NORTH EAST, Md. — Cecil County officials are asking the state for help in dealing with some of the growth expected by the military base realignment project that will bring thousands of defense jobs to the nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground.
County officials want the state to extend MARC commuter rail service through Cecil, eliminate tolls on Interstate 95 and let the county expand sewage-treatment plants for commercial and residential development.
Officials made the request at a meeting Monday with Gov. Martin O’Malley’s base realignment subcabinet.
“For many years we were content to be a sleepy Eastern Shore county,” William Manlove, president of the Cecil board of commissioners, told the Baltimore Sun. “It’s rural, and we kind of like it that way.”
However the BRAC, or Base Realignment and Closure, project likely will change that.
More than 9,000 military, civilian and contractor jobs are expected in the next four years to come to and around Aberdeen Proving Ground in neighboring Harford County. Cecil County officials hope to get some of the defense contracting firms and workers’ families.
“We want to accommodate managed growth in designated growth areas,” said Vernon Thompson, the county’s economic development director. More than half of the county’s working residents are employed outside of Cecil. So county officials hope local job growth will reduce traffic and highway congestion.
The county could get about 2,000 of the 28,000 new households expected to accompany up to 60,000 jobs moving to Maryland as part of the realignment.
The county population of 100,000 was projected to grow by at least 10 percent over the same period, even without BRAC. It also was expected to put development pressure on the horse pastures and farm fields that still cover much of the landscape in the state’s northeastern corner.
Two big development projects that could handle defense contractors and their families are planned. Construction is expected to begin in the fall at the 1,200-acre former Bainbridge Naval Training Center, where as much as 4 million square feet of commercial space, 1,250 housing units and a 1,000-unit retirement community are planned. And a 1,000-acre business park is planned on U.S. 40.
County officials asked the state to ease the commute from Cecil to Aberdeen by extending commuter rail service through the county to Wilmington, Del. They also reiterated a long-standing request to cut the $5 toll on northbound I-95 traffic or move the toll plaza someplace else.
About 85,000 vehicles cross the Susquehanna River on Interstate 95 each day, and another 36,000 use U.S. 40, officials said. Officials have long claimed that tolls collected on I-95 and on the U.S. 40 bridge across the Susquehanna River have discouraged businesses and residents from locating there.
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