Costco's Forest Conservation Plan Exemption Challenged

In October 2010 the Montgomery County Planning Department granted Westfield Wheaton an exemption from submitting a Forest Conservation Plan for its Costco wing addition.

Now neighborhood and environmental groups are asking the Planning Department to review--and overturn--this exemption in order to protect the green buffer zone separating the and the bordering Kensington neighborhood.

The Audubon Naturalist Society, Rock Creek Conservancy, Kensington Heights Civic Association, Kensington View Civic Association and the Anacostia Watershed Citizens Advisory Committee sent a joint letter last week to the director of the Montgomery County Planning Department, Rollin Stanley. As of today (Jan. 20), they say they have not yet received a formal response. (Editor's Note: The letter has been attached to this article as a PDF.)

According to a Planning Department memo in October 2010 that established the exemption’s conditions, “This exemption covers a modification to an existing developed property if no more than 5,000 square feet of forest will be cleared, no forest in a stream buffer will be affected, it is not located on property within a special protection area, and the modification does not require approval of a new subdivision plan.”

The challenge to the exemption centers on Westfield’s stormwater system. The environmental and neighborhood coalition’s letter charges that Westfield avoided the 5,000 limit by dividing a large project into two smaller ones: “Specifically, to get under the 5,000 square foot threshold, the planned forest disturbance was arbitrarily separated into smaller projects – that is, construction of the inlet and outfall for a single stormwater conveyance system are being treated as if they are two disparate and unrelated projects, which is inappropriate.”

As to the second condition, that “no forest in a stream buffer will be affected,” environmental groups and the Planning Department have disagreed before about the precise definition of “forest,”

The official planning department definition of a forest encompasses “those areas that have at least 100 trees per acre with at least 50 percent of those trees having a two-inch or greater diameter at 4.5 feet above the ground.”

The coalition’s letter states the following:

“The forest in question, located to the south of the proposed Costco wing of the Westfield Wheaton shopping mall, constitutes the largest contiguous collection of trees in the entire Wheaton Sector Plan area, yet it took over a year for the Planning Department to acknowledge this obvious fact, and we have yet to see protective measures for this forested buffer established by the Planning Department.”

Diane Cameron of Audubon said that agency fragmentation is frustrating her coalition’s efforts. While the Planning Department handles the Forest Conservation Plan exemption, the Department of Permitting Services controls the plans and permits for stormwater and sediment controls. Cameron said that the Planning Department has informally told her that in order for it to act on the Forest Conservation Plan, DPS first would have to require a sediment control plan.

Danila Sheveiko of the Kensington Heights Civic Association is concerned that the creek that runs through the buffer zone between the Wheaton Mall and the Kensington Heights neighborhood is not properly marked on the Conservation Exemption Plan map.

“At the very least, they need to mark the creek and the full extent of the disturbance,” Sheveiko said.

The fear is that excessive runoff from the future Costco at Westfield would flow into the headwaters of Silver Creek and Kensington Branch--damaging the Sligo Creek and Lower Rock Creek watersheds.

For the complete letter sent to the Planning Department, see the attached PDF. More updates to come.