Once upon a time, Maryland had Republican politicians who were proud environmentalists and stewards of the vast Chesapeake watershed.
The late Mac Mathias , a senator for 18 years, was a founder of the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort; Rogers C.B. Morton was a congressman from the Eastern Shore, a robust advocate for the bay who later served as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior; and Wayne Gilchrest , who represented the shore in Congress from 1991 to 2009, remained steadfast in support of environmental regulations even as his party fought them nationally and denied climate change.
Indeed, the Republican Party once championed conservation (see Roosevelt, Teddy) and environmental protection (see Nixon, Richard).
Starting in the Reagan era, however, Republicans reversed course and fought, in Congress and courts, what they considered anti-business government overreach. Larry Hogan, a big Reagan fan and former Maryland governor now running for the U.S. Senate, is sure to boast about his environmental record, but he’s also the guy who mocked as a “rain tax” the state’s mandate to deal with polluting stormwater runoff.
And, of course, allies of Donald Trump have proposed further gutting environmental regulations and climate policy should he regain the presidency.
Given that background, it’s been interesting — actually, kinda shocking — to watch Bob Cassilly, the Republican executive of Harford County, go retro and stir memories of pro-environment Republicans of the past.
And he’s done this in a county that went for Donald Trump over Joe Biden by nearly 18,000 votes.
Since taking office less than two years ago, Cassilly has been pushing the pause button on big development. He’s argued for the redevelopment of vacant commercial and industrial sites , suggesting that he shares the common-sense views of “smart growth” progressives who want to see counties direct development in a way that avoids more sprawl.
Cassilly’s particular concern has been mega warehouses, those already on the ground and those in the pipeline. He got a six-month moratorium on new warehouse construction and a restriction on their size — both within his first year in office.
In some Maryland counties, local politicians and business owners see big warehouse construction as good economic development. The same is the case in central Pennsylvania , where the former farmlands along Interstates 81 and 78 have been marred with hundreds of massive warehouses. It’s mostly because of ecommerce, of course; online consumers have made warehouse space a primo asset within commercial real estate.
But Cassilly does not consider warehousing to be good economic development.
When we spoke last year, he said the super-size warehouses approved by his Republican predecessor were overrated. Warehouses have a big environmental impact, he said, and they don’t create all that many jobs. The pay for warehouse work, he added, is on the low end.
Instead of becoming known as “the warehouse county” along Interstate 95, Cassilly argued, Harford should be trying to attract businesses that pay higher wages for skilled or highly educated workers.
At the time, he claimed that the county had more than 2.8 million square feet of warehouse/distribution space that was unused and leasable.
He took this argument into court and into the county council.
In January 2023, less than a month after taking office, Cassilly walked into a Bel Air courtroom and got a judge to pause a warehouse development for the sake of trees. He later got the council to restrict the size of new warehouses to 250,000 square feet. That’s still big, but it’s not the 2 million square feet of warehousing a developer wanted to build on 327 green acres in a place called Abingdon Woods.
This week, Cassilly reported victory in the long Battle of Abingdon Woods.
The developer has backed off , scrapping plans for the warehouse and agreeing to stabilize lands that had been disturbed, manage stormwater on the site and plant trees. Now, any new developer who wants to build in Abingdon Woods would have to start the permitting process from scratch.
Here’s what Cassilly said in a news release about the agreement: “Harford County welcomes appropriate development that brings well-paying jobs, boosts economic activity, protects the environment and enhances our quality of life.”
The citizens who fought the mega warehouse for more than four years deserve big credit. But having a county executive on their side certainly helped — even if Cassilly doesn’t quite qualify as a full-fledged environmentalist.
It seems to me he’s pushed toward the practical, supporting development but not on the scale some wanted. After the county council voted to limit the size of warehouses, Cassilly said the new restriction “more fairly balances the property rights of landowners … with the rights of the surrounding communities.”
It will be interesting to see where all this goes from here, as pressures undoubtedly build for more development to generate more tax revenue to keep the county going.
At the same time, Harford residents have shown their willingness to engage in a long fight against development that changes the nature of their county. As a woman from Bel Air said last year: “I moved here 20 years ago, and I didn’t move here for the warehouses.”
Their next big battle will be tough: getting more wetlands and woodlands in permanent preservation. Maybe the Republican county executive could help them with that. That would be something.
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