As the government continues to print more money, the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for building the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) facility has now been published, containing a summary of the comments received during the Draft Environmental Impact Statement public review period and the agency’s proposed changes/responses (see front page article in the June 10, 2021 issue of the News Review). Although it is not clear whether public concerns on the FEIS will be received, the environmental law firm of Jill Grant and Associates, retained by the city in their opposition to the SCMaglev project, recommends that the city comment on any new items or new comments/actions pertaining to previous items appearing in the FEIS to establish the city’s right to future input or appeal on those topics (if they fail to reference a point they later wish to make, there’s no going back). The BEP facility is to be built at the intersection of Poultry and Odell Roads in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) and will be between 40 and 50 feet tall and almost one million square feet in extent (~21 football fields) plus parking. It will likely generate heavy and continuous truck traffic on Powder Mill Road.
County Executive Angela Alsobrooks has publicly commented in favor of the BARC location for the new plant, meaning, as Councilmember Judith Davis commented, that there was little likelihood of county support for the city’s opposition.
Councilmember Rodney Roberts pointed out that, although the DEIS itself had narrowed the choices down to include only one site option, all the 16 or so originally suggested sites were located within Prince George’s County so, had Alsobrooks supported another location, the county was still a shoo-in for the much-coveted federal jobs. As Roberts noted, he was disappointed that BARC was selected, when the other candidate sites were not in areas as environmentally sensitive.
Also commenting was Vijay Parameshwaran who revealed that the Department of the Treasury has recently been cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for problems with BEP’s chemical and air emissions
handling at its D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas, facilities. He suggested that with a new and more environmentally concerned White House and a new treasury secretary, an effort by the city to attract the administration’s attention to its concerns would perhaps not go amiss.
Council authorized the city staff to draft an appropriate letter once their analysis of newly published material is complete.
