Activists elated, Tradepoint frustrated as Hart-Miller Island won’t receive dredged material

First published Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024 in the Dundalk Eagle.

Hart-Miller Island will not be where Tradepoint Atlantic places the material it dredges up from deepening its harbor.

Community activists cautiously celebrated the announcement last week. Two council members and the county executive expressed disappointment. Tradepoint’s Aaron Tomarchio told the Eagle he was frustrated.

“While there were many who understood the value of a win-win opportunity and the positive impact such a significant investment of $40 million could have in their communities,” Tomarchio wrote in a letter to Baltimore County sent Thursday, Oct. 10, “there remains a long-held sentiment that Hart-Miller Island should remain as-is.”

The long-held sentiment continues, the executive vice president of corporate affairs wrote, despite the $40 million proposed community benefit agreement and “assurances” that the company is dedicated to placing the dredged material on the island safely.

Frank Neighoff, the president of the Chesapeake Bay Association and a member of the committee that would have advised the Baltimore County Council on how to spend the $40 million, said he was “very pleased.”

Keith Taylor, the president of the Sparrows Point-North Point Historical Society, called the news “wonderful” but cautioned that the fight wasn’t over.

Tomarchio told the Eagle that his company was “community-minded” and understood the community “did not” want to see the dredged material placed on Hart-Miller Island, created through the dredging of the Baltimore harbor in the 1980s.

“Is it frustrating that certain people lack vision? Yes,” he said. “Is it frustrating that certain people are unable to let go of the past and look toward the future? Yes.”

“But are we respecting the decision of the community?” he continued. “Absolutely.”

And so the proposal to put the dredged material from the site of the former Bethlehem Steel Mill, where Tradepoint and Mediterranean Shipping Company want to expand the harbor into one capable of hosting the large container ships in a billion-dollar project, onto the island is dead in the water. 

The Hart-Miller Island plan was just one of three proposals for what to do with the dredge.

THE PLAN

Tradepoint plans to move ahead with a “blended” option, where it would deposit the 4.2 million cubic yards of dredge, dug from the bottom of its harbor while deepening it to 50 feet by 2028, in four different sites.

Roughly a third of the cleanest dredge would be dumped into the ocean off the coast of Norfolk, a third of the dredge would be contained on its own property and the last third would be stored at an existing containment site run by the state across the Patapsco River in Cox Creek by Hawkins Point.

An environmental report the company commissioned, released to the public on Oct. 2, cleared the first hurdle for the third to be dumped into the ocean. The report found it clean enough to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards.

Another proposal called for building a new facility on the western part of Coke Point, taking away 100 acres of water — about 76 football field’s worth — for a closed-off site with the dredged material, called a dredged material containment facility.

Scott Pappas, the president of the Fort Howard Community Association who sat on the committee advising what to do with the funds as well, said either of the two options that did not involve placing the material on public, recreational land was fine with him as long as the corporation followed the law.

“You’ve got to remember that Hart-Miller Island is a commonwealth, it’s a state property that we as taxpayers of the state of Maryland, we own that,” he said. “What they wished to do was to take their materials and put it onto one of our gems, one of our recreational places.”

LAST-MINUTE CHANGE

So why the sudden change of heart at Tradepoint, after at least two months of pushing for the dredge to be placed on Hart-Miller Island?

“I think there was a combination of things that played a role in it,” Tomarchio said.

Community feedback was one big pillar, he said. On Tuesday, Oct. 8, more than 90 people jammed into a small meeting room at the North Point Library to hear about Tradepoint’s proposal to deposit the dredge on the island.

Many community members hadn’t heard of the project. The number of attendees was more than twice that of any meeting with the committee, called the Hart-Miller Island Community Benefit Agreement Steering Committee.

About two hours after the meeting began, some members of that committee asked the community members to vote on whether the committee members should advise the County Council to accept or reject the $40 million Community Benefit Agreement.

It wasn’t even close. 86 residents voted to reject the agreement, according to Neighoff’s Facebook post. Two voted to accept it. One voted undecided.

Less than 48 hours later, Tradepoint jettisoned the plan. That canceled a committee meeting later that day, set to be held at the Sollers Point Multipurpose Center.

Tomarchio derided the meeting as a “kangaroo court,” claiming that Tradepoint was not invited.

“There was no opportunity to present the facts of what was actually going on and being proposed,” he said. “So, of course, when you have a one-sided conversation happening, people are going to end up on that one side.”

Taylor chuckled when asked to respond.

“Sometimes the community has to speak for itself,” he said, “and I think that happened Tuesday.”

The second pillar, Tomarchio said, was a realization that placing the dredge on the island wasn’t nearly as simple as they had expected.

It would take about the same amount of time, he said the company realized, to build the new containment facility in Hart-Miller Island’s North Cell as it would to place the dredge via the “blended” plan.

Now, with the plan to place the dredge on the island jettisoned, the $40 million that went along with that as compensation is gone as well. Tradepoint will not be paying the communities any money, whatever plan it goes ahead with.

Pappas isn’t sorry to see the money go.

“What they were doing is compensating the community for their political support in order for them to have a fast track and a secure place to put their dread spoils from their construction and real estate development at Tradepoint Atlantic,” he said.