1 00:00:00,318 --> 00:00:04,764 Wootton Elementary School Site 7 sits inside a Special Protection Area. 2 00:00:04,809 --> 00:00:07,727 The Board of Education has protected land like this before. 3 00:00:07,773 --> 00:00:08,709 Here is the record. 4 00:00:09,985 --> 00:00:14,376 In 1994, Montgomery County created Special Protection Areas: 5 00:00:14,421 --> 00:00:16,903 watersheds where streams are unusually clean, 6 00:00:16,948 --> 00:00:19,630 and ordinary development would damage them. 7 00:00:19,676 --> 00:00:20,503 There are five. 8 00:00:20,548 --> 00:00:23,630 One is Piney Branch, which rises in our neighborhoods 9 00:00:23,676 --> 00:00:25,885 and runs south toward the Potomac. 10 00:00:25,930 --> 00:00:27,485 The County's own words: 11 00:00:27,530 --> 00:00:31,703 "unusually high water quality" and a "fragile ecosystem." 12 00:00:32,924 --> 00:00:34,952 So where does it start and end? 13 00:00:34,997 --> 00:00:36,752 This is the County's own line. 14 00:00:36,797 --> 00:00:39,315 It follows Piney Meetinghouse Road on the west, 15 00:00:39,361 --> 00:00:40,915 from Darnestown Road at the top 16 00:00:40,961 --> 00:00:43,061 down to Glen Road at the bottom. 17 00:00:43,106 --> 00:00:46,224 About two miles across, nearly four miles long. 18 00:00:46,270 --> 00:00:48,370 2,370 acres. 19 00:00:48,415 --> 00:00:51,642 Everything inside the line is in the Special Protection Area. 20 00:00:51,688 --> 00:00:54,406 Site 7 sits near the top, at the headwaters. 21 00:00:55,530 --> 00:00:57,921 We laid the County's parcel map over it. 22 00:00:57,967 --> 00:01:00,867 Site 7, all 12 acres, is inside. 23 00:01:00,912 --> 00:01:03,885 Not an edge. Not a corner. The whole site. 24 00:01:03,930 --> 00:01:07,539 Headwater streams run within about 20 feet of its property line. 25 00:01:07,585 --> 00:01:09,830 A pond sits 10 feet from it. 26 00:01:09,876 --> 00:01:13,539 The Board of Education owns nearly 500 parcels in this County. 27 00:01:13,585 --> 00:01:15,085 One touches this watershed. 28 00:01:15,130 --> 00:01:15,848 This one. 29 00:01:16,924 --> 00:01:20,333 Inside a Special Protection Area the rules are stricter, 30 00:01:20,379 --> 00:01:22,497 and they apply to public agencies too. 31 00:01:22,542 --> 00:01:24,097 Montgomery Planning's own summary: 32 00:01:24,142 --> 00:01:28,279 the law covers "land-disturbing activity on publicly-owned property." 33 00:01:28,324 --> 00:01:32,133 Any project needs a water quality plan approved by the Planning Board. 34 00:01:32,179 --> 00:01:34,970 Stream buffers are wider, and protected by easement. 35 00:01:35,015 --> 00:01:37,261 The law does not forbid a bus depot. 36 00:01:37,306 --> 00:01:40,515 It puts every acre of pavement in front of the Planning Board, 37 00:01:40,561 --> 00:01:42,897 in public, before anything is built. 38 00:01:43,985 --> 00:01:46,558 So how does a conservation easement work? 39 00:01:46,603 --> 00:01:48,285 The owner keeps the land. 40 00:01:48,330 --> 00:01:51,467 It gives up one right: the right to build on it. 41 00:01:51,512 --> 00:01:53,503 That right goes to a second party, 42 00:01:53,548 --> 00:01:56,412 here the Park and Planning Commission, which holds it. 43 00:01:56,458 --> 00:01:58,703 The easement is recorded in the land records, 44 00:01:58,748 --> 00:02:01,521 so it stays with the land, whoever owns it. 45 00:02:01,567 --> 00:02:03,558 And it is written as perpetual. 46 00:02:03,603 --> 00:02:06,521 A new Board, a new plan: neither changes it. 47 00:02:06,567 --> 00:02:08,939 To undo it, the holder has to agree. 48 00:02:10,136 --> 00:02:11,800 The Board has done this before. 49 00:02:11,845 --> 00:02:15,636 Briggs Chaney Road, in the Upper Paint Branch Special Protection Area: 50 00:02:15,682 --> 00:02:19,418 a future middle school site the Board owned and had not built on. 51 00:02:19,464 --> 00:02:23,945 In 2010, the Board and Park and Planning signed a memorandum of understanding; 52 00:02:23,991 --> 00:02:28,600 it found the site "qualifies as a land bank within the Special Protection Area." 53 00:02:28,645 --> 00:02:32,127 On January 11, 2011, the Board voted, unanimously, 54 00:02:32,173 --> 00:02:38,055 to grant a conservation easement over 20.37 of the site's 20.96 acres, 55 00:02:38,100 --> 00:02:42,345 "to protect and prevent any alteration, construction, or destruction" 56 00:02:42,391 --> 00:02:45,455 of its forest, wetlands and stream buffers. 57 00:02:45,500 --> 00:02:49,145 In return, the Board got credit toward its own water quality obligations 58 00:02:49,191 --> 00:02:51,000 for a school project nearby. 59 00:02:52,227 --> 00:02:54,727 Farquhar Middle School, 2014. 60 00:02:54,773 --> 00:02:59,255 MCPS built the new school on parkland under a Rural Open Space easement. 61 00:02:59,300 --> 00:03:02,527 The Planning Board released that easement on the new school's footprint, 62 00:03:02,573 --> 00:03:05,491 and a replacement easement went onto the old school property. 63 00:03:05,536 --> 00:03:06,127 A trade. 64 00:03:06,173 --> 00:03:09,636 Today, MCPS's own plan lists both under the heading 65 00:03:09,682 --> 00:03:13,345 "Board of Education-owned sites under perpetual easement," 66 00:03:13,391 --> 00:03:16,018 footnoted: "cannot be used for school development." 67 00:03:16,064 --> 00:03:20,091 Site 7 appears a few lines above, in the plain list. 68 00:03:21,136 --> 00:03:25,073 Side by side. Three sites the Board of Education owns. 69 00:03:25,118 --> 00:03:29,691 Two sit inside a Special Protection Area: Briggs Chaney, and Site 7. 70 00:03:29,736 --> 00:03:33,691 Two are protected for good: Briggs Chaney, and Farquhar. 71 00:03:33,736 --> 00:03:37,545 Only one is inside a Special Protection Area and not protected. 72 00:03:37,591 --> 00:03:38,600 Site 7. 73 00:03:40,106 --> 00:03:44,297 The County's own plan for this area, from 2002, says it plainly: 74 00:03:44,342 --> 00:03:46,842 "Re-use surplus school sites as parks." 75 00:03:46,888 --> 00:03:50,788 And for this very stream, acquire a vacant school site along Piney Branch, 76 00:03:50,833 --> 00:03:54,079 "to protect scarce and important forest areas." 77 00:03:54,124 --> 00:03:56,261 A bus depot is not on that list. 78 00:03:57,561 --> 00:03:59,152 So the ask is simple. 79 00:03:59,197 --> 00:04:03,061 Put it in writing: no bus depot on Wootton Elementary School Site 7. 80 00:04:03,106 --> 00:04:06,315 Then protect it the way the Board protected Briggs Chaney. 81 00:04:06,361 --> 00:04:10,388 The template already exists. It is Resolution 19-11. 82 00:04:12,227 --> 00:04:18,000 The map, the records and the quotes are at nobusdepot.com/spa.