Dan Rodricks: Cutting mighty trees in a popular Maryland park for a bridge? Must be a better way. | STAFF COMMENTARY

Swallow Falls State Park, in western Maryland, has the cascading Youghiogheny River, the state’s tallest waterfall, old-growth hemlocks, hiking paths and cross-country ski trails. It’s a popular destination for visitors from throughout the region, including white-water kayakers and people who appreciate mighty, centuries-old trees.

“The forest in Swallow Falls is especially important to us because it has the oldest hemlock trees in Maryland, as far as we know,” says Joan Maloof, founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network and a prominent voice in efforts to save ancient, native trees across the country.

In addition to the old hemlocks, a familiar part of the Swallow Falls experience is the one-lane steel bridge over the river that gets you to the park. (Garrett County refers to it as a “temporary bridge” that was built in 2011 above the previous steel bridge.) It requires drivers approaching from one side to yield to oncoming motorists.

As a long-time visitor to Swallow Falls, I’ve always found that bridge a quaint traffic-calming measure. It requires you to slow way, way down, which puts you in a good frame of mind as you enter the park.

Now officials in Garrett County want to build a new, two-lane bridge just north of the current one-lane bridge.

During construction of this new bridge, they want to keep the one-lane bridge so that the county road stays open to traffic.

But here’s why I bring this up: The county wants to cut down lots of trees, some of them very old, to carve a new roadway to the new bridge.

And, to do that, they have the support of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources — the state agency responsible for protecting and maintaining our parklands.

If you visit Swallow Falls this fall or winter, you’ll see ribbons on dozens of trees that, presumably, are destined to be removed. I was out there recently to look around and found it a grim prospect. Some of the trees are 200, even 300 years old.

Steve Storck, who owns land nearby, showed me a huge pine and an old-growth hemlock, both with ribbons, and I was genuinely shocked at the prospect of the trees’ elimination, and for what?

I didn’t understand why the county wants to replace a bridge that seems to be holding up well and that only bears the weight of, on average, 400 to 465 vehicles a day, according to a study submitted to the state.

And are we really going to allow the cutting of up to 300 trees in an area the state considers “wild and scenic” ? Shouldn’t that be against the law?

Indeed, parts of the area are within the Youghiogheny Scenic and Wild River Corridor . That means just about everything out there is supposed to be left alone.

To allow the county to build a new bridge, the state had to grant an exception, and that’s what DNR Secretary Josh Kurtz did.

In an approval letter to the county last year, Kurtz said, “The scenic and wild character of the river and corridor as a whole will not be injuriously impacted by the construction of the new bridge.” He added that “strict application of the regulations would cause an unnecessary hardship to the county, the community and the general public that use the roadway.”

Kurtz’s decision is being challenged in court now by opponents who say a new bridge should be built on the same spot as the present bridge and without cutting into the Swallow Falls forest.

“If I had one wish in this case, it would be to have [Kurtz] come to the hemlock grove and seriously analyze why the bridge and road can’t be replaced where they are, without cutting down old growth forest,” says Dirk Schwenk, the attorney representing the opponents of the bridge plan. “There is absolutely no justification for cutting a new road.”

He argues that federal law requires the state to find a solution that least impacts natural resources. That solution, Schwenk and Storck say, would be replacing the present bridge where it stands.

That, of course, would require closing passage over the river to traffic for the duration of construction.

But that, argue supporters of the new bridge, would require a problematic detour. Chiefs of volunteer fire companies in Oakland and McHenry say a stronger, wider bridge is necessary for their emergency vehicles. They’ve said that closing the present bridge would cause delays in responses to the park or nearby homes.

This DNR apparently accepted this argument because, in approving the bridge plan, Kurtz noted that “the need to maintain traffic flow through the area for safety and emergency access are special circumstances which are necessary for community health, safety, and welfare.”

Storck says those arguments are not based on data. “I am not interested in putting my community at risk and did the research to ensure my request to replace the bridge in its current [location] did not do this,” he says. “Their claims are false fear tactics. … I have never argued against replacing the bridge. It is the location and the undermining of environmental protections that are the issues for me.”

He points out — and this is the most disturbing part — that the section of public land where DNR granted the exception has numerous state protections, not only the “wild and scenic” designation. “If this can happen to one of the most legislatively protected areas in the state, and likely the country,” Storck says, “it can happen anywhere.”