is the former chairman of Bipartisan Coalition For New Council Leadership and has lived in Talbot County for the last twenty-five years.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Focus on Talbot: A Book Review by Dan Watson

July 18, 2019 by Dan Watson

I’m not exactly sure what I think about The Second Mountain, the well-publicized book by David Brooks, except for these two things: the section on “Community Building” is important and certainly applicable to Talbot County, and I would urge people to read the whole thought-provoking volume.

On the one hand, Brooks develops some clear and very compelling theses that run through the entire work. First, individuals quite naturally undergo two phases in a healthy adult life. The first is focused on career, family, building one’s identity & success in the world. Then, usually around midlife, one goes into a valley. Often he/she experiences setbacks, difficulties or loss of satisfaction with one’s situation, leading to a re-evaluation of values and life goals. Then comes the second phase, inward looking as to values but focused outward towards relationships and community-building.

This idea is hardly a revelation, but Brooks articulates it well. I made reference to it a few weeks ago, when pointing out the benefits that flow to our community and local institutions from the coincidence that Talbot has a disproportionately large number of folks over 55 who are climbing that second mountain, including many with substantial resources.

Zooming out, Brooks contends persuasively that the maladies of our society arise from “hyper-individualism,” a deep-seated ideology we’ve internalized that every man (and woman) is independent and stands alone in their pursuit of happiness. That world-view has been taken to an extreme, yielding loneliness, isolation, a consumer-driven ethos, tribalism and an epidemic of suicide. Its counter—the way to build a healthy world–is not a leftist collectivism he contends, but “relationalism,” a way of valuing our interconnections. (You will believe me when I say Brooks articulates all this enormously better than I can summarize!)

The Marlboro Man may be handsome and tall in the saddle, but he’s unhappy and ultimately dysfunctional. A society of Marlboro men and women just doesn’t work.

On the other hand, I found the book, for me, a little uncomfortable. It is not really a socio-political work, the kind of thing I expected. To my surprise, the book is largely a very personal, revelatory story of Brooks’ own personal evolution as a man, dealing largely with his psychological journey, his successes and failures with loving relationships, his (interesting) mixed religious roots and a transformation of religious beliefs. The discomfort was mine: I don’t read books of this sort, just not my thing. Jeeze, he was writing all about love, and intimacy, and vulnerabilities and such–things that are central to my life too, but not ones I usually talk about with strangers. I felt a bit like a voyeur—which tells you more about me than Brooks.

The book is structured in five parts, each one of which could stand alone. He first presents the “two mountain” theme, then expounds on vocation and career, on marriage, on philosophy and faith, finally bringing it all together in “building community.” It does not take much reading between the lines to tease out from these pages Brooks’ biography, some of it expressed directly, some just hinted at, all of it pretty intimate and revealing.

Many of my conservative friends here in Talbot and elsewhere would not dream of reading anything by Brooks because he is, after all, a political turncoat. He knew Milton Friedman intimately and was a protégé of William Buckley. He wrote for the National Review (after a youth reading leftist works with enthusiasm, as he tells us). Articulate, extremely well read, and publicly personable (if not privately so, as he also tells us), Brooks is particularly well known since the early 90’s as “the conservative voice” on the PBS News Hour, a bookend with Mark Shields on the left.

But, though his intellectual foundation and conservative credentials were both rock-solid and main-stream in the Reagan era, Brooks did not follow the conservative political evolution of the last two decades, and not at all the metamorphosis of the Republican Party that he was once identified with. His distain for Donald Trump and this administration could not be greater, and he makes no secret of that. Consequently, he is vilified by many on the right, surprisingly admired by many on the left in spite of espousing traditional conservative political and economic principles.

The Second Mountain delivers two things. First, what I was looking for: a clear discussion of root causes of many of society’s ills (hyper-individualism) and a strategy for countering them (what he calls “relationalism”). What I did not expect was the personal story, a vivid backdrop to understanding who this pundit fellow is and the personal worldview that now envelops his political and economic positions.

I’d urge you to read this thought-provoking book; take from it what’s of interest to you.

Dan Watson is the former chair of Bipartisan Coalition For New Council Leadership and has lived in Talbot County for the last twenty-five years.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

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