(Jan. 5, 2017) Attorney Hugh Cropper, respectfully, does not agree that campsites are bad for the environment, or for traffic, in Worcester County.
Cropper represents Todd Burbage and the Ayres Creek Family Farm, LLC, which owns the former Pines Shore Golf Course near Route 611 and Route 376 and plan to redevelop that property into about 300 camping sites.
He also speaks for the Carl M. Freeman group, which has similar plans at the Bay Club golf course on Libertytown Road in Berlin, and is the chairman of the conservationist-oriented Lower Shore Land Trust board of directors.
Last Wednesday, more than 100 people turned up to a “Save Our Ayres Creek” meeting at the Ocean Pines Library to voice their opposition to the Pines Shores project.
Cropper said many of the opinions expressed that night, as well as online and during interviews with this and other media outlets, have rung false.
“I don’t agree with the arguments against the campground from an environmental perspective, because the fact is there will be a minimum of 100-foot vegetative buffer from tidal wetlands,” he said. “In some instances, along Ayers Creek, that buffer will be as much as 400 or 500 feet.”
“Several acres” would be set aside to buffer the creek, he said, and all stormwater would be treated onsite. Cropper suggested the environmental impact would actually be less than what is there now.
“When you come up the creek on a boat you won’t even be able to see the campground,” he said. “Also, the property is highly disturbed from the golf course. They have ponds and lakes – it’s an interconnected system, so all stormwater will be managed from the properties. All the stormwater will run back to those ponds and be treated. There will be no runoff to Ayers Creek.”
When the property was used as a golf course, Cropper said the greens extended all the way into the creek. One of the tees is apparently is still in the creek.
“Golf courses use thousands of pounds of chemicals – nitrogen and herbicides and all kinds of stuff. That will all go away,” he said.
He said no motorized boats would be allowed to launch from the property, but that “non-motorized” crafts such as kayaks and canoes could be permitted.
“I know the neighbors don’t want that – they don’t want anybody using the creek, but that’s disingenuous,” he said. “The creek is owned by the state of Maryland for the benefit of all the citizens – it’s not fair for them to say people can’t use the creek.
“From an environmental point of view, [a campground] will be better than a golf course. It will be better than houses. It will be better than a farm,” Cropper continued. “You won’t see it, you won’t even know it’s there, and it’s closed [by law] five months out of the winter. They’re worried about the critters and the ducks. In the winter, those gates will be locked and those ponds will be full of ducks and geese and all sorts of things.”
More importantly, Cropper said, the property would be connected to the sewer lines at Mystic Harbor where “every drop [would receive] a high level of treatment.”
He argued the same point when considering the proposed redevelopment at the Bay Club, and called campgrounds “the perfect sewer customer” because they pay standards rates but do not put any drain on sewer plants during the colder months when processing facilities generally have the most difficulties.
“Right now, all the people who are complaining about this thing are on drain fields, many of which are very old. And where do you think it goes when they flush the toilet? It goes into the creek [and] it goes into the aquifer,” he said, adding that some adjacent properties could connect to the Mystic Harbor system once the campground puts in new infrastructure.
“We’ll pull all those drain fields out of use and it will be a huge net-positive environmental impact,” Cropper said. “Everybody just ignores that. All the opponents just ignore the fact that they’re on drain fields and ignore the fact that those little houses have failing septic systems going straight into the [creek]. When I bring that up, that’s ignored.”
As for the traffic concerns presented by opponents of the development – namely, that traffic congestion would increase and cause safety issues – Cropper said he “totally disagreed” with that assertion, both as a lawyer and as a citizen.
He went as far as calling those concerns “a red herring.”
“It’s probably going to be at most 300 campsites,” he said, adding that sketches circulating of a 311-site produced by R D Hand & Associates were preliminary – and “aggressive.” He did not know how they were obtained by the Save Our Ayres Creek organizers, who distributed those drawings at the meeting.
“Castaways has 394 campsites,” Cropper said. “I ride by it every day going to my office. I live on Assateague Road, my office is on 611. I never see anybody coming out of Eagle’s Nest Road. If you go back there, it looks like it’s deserted.”
Up to 25 percent of the sites could be permanent facilities like cabins, and Cropper said there would also be “primitive” campsites allowing people to pitch small tents. He estimated between half-to-two-thirds of the sites would allow for RVs.
Modern RVs, he argued, tend to stay in one place longer, meaning some could be parked for an entire season rather than rolling up and down Route 611 all summer.
“Maybe on the weekend you’ll have less than 100 RVs turnover, and that’s assuming 100 percent occupancy,” Cropper said. “It is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands and ten-thousands that go to Assateague, and the thousands and ten-thousands that use 611 as a back way to get to Ocean City to try to avoid the Route 50 traffic.”
Asked why he thought the opposition, so far, had been so vocal Cropper replied, “They’re selfish.”
“They don’t want it in their backyard,” he said. “I’m shocked at the people that have come out and said ‘we don’t want to see anything happen to this piece of property.’ I’m shocked that people say it should be a park – well, go buy it and make it a park!”
He noted that the former golf course had “a clubhouse, a restaurant and a liquor license.”
“With all due respect to [Save Our Ayres Creek organizer] Joan Jenkins, she’s got a big-ass house in the buffer right on a subdivided lot in the subdivision,” Cropper said. “If she had a 100-acre farm down in Stockton I’d have the greatest respect for that. Look at the aerial picture you see [on television reports] – this is a developed area. This isn’t out in the country, respectfully. It’s just not.
“When you look at environmental impact – there’s not going to be any environmental impact. It’s going to be less impact from this than one of those houses with a drain field,” he continued. “All those houses down on South Pointe are on drain fields [and] virtually none of them have any treatment at all. If they were rebuilt today, they’d have to be 100 feet to 300 feet from the water and they’d all have to have treatment systems on their septic – that’s the law today. They’re all grandfathered, they’re all nonconforming, every single one of them, including, respectfully, Ms. Jenkins.”
Although Cropper had scheduled a meeting with the county planning commission on Jan. 5 to rezone the property – the first step in a lengthy process towards redevelopment – that has since been postponed. He said that was not unusual and that he still expected a meeting to take place soon.
As for the larger push, apparently countywide, to transform golf courses into campgrounds, Cropper said part of that was because of the obvious demand.
“Worcester County appears to be underserved for campgrounds. The camping lifestyle has become very popular, campgrounds have become very popular and Worcester County has become a leader in the campground business,” he said. “Right now we see some expansion and we see these two new campgrounds in the pipeline. Is there going to be 10 next year? No.”
He added that any new campgrounds could also replace an expected, gradual move of campsites going off the island at Assateague National Seashore.
“They’re not going to have any place to move them – they’re just going to have to close them,” he said. “We’re going to lose those campsites. In 10 years, 20 years, if they move all those campsites off Assateague, you’re going to see a net decrease in traffic.
“I think Ayers Creek [Campground] is a great spot, despite what the neighbors say,” Cropper added. “It’s a perfect spot. It’s across from Frontier Town. It’s right down from Castaways. It’s right down [the street] from Assateague. It’s smart growth. It’s where we want the people. We don’t want the campground in Willards. Here, they can take buses to Assateague or to Ocean City. It’s a camping area, like it or not.”
Cropper represents Todd Burbage and the Ayres Creek Family Farm, LLC, which owns the former Pines Shore Golf Course near Route 611 and Route 376 and plan to redevelop that property into about 300 camping sites.
He also speaks for the Carl M. Freeman group, which has similar plans at the Bay Club golf course on Libertytown Road in Berlin, and is the chairman of the conservationist-oriented Lower Shore Land Trust board of directors.
Last Wednesday, more than 100 people turned up to a “Save Our Ayres Creek” meeting at the Ocean Pines Library to voice their opposition to the Pines Shores project.
Cropper said many of the opinions expressed that night, as well as online and during interviews with this and other media outlets, have rung false.
“I don’t agree with the arguments against the campground from an environmental perspective, because the fact is there will be a minimum of 100-foot vegetative buffer from tidal wetlands,” he said. “In some instances, along Ayers Creek, that buffer will be as much as 400 or 500 feet.”
“Several acres” would be set aside to buffer the creek, he said, and all stormwater would be treated onsite. Cropper suggested the environmental impact would actually be less than what is there now.
“When you come up the creek on a boat you won’t even be able to see the campground,” he said. “Also, the property is highly disturbed from the golf course. They have ponds and lakes – it’s an interconnected system, so all stormwater will be managed from the properties. All the stormwater will run back to those ponds and be treated. There will be no runoff to Ayers Creek.”
When the property was used as a golf course, Cropper said the greens extended all the way into the creek. One of the tees is apparently is still in the creek.
“Golf courses use thousands of pounds of chemicals – nitrogen and herbicides and all kinds of stuff. That will all go away,” he said.
He said no motorized boats would be allowed to launch from the property, but that “non-motorized” crafts such as kayaks and canoes could be permitted.
“I know the neighbors don’t want that – they don’t want anybody using the creek, but that’s disingenuous,” he said. “The creek is owned by the state of Maryland for the benefit of all the citizens – it’s not fair for them to say people can’t use the creek.
“From an environmental point of view, [a campground] will be better than a golf course. It will be better than houses. It will be better than a farm,” Cropper continued. “You won’t see it, you won’t even know it’s there, and it’s closed [by law] five months out of the winter. They’re worried about the critters and the ducks. In the winter, those gates will be locked and those ponds will be full of ducks and geese and all sorts of things.”
More importantly, Cropper said, the property would be connected to the sewer lines at Mystic Harbor where “every drop [would receive] a high level of treatment.”
He argued the same point when considering the proposed redevelopment at the Bay Club, and called campgrounds “the perfect sewer customer” because they pay standards rates but do not put any drain on sewer plants during the colder months when processing facilities generally have the most difficulties.
“Right now, all the people who are complaining about this thing are on drain fields, many of which are very old. And where do you think it goes when they flush the toilet? It goes into the creek [and] it goes into the aquifer,” he said, adding that some adjacent properties could connect to the Mystic Harbor system once the campground puts in new infrastructure.
“We’ll pull all those drain fields out of use and it will be a huge net-positive environmental impact,” Cropper said. “Everybody just ignores that. All the opponents just ignore the fact that they’re on drain fields and ignore the fact that those little houses have failing septic systems going straight into the [creek]. When I bring that up, that’s ignored.”
As for the traffic concerns presented by opponents of the development – namely, that traffic congestion would increase and cause safety issues – Cropper said he “totally disagreed” with that assertion, both as a lawyer and as a citizen.
He went as far as calling those concerns “a red herring.”
“It’s probably going to be at most 300 campsites,” he said, adding that sketches circulating of a 311-site produced by R D Hand & Associates were preliminary – and “aggressive.” He did not know how they were obtained by the Save Our Ayres Creek organizers, who distributed those drawings at the meeting.
“Castaways has 394 campsites,” Cropper said. “I ride by it every day going to my office. I live on Assateague Road, my office is on 611. I never see anybody coming out of Eagle’s Nest Road. If you go back there, it looks like it’s deserted.”
Up to 25 percent of the sites could be permanent facilities like cabins, and Cropper said there would also be “primitive” campsites allowing people to pitch small tents. He estimated between half-to-two-thirds of the sites would allow for RVs.
Modern RVs, he argued, tend to stay in one place longer, meaning some could be parked for an entire season rather than rolling up and down Route 611 all summer.
“Maybe on the weekend you’ll have less than 100 RVs turnover, and that’s assuming 100 percent occupancy,” Cropper said. “It is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands and ten-thousands that go to Assateague, and the thousands and ten-thousands that use 611 as a back way to get to Ocean City to try to avoid the Route 50 traffic.”
Asked why he thought the opposition, so far, had been so vocal Cropper replied, “They’re selfish.”
“They don’t want it in their backyard,” he said. “I’m shocked at the people that have come out and said ‘we don’t want to see anything happen to this piece of property.’ I’m shocked that people say it should be a park – well, go buy it and make it a park!”
He noted that the former golf course had “a clubhouse, a restaurant and a liquor license.”
“With all due respect to [Save Our Ayres Creek organizer] Joan Jenkins, she’s got a big-ass house in the buffer right on a subdivided lot in the subdivision,” Cropper said. “If she had a 100-acre farm down in Stockton I’d have the greatest respect for that. Look at the aerial picture you see [on television reports] – this is a developed area. This isn’t out in the country, respectfully. It’s just not.
“When you look at environmental impact – there’s not going to be any environmental impact. It’s going to be less impact from this than one of those houses with a drain field,” he continued. “All those houses down on South Pointe are on drain fields [and] virtually none of them have any treatment at all. If they were rebuilt today, they’d have to be 100 feet to 300 feet from the water and they’d all have to have treatment systems on their septic – that’s the law today. They’re all grandfathered, they’re all nonconforming, every single one of them, including, respectfully, Ms. Jenkins.”
Although Cropper had scheduled a meeting with the county planning commission on Jan. 5 to rezone the property – the first step in a lengthy process towards redevelopment – that has since been postponed. He said that was not unusual and that he still expected a meeting to take place soon.
As for the larger push, apparently countywide, to transform golf courses into campgrounds, Cropper said part of that was because of the obvious demand.
“Worcester County appears to be underserved for campgrounds. The camping lifestyle has become very popular, campgrounds have become very popular and Worcester County has become a leader in the campground business,” he said. “Right now we see some expansion and we see these two new campgrounds in the pipeline. Is there going to be 10 next year? No.”
He added that any new campgrounds could also replace an expected, gradual move of campsites going off the island at Assateague National Seashore.
“They’re not going to have any place to move them – they’re just going to have to close them,” he said. “We’re going to lose those campsites. In 10 years, 20 years, if they move all those campsites off Assateague, you’re going to see a net decrease in traffic.
“I think Ayers Creek [Campground] is a great spot, despite what the neighbors say,” Cropper added. “It’s a perfect spot. It’s across from Frontier Town. It’s right down from Castaways. It’s right down [the street] from Assateague. It’s smart growth. It’s where we want the people. We don’t want the campground in Willards. Here, they can take buses to Assateague or to Ocean City. It’s a camping area, like it or not.”