By: Dr. Tracy Garrett-Owusu, as told to the Maryland League of Conservation Voters Education Fund
The opinions shared in this piece are those of the speaker and/or the person being featured in the story. They do not necessarily reflect those of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.
Celestine Brown, left, and Tracy Garrett on Sands Road. Image by Dave Harp (2023)
https://www.bayjournal.com/news/pollution/despite-setback-maryland-community-aims-to-continue-fighting-industrial-activity/article_12572ac2-540b-11ee-b538-0f3500952efc.html
In Lothian, more than 100 diesel trucks travel daily through narrow residential roads. The community, located in central Anne Arundel County, was once predominantly forest and farmland, but is now regularly impacted by industrial traffic, leaving behind thick clouds of dust and the stench of diesel exhaust.
The trucks travel to and from a company that receives vehicles transporting a variety of materials, passing through predominantly Black communities, which were exposed to the environmental impacts of industrial activity without their knowledge.
This part of Lothian is zoned as rural-agricultural, not industrial. And yet, along one road, Sands Road, there are a number of industrial facilities, including Westport Reclamation. There is provision in the local zoning code that allows operations at the site to continue under a “special exception” despite consistent objections from the community, and ongoing uncertainty about the nature of daily operations at the facility.
What’s more, even though the operations had been going on for decades, the site was not issued a required stormwater discharge permit until 2020. In addition, Anne Arundel County inspectors found that the property was violating local zoning regulations by holding unregistered vehicles and dumping, processing, and reselling construction debris.
When lifetime Lothian resident and environmental chair of the NAACP, Dr. Tracy Garrett-Owusu, petitioned to shut the operation down, it was ruled she didn’t have legal standing because she didn’t live directly next to the facility. As for the non-permitted activity, the company received a relatively minor punishment of a $3,000 fine.
Dr. Garrett-Owusu emphasizes, “It’s not just the trucks and it’s not just that company; we’re dealing with legacy pollution from old facilities and toxic dust in the air. Fumes, water pollution, sound pollution—it has an impact on your stress levels.”
Near where she lives, there are at least ten sources of water pollution: five mobile home park wastewater treatment plants, two closed solid waste landfills, and another sand and gravel mining operation.
In 2015, a Health Impact Assessment prepared by University of Maryland students under the guidance of Dr. Saccoby Wilson revealed 33 industrial sites in the Lothian-Harwood area, 22 of which were still in operation, all within a five-mile radius of one another. Two of those sites also had documented histories of cancer-causing pollutants surpassing permitted health standards.
In another investigation, the Chesapeake Bay Legal Alliance uncovered several instances of noncompliance with water pollution permits. “Although we informed the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) in June of 2020 and asked for a follow-up response and action, we never received a formal response,” litigation manager Patrick DeArmey wrote two years later.
“It’s been an ongoing struggle with the county—one step forward, two steps backward,” says Dr. Garrett-Owusu. “People who don’t live here just don’t really get it.”
Without accountability and transparency, communities not only suffer from decisions they didn’t make, but are forced to fight for the bare minimum: health and safety. Moreover, enforcing existing standards does little to address the decades of cumulative health impacts that continue to weigh on community members today. Meaningful prioritization of health, sustainability, and justice is possible only when communities are guided by the people who live in them, rather than by industry.