American Dream

King of the roads
By EARL SWIFT, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 21, 2005
Last updated: 1:41 AM

Scott Kozel’s Web site

Quotes:

HIS DAY OFF, and Scott Kozel is devoting it to something he loves: he’s behind the wheel of his big Buick, steering it around a curve on a just-opened highway outside of Richmond, admiring the concrete and steel all around.

The road’s surface, unstained ash-gray, shimmers under the midday sun. Overpasses are unblemished by time and vandals. The median is crisply mowed, the shoulders free of litter and weeds. It looks less a highway than a computer simulation.

What Kozel fastens on, however, are things that might easily escape attention. The way the highway banks ever so slightly as it sweeps left. Its arc as it does so, no doubt true to the state’s prescribed minimum radius of 1,821 feet for a flat-terrain freeway designed for travel at 70 mph. Interchanges overbuilt in anticipation of ratcheting traffic loads. Collector-distributor lanes straddling the main line, siphoning away congestion at especially busy crossroads.

“A very ample design,” Kozel muses. He points to a diamond-shaped interchange. “Built with enough room to add a cloverleaf, should that be warranted in the future.”

He nods, cataloging the details. In a short while, he’ll steer his LeSabre home, post the data he’s gathered on his Web site – which specializes in the arcana of highway history and design in Virginia, the D.C. area, Maryland and West Virginia – and share it with the world.

And, funny thing: The world will eat it up.

Kozel’s Web site, called “Roads to the Future,” answers all manner of questions about the Old Dominion’s roads – how and when they were built, why they were built where they were, how much traffic they carry, the genius of their engineering. It does so with such specificity and such disinterested language that it’s become a go-to source for government officials, journalists, historians and students.

The No. 1 source of visits? Google, with 3.74 percent of all referrals to the site, followed, at 1.59 percent, by a search engine written in Chinese. After American visitors, most come from Taiwan – though Brazil, Hungary, Thailand and Turkey figure prominently in Kozel’s fan base.

The site’s reliability comes thanks, in no small measure, to Kozel’s painstaking work out of doors. With his Buick’s odometer ticking toward 50,000, his assignment today is to snap a few pictures of Va. 288’s newest section, a 16.7-mile stretch of four-lane that is the western piece of a perimeter highway ringing the capital.

Reach Earl Swift at 446-2352 or earl.swift@pilotonline.com.

© 2005 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com

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August 27, 2005
Transit Leader to Pay Fine in Ethics Case
By SEWELL CHAN

Quotes:

The president of New York City Transit, Lawrence G. Reuter, has admitted that he accepted $633 in improper gifts, including golf outings and circus tickets, from companies that do business with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the State Ethics Commission announced yesterday.

Mr. Reuter has agreed to pay a $1,200 fine to settle ethics charges filed by the commission.

While the value of the gifts was small, the charges are an embarrassment for Mr. Reuter, who has supervised the city's subways and buses since 1996. He is the highest-ranking official to be implicated in a recent series of investigations that have highlighted close relationships between the authority and its contractors.

Mr. Reuter, 54, is one of the most visible officials at the authority as the leader of its largest subsidiary.

His tenure as president - the longest of any since New York City Transit was created in 1953 - has been generally considered a
success. Subway service is far more reliable than a decade ago, scores of stations have been rehabilitated, and ridership is at its highest in decades.

But Mr. Reuter has been seen as less effective in communicating with the public. His efforts to remove conductors from trains and to reassign token-booth clerks to walk around and assist riders have met with resistance. After a fire in January crippled two subway lines for nearly two weeks, Mr. Reuter publicly apologized for having overestimated how long it would take to
restore service.

From October 2000 to September 2002, according to the commission, Mr. Reuter accepted a total of five gifts from Atlantic
Detroit Diesel-Allison of Lodi, N.J., which sells and repairs engines and transmissions, and from Motor Coach Industries, a manufacturer of coach buses, based in Schaumburg, Ill. The office of the authority's inspector general, Matthew D. Sansverie, uncovered the gifts through an investigation.

The gifts were a golf outing and lunch at the Roxiticus Golf Club in Mendham, N.J., worth $110; a dinner at a Morton's steakhouse in Washington, worth $112; a golf outing at the Wilds Golf Club in Prior Lake, Minn., worth $77; and food from Lawry's The Prime
Rib, a restaurant in Las Vegas, worth $154. Mr. Reuter also accepted tickets worth $180 for himself, his wife and his son to a Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas. (A sixth gift - another outing at the Roxiticus Golf Club - was worth only $50, less
than the $75 threshold for action by the State Ethics Commission.)

Mr. Reuter received the gifts either on his own time or when he was on official business, said Tom Kelly, an authority spokesman.
He was in Las Ve gas in September 2002 for a meeting of the American Public Transportation Association.

Mr. Reuter signed a settlement with the commission on Aug. 11. He gave complete cooperation and "settled the matter in order to put it to rest and to move on," according to a statement by his private lawyer, Steven M. Polan.

"These activities did not affect in any way, shape or form the business of New York City Transit, but could nevertheless be construed as violations," said Mr. Polan, who was the authority's general counsel from 1984 to 1990. "These incidents all occurred three or more years ago and do not reflect Mr. Reuter's current practice, nor are they consistent with current agency policy."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Comments:
There is a question that I'd love to ask Mr. Reuter or his attorney, Mr. Polan.

Did Mr. Reuter ride a NJ Transit bus or train to get to the golf outing and lunch at the Roxiticus Golf Club?

Struggling to produce affordable housing

Developers look at the technicalities; advocates warn that action is needed;
Strategy sought for sheltering the middle class

By Larry Carson
Sun Staff

August 26, 2005

Quotes:

Affordable-housing advocates and builders veered off in two
directions this week as a committee created by Howard County officials struggled to craft a strategy to provide more homes for middle-class people.

Builders in the group discussed the technicalities of building homes for familes with incomes up to $106,000, while faith-based housing advocates warned that the greater need is to serve working families with incomes below $75,000.

"We are going to become a very exclusive county unless we take action," said Bob Buckneier, one of three members of the
Interfaith Coalition for Affordable Housing participating in the committee's work.

Currently, developers are required to provide free finished lots for moderate-income units in some zones in exchange for permission to build more full-priced units. But they have complained that it is impractical to try to fit identical-looking, subsidized homes amid those selling for $600,000 or more. They want permission to build a variety of units on different sites, or pay the county in cash instead.

The committee, organized by Marsha S. McLaughlin, the county planning director, and county housing officials, is working to
produce a County Council bill to change the moderate-income housing law this fall. That task is becoming increasingly difficult as county home prices soar.

"We are clearly working around the edges of a huge problem,"McLaughlin said.

But housing advocates warned about the dangers of doing nothing.

Only 40 percent of current residents could afford to buy their homes at today's prices, he said.

"Housing costs in Howard County are pushing the cost of
citizenship to levels affordable only by the extremely wealthy," the group said in a prepared statement distributed to committee members. Buckneier pointed to 2003 census figures showing that 39 percent of the county's income goes to people earning less than $75,000 a year, while only 9.6 percent of homes are worth $150,000 or less. In contrast, 39 percent of income goes to people who earn more than $106,000 a year, while 47 percent of the county's homes are worth more than $300,000.

That means homebuyers must be wealthier than many families who live in the county. The coalition responded by calling for more moderate-income homes instead of a plan to create a new higher-priced category of middle-income subsidized homes for two-income families. At a meeting Aug. 3, county housing officials suggested allowing developers to build half the required number of moderate-income homes by substituting the new middle-income units for families earning up to $106,000 a year. That would define a moderate-income family as four people with an income of up to $74,350 a year.

At a meeting Tuesday in the George Howard Building, housing advocates rejected the middle-income concept, and they proposed
adding a requirement for builders to reserve 15 percent of every development's homes for moderate-income people in every residential zone where the units are not now required.

"We reject any legislation that fosters the movement of housing toward higher incomes. We claim the need is radically in the opposite direction," the group said in a prepared statement.

Charles O'Donovan, a vice president of Greenebaum and Rose Associates, developers of Maple Lawn, Maryland, rejected the coalition's proposal, calling it a "very slippery slope" and "social engineering" that would involve taking value from rural land by using it for lower-price homes, forcing full-price units onto the remaining land, which would make them even more expensive.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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Comments: Now I have to wonder if the journalists at the Sunpapers have ever considered that there might be a connection between housing prices, as described in the article above, and the efforts to "preserve" open space and farmland in the western part of the very same county - and reported in the very same newspaper? For example, see this article from earlier in the month (which I posted to this blog):

Compromise sought on west county

washingtonpost.com
How Far Is Too Far?
Developer Plans 4,300 Homes 100 Miles From D.C.

By Eugene L. Meyer
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, August 27, 2005; F01

Quotes:

To what lengths will they go? How far are people willing to drive for the privilege of working in the metropolitan area while living in more affordable housing in a more rustic setting?

A hundred miles, one developer is betting.

Drive about 100 miles from the District and you could wind up south of Cambridge on the Eastern Shore, or north of York, Pa., or on Town Hill in picturesque Allegany County, what boosters call "the Mountain-Side of Maryland."

So Michael Carnock, principal of PDC Inc. of Columbia, has taken an option to pay $3 million for 935 acres of forested mountain valley land in eastern Allegany County that is two hours and many mountain ridges removed from Washington. He is negotiating to buy 400 acres more to complete the project.

The proposal has been highly controversial in Allegany County, filling the letters columns in the local newspaper and generating
78 exhibits and 25 hours of testimony over seven nights this summer before a county zoning panel.

The location, Carnock said, is about 50 miles from Hagerstown, 70 miles from Frederick and about 90 miles from Gaithersburg
and the high-paying, high-employment Interstate 270 corridor. In Carnock's view, it's a no-brainer.

"If I was going to draw a realistic radius, I would think you'd get folks going to Germantown, to northern Montgomery County, to work," he says, standing on the shoulder of Scenic U.S. 40 by the land he hopes to develop. "You can get there in an hour and a half in rush hour."

Carnock's site adjoins 47,000-acre Green Ridge State Forest and is a mile or two from Interstate 68. From there, it's a straight shot to where the jobs are. And, as housing prices closer in soar to ever-higher heights, there appears to be a growing market for this, the newest frontier in the ever-expanding exurbs.

"I think everything's moving this way," said James Stakem, president of the Allegany County Board of Commissioners.

"It wasn't that long ago that people thought it was crazy for folks from the city to move out here and commute back and forth,
but that's exactly what happened," said Steve Goodrich, planner for Washington County, which sits immediately east of Allegany County. "Green Ridge might seem a little wacky right now, but in the long run it's believable."

Carnock's proposed project, named Terrapin Run for a stream that goes through it, would bring 4,300 housing units and 11,000 people to a pristine, sparsely settled area of Western Maryland. The eastern end of Allegany County is a land of steep forested ridges, verdant valleys and a mere 2,400 people. The planned community would become the county's second densest concentration of humanity, ahead of Frostburg (7,873 people in 2000) and smaller only than the city of Cumberland, with 21,000 residents.

Still, both sides of the debate agree that, as Dave Williams, the developer's local public relations man, put it: "The concentric rings of Maryland's growth from the Beltway have reached our borders."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Published: Aug 25, 2005
Modified: Aug 25, 2005 6:21 AM
Rail's cost jumps by $58 million
Labor, materials push up price of Triangle system; new ridership forecast is delayed

By BRUCE SICELOFF, Staff Writer

Quotes:

Rising prices for steel, concrete and labor over the past year have helped to add $58 million to the cost of a planned 28-mile commuter rail service from Raleigh to Durham.

"It really shows that we have some work to do to get our project budget down," John D. Claflin, general manager of the Triangle Transit Authority, said Wednesday. The TTA is in charge of planning and building the rail system. It hopes to start service in December 2008.

The new construction cost estimate -- $689 million in current dollars -- comes as TTA struggles to meet strict new federal fiscal standards and to satisfy Washington's questions about how many people would ride its trains.

Last year, TTA estimated the price at $631 million, a figure that rose to $694 million with inflation figured in. The new $689 million figure has not been adjusted for inflation.

© Copyright 2005, The News & Observer Publishing Company

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Thanks to P-A-D Coalition member C. M. Heath for this!
C.M. Heath tells us: "Hope this proves to be another nail in the coffin for this project."

A new book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, argues that Saudi Arabia is about to run out of oil, and that will devastate WalMart, the suburbs, and the world economy. In response, New York Times columnist John Tierney challenged the book's author, Matthew Simmons, to back up his opinions with a substantial bet.

Simmons agreed to bet Tierney $5,000 that the price of oil will triple, after adjusting for inflation, within five years. While such a huge increase is possible, if it happened it would most likely be due to war or other international tensions than to Saudi Arabia or anywhere else running out of oil.

Tierney was inspired to make this bet by the late economist, Julian Simon, who made a bet with Paul Ehrlich that the price of any raw material that Ehrlich choose would decline between 1980 and 1990. Ehrlich gladly took up the bet, selecting five different metals, believing that the price of those metals would be sure to increase. In fact, they declined and Ehrlich ruefully paid Simon $576.

Simmons probably figures it is a safe bet because, if nothing else, the publicity could increase his book sales by $5,000. Tierney is sharing his side of the bet with Rita Simon, Julian Simon's widow. We will see in five years whether Tierney and Simon end up $5,000 richer.

'I feel myself at home here'
The region's thousands of Russian immigrants are thriving.

By Kelly Brewington
Sun Staff

August 23, 2005

Quotes:

Slava Drakh moved to New York from Moscow but four years ago ended
up in Baltimore, where he operates an eclectic restaurant that turns into a techno-thumping disco on weekends, a favorite of the area's thriving Russian community.

"Everybody knows about Baltimore," said Drakh, 35, who operates the Art Gallery Cafe in Pikesville, which serves Russian, Italian and
French cuisine as varied as borscht, veal marsala and duck salad.

Many of Baltimore's Russian immigrants began life in the United States as cabdrivers, manicurists and grocery owners selling the familiar tastes of home. As the region's community matured and prospered, the immigrants branched out and now own a variety of businesses including nightclubs, law firms and dental offices.

"They are quite successful, pragmatic and highly educated," said Steve Gold, a professor of sociology at Michigan State University who has written about Jewish emigration from the former Soviet Union.

Russians have made Baltimore a destination for more than a century, but the recent influx of mostly Jewish immigrants such as Drakh from the former Soviet Union has transformed parts of Baltimore and Baltimore County. They began arriving as refugees in the early 1980s, turning places such as the Millbrook Park Apartments in Pikesville into little Moscows.

Drakh's restaurant, with its smoky interior and jumbo televisions showing Russian pop performances, is a hit with Russian immigrants in their 20s.

Drakh became a publisher last year, adding the monthly
Russian Kaleidoscope to the area's Russian-oriented periodicals. For many Russian immigrants, Baltimore has offered opportunity in a more manageable setting than a bigger metropolitan area would have.

The Baltimore region has the 15th-largest Russian-speaking population in the country, behind such cities as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to an analysis from the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank focusing on demographic issues.

Russian immigrants in Baltimore region

A snapshot of the Baltimore region's Russian immigrant community:

- 10,477: Number of foreign-born immigrants from Russia and the
former Soviet republics.

- 15th: Baltimore's nationwide rank in Russian immigrant population.

- 72.5: The percentage of the area's Russian immigrants who have
arrived in the United States since 1990.

- 30: The percentage of the region's Russian immigrants age
25 and older with bachelor's degrees.

- 15.6: The percentage of the area's Russian immigrants age 25
and older with master's degrees.

- 41.8: The percentage of the area's Russian immigrants
without U.S. citizenship.

Source: analysis of 2000 U.S. Census Bureau data from the
Migration Policy Institute

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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washingtonpost.com
High-Rise Plans Draw Complaints
Ballston Residents Worry About Overcrowding

By Jamie Stockwell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 18, 2005; VA03

Quotes:

Residents near the site where a developer wants to build a 23-story apartment and retail complex in Ballston say the building will tower over its neighbors and increase congestion in the already dense Arlington neighborhood.

The complex, proposed for the southeast corner of Fairfax Drive and North Vermont Street, would be a tower of steel and glass
amid a cluster of brick buildings. Plans call for it to have 237 residential units and, on the ground level, about 9,200 square feet of retail space, officials said.

Neighbors say the development will add to the daily traffic headaches of the 1,000 residents of the small block, which is already home to five residential and office buildings, said Glenn Elliott, president of the Ballston Smart Growth Alliance, a group that represents the residents.

"We don't oppose the development of the site," said Elliott, a resident of The Continental at Ballston, a 411-unit condominium high-rise adjacent to the site of the proposed 23-story building. "Our issue is the direct effect it will have on the area, with more congestion and overpopulation. It's important for us that the overall size be kept down."

The Ballston Smart Growth Alliance challenged the building plans at two meetings last month and presented the county Planning Commission with a 10-page report proposing several changes, including eliminating all but three surface parking lots on the site, creating an underground parking garage, re-routing traffic from a narrow alley that serves pedestrian and vehicular traffic from the existing buildings to a different side of the new building, and limiting the building's height.

But county officials said the site plans, which call for the development of 6.21 acres -- 5.57 of which have already been approved -- are consistent with the county's planned density for Ballston.

"The fact that it's tall is a problem that other high-rise tenants have, but they have to realize that it is compliant with the overall plan for the area," said Terry Savela, vice-chair of the county's Planning Commission.

The proposed building -- referred to as "The Fairmount" because of the existing five-story structure by that name at the site -- will bring "architectural relief to the area" by virtue of its steel and glass design, Savela said. Its construction also offers the county a major bonus: A new west-side entrance for the Ballston Metro station. The developer, The JBG Companies, agreed to build the Metro entrance in exchange for "bonus density" -- additional square footage.

"That entrance has been desired for a long time," Savela said, adding, "And it will really help the property values in that
area."

As important as the Metro station is to the area's residents, Elliott said, the group opposes the county's bonus density deal with The JBG Companies.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Muhammad Moves From Va. to Md.
Sniper, Who Fought Transfer, Will Be Tried by Montgomery [County, Maryland]

Relevant parts of the story:

A silent John Allen Muhammad was driven from a Sussex County, Va., prison to a Maryland jail before dawn yesterday in what authorities called an uneventful trip that brought him to Montgomery County to face trial in six of the 2002 sniper slayings.

Fifteen employees of the Montgomery County sheriff's office, including a medic, rode in six cars as the convoy -- joined by a Virginia state trooper escorting it to the state line -- started the journey with Muhammad about 1 a.m.

The predawn transfer was done strategically, [Montgomery County, Md. Sheriff] Kight said.

"We didn't want the traffic to hamper us," he said. "At that hour of the morning, it's a lot easier to get him through
Washington traffic."

Dobbins Island owner strives to limit access
Man seeking OK to build says trespassers treat land as park

By Phillip McGowan
Sun Staff

August 21, 2005

Quotes:

He has been prevented from building a home on the Magothy River property he bought last year, but David L. Clickner Sr. said that's not the reason he has stepped up efforts to prevent trespassing on Dobbins Island.

Last week, the Glen Burnie businessman wrapped the perimeter of the 7-acre crescent with yellow tape and placed red-and-white
signs telling boaters not to trespass -- and to call County Executive Janet S. Owens. He also has the state Natural Resources Police keeping a watchful eye on his property.

What has raised Clickner's ire is that people treat his island as a park. Clickner said Anne Arundel County knows it, allows visitors to frequent there, but doesn't police the area.

That leaves him to deal with "2 percent" of the visitors who are rowdy and vulgar, and to pick up debris they leave behind, he said. On top of that, he worries that heavy foot traffic will cause further deterioration of the decaying island.

"I can't get the [Owens] administration to understand that they are fostering an environment" in which it's acceptable for the public to use "the island as a park," he said.

Dobbins has served as a popular site for weekend campers, despite the presence of large blue-painted markers warning against trespassing. Some in the community are concerned that Clickner is trying to discourage boaters from using the island's cove and sandbar, considered traditional summertime sanctuaries for generations.

Clickner, who bought Dobbins Island in October for $825,000, is seeking a variance request to build pier access to the island and a nearly 5,000-square-foot house. A county hearing officer last month rejected his request because of environmental concerns; Clickner is appealing.

Clickner reaffirmed his stance last week that "the island is not for sale to anyone at any price" -- whether he can build a home there or not. He also added: "The Clickners will not subsidize an Anne Arundel County park."

Matt Diehl, a spokesman for Owens, said the county executive supports the rights of property owners, and encouraged Clickner to contact authorities, such as Natural Resources Police, to remedy the situation.

Natural Resources Police were called to the island last weekend to remove people from it. Lt. Bob Davis, a spokesman for the Maryland Natural Resources Police, said the agency will take action to protect Clickner's property rights.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

Despite rising cost of a fill-up, Americans still love their SUVs
Some find 14 mpg acceptable to get roominess, ride, safety

By Frank D. Roylance and Mariana Minaya
Sun Staff

August 21, 2005

Quotes:

The weekly visit to the gas pump is starting to bite, and bite hard. The fill-up that drivers shrugged off at $25 is suddenly putting a real dent in family budgets at $50 or more.

So, is the pain of $2.70 a gallon enough to end America's love affair with gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles? Not quite yet, industry analysts say. Buyers are beginning to put fuel efficiency higher among their priorities for their next car - but there's no SUV divorce in sight.

"It's not accurate to say SUVs are no longer popular, or are not being sold because of their fuel economy," said Brian Chee, an analyst with Autobytel, one of the most popular Web sites for new car buyers. "Lifestyle and price are still very important, probably more important. Fuel economy is probably No. 3 at this point, where it was 5 or 6."

He might have been talking about Richard Goodale, an adviser at Ameriprise Financial in Owings Mills who thought about mileage but still bought a 14-mpg Toyota Sequoia this year.

"When people need a vehicle, they're going to buy what suits their needs," Goodale said. "I just purchased a big SUV because my family needs one to get everybody to and fro. It's a little bit of a shock to fill your car up for $65, but it's what it takes to do what you have to do."

There's little question that some of the bloom has come off the SUV rose. Surveys by Kelley Blue Book, which tracks car prices and market trends, found that the proportion of buyers looking for SUVs dropped from 40 percent last year to 34 percent in 2005.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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An energy boom in Calvert

Southern Maryland could benefit from energy bill provisions that make expansion of its liquid natural gas terminal attractive to investors and a new nuclear reactor a possibility.

By Tom Pelton
Sun Staff

August 21, 2005

Quotes:

COVE POINT - Michael Frederick pedals a bicycle down a mine-shaft-like tunnel that runs deep underneath the Chesapeake Bay. On either side of the artery loom stainless steel pipes coursing with liquid natural gas chilled to 260 degrees below zero, so cold it could crack iron.

At the end of the mile-long passageway, he hops an elevator up into blinding sunlight, where a tanker ship the length of three football fields is moored. Workers in blaze orange jumpsuits guide robotic arms sucking 2.7 billion cubic feet of supercooled Egyptian gas out of the ship's gut - enough to heat 9.2 million homes for a day.

This futuristic scene at the Dominion Cove Point liquid natural gas terminal, where Frederick is manager, is just one example of how the nation's changing energy needs are altering the face of Southern Maryland. As the price of oil and gas surges to record highs, the economy of this once-sleepy landscape of tobacco farms is booming as a center for alternative fuel and focal point of the Bush administration's energy policies.

Cove Point is already the nation's largest liquid natural gas terminal, and the energy bill recently signed by the president contains regulatory changes to make a proposed $850 million expansion attractive to investors.

Just down the shore, the owners of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant - Maryland's largest power generator, cranking out 20 percent of the state's electricity - are vying to start building the nation's first new reactor since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. The addition of a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs, using millions of dollars in federal subsidies from the energy bill, would nearly double the plant's output of electricity.

The southern tip of Calvert County is becoming Maryland's energy coast.

Both plants have helped to transform rural Calvert County into the state's fastest-growing jurisdiction, with a population that has almost quadrupled, to about 85,000, since they opened in the 1970s. Major expansions at Calvert Cliffs and Cove Point - the county's No. 1 and No. 2 taxpayers - could spark an even more intense rate of growth.

Together, the two proposed construction projects dangle the prospect of more than $3 billion in new investment for the county, creating more than 3,000 construction jobs, 425 permanent positions and $21 million a year in additional local tax revenues - a more than doubling from these plants.

The county needs the money for its strained roads and schools, local officials say. More importantly, Calvert could become a magnet for high-paying jobs if nuclear power and liquid gas become growth industries, as they were during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

"When there is an energy crisis, it's good for Calvert County," says Linda S. Vassallo, the county's economic development director.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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[Commentary - it should be noted that both of these facilities, the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Electric Generating Station and the Cove Point LNG terminal - were sited where they are in part because Calvert County was a relatively rural county (though the northern part of the county has been a de-facto suburb of Washington, D.C. for many, many years.)]