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Indian Head Rail Trail Proposal Revived
After an eight-month delay, the Charles County commissioners restarted the effort Tuesday (9/12) to convert the old Navy railroad running between White Plains and Indian Head into a public hiking and biking trail.
The commissioners directed the county’s parks staff to award a bid to a county contractor to remove the steel rails and wooden ties from the railroad and recycle the materials. The recycling is expected to raise $549,000 for the rail project.
The recycling money, along with $402,000 in county construction funds and $1.4 million in state Program Open Space money, is what the county expects to use to pave the rail bed with crushed stone and open it to the public.
If the state money comes through, parks director Tom Roland said he hopes to begin construction by July of next year for completion in 2009.
The commissioners also gave Roland permission to begin coordinating a plan for the trail with the state’s Rail-to-Trail Conservancy and hold a public meeting on the project in January.
Roland’s plan for the project includes additional phases, which would later add restrooms, asphalt paving and signs interpreting the natural environment and historical significance of the trail.
The county acquired the railroad from the Indian Head naval base in 2005 after the Navy deemed the line a surplus property. In December 2006, the county was prepared to approve a bid to tear up the railroad in preparation for a trail.
The bid was put on hold when Alcoa announced its intentions to construct a power plant in Indian Head. The commissioners waited to hear whether Alcoa would need the railroad to transport coal to the new plant. However, according to Roland, Alcoa recently told the county ‘‘that is something they are not going to need.”
Once completed, the rail trail would be ‘‘the most popular and most used park in our system,” Roland predicted. He said the trail has the potential to draw more than 200,000 visitors a year, a figure that raised the eyebrows of Commissioner Gary V. Hodge (D).
Hodge noted the Calvert Marine Museum and Historic St. Mary’s City, the region’s two most popular tourism destinations, draw a combined total of 100,000 visitors a year.
‘‘It is a big number,” Roland said, but added that some projects for the trail put the number of visitors at 300,000. Roland said the trail would likely be used by 53 percent of the county’s population, as opposed to the White Plains Golf Course, which is used by 5 percent.
‘‘It’s very inclusive,” Roland said.
The commissioners stopped short of setting a date to begin construction on the trail.
They asked Roland to finish recycling the old railroad, secure the state funding and hold a public meeting before returning to them for construction approval.
Jay Fries
Southern Maryland News, September 12, 2007