Legislative Director
Dave Thomas
dslmd@cbyca.org
I really enjoyed the CBYCA “float in” to the Kent Island Yacht Club and having the opportunity to chat with a number of the club’s members on a beautiful Saturday the weekend before Labor Day!
On August 18th, I was interested to see a number of CBYCA attendees at the large turn out to the public meeting Amtrak held at the Joppatown Christian Church in reference principally to the Gunpowder River railroad bridge, but also the Bush River. Thanks here to both Gene and Mark who spoke at our August Delegates meeting in support of this matter, having also been at the August 18th meeting.
Because of the opacity of this situation and its history, I will try to summarize this meeting as follows:
The meeting started promptly at 6:00 p.m. a fter welcoming remarks from Pastor Adam of the hosting church, with introductory remarks of Denise Miller, a government affairs leader at Amtrak. The Amtrak consultant teams of “HNTB” and the Calladium Group were introduced as well as Amtrak’s project and team members, a number of which were on hand for what was described as an informational meeting as to how the process works in relation to an important and expensive effort which is underway to modernize the aging Northeast rail corridor and which transports some 23% of the commerce and people by Amtrak’s reckoning going between Washington, D.C. and Boston and worth 170 million dollars per day, if my notes got it right.
A single two-sided sheet of information (with one side describing the Gunpowder Bridge and the other focused on the Bush River), was handed out together with a clip board and sheet of paper for each person in attendance to pose written questions for a question-and-answer time “if there was time”. The meeting was scheduled for and did end a fter exactly one hour, and which included only some nine minutes at the end that covered a few submitted questions from the many that were collected on the clipboards minutes before.
One “mike drop” question as it was put as it was read, was as to what the clearances for the two bridges was finally going to be?
It was responded that the 30-foot height clearance for Bush River and 15 feet for Gunpowder River were only preliminary determinations and that the final clearances were unknown but would be determined by the Coast Guard. What “seemed” to be implicit in this was that these clearances were the ones that were recommended by Amtrak in light of their surveys and whatever other materials they submitted, and that as of that meeting, Amtrak stood by those clearances as meeting the reasonable needs of navigation for both rivers. However, and frustratingly, the actual content of these materials was never supplied or directly discussed. At one point Amtrak asked the audience, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how are we doing?” The sole answer from the back of the room was a loud “One!” Hmmm.
The context here is that both bridges have a current nominal 12-foot clearance in relation to the river’s water level and which varies by tidal and weather conditions, to be brief. While during the meeting it was said that around “1936” the Gunpowder Bridge was no longer either being opened or operable under some description or circumstance and which “was only 20 years or so” (words to that effect) a fter the bridge now in place there was built. I must confess, I was expecting to hear a much more factually concise history here! Two factors that were touched on included that the bridge has changed ownership (and apparently at some point from the Pennsylvania Railroad) since 1936 and that the Coast Guard only came into its present role in relation to this matter in 1967, having received those responsibilities from the US Corps of Army Engineers.
The upshot is that for decades now the Gunpowder Bridge has been welded permanently shut with such a low clearance that many impacts have resulted, among them being that dredging equipment cannot transit the bridge, and the watercourse has filled with sediment not susceptible to commercially reasonable and conventional dredging maintenance. In contrast, from similarly unknown and/or unspecified dates, the Bush River rail bridge for decades has been absent a draw bridge tender–of the originally designed and operated bascule bridge arrangement– and which matched the engineering of the Gunpowder River of around 1916 (also “twenty years before ‘1936’ “). However, at Bush River and for some decades now, it has been subject to opening of the draw span by a crew of 20 rail workers which can temporarily hoist it open with a crane on rolling stock. Thereby, the bascule draw span can open to a vertical clearance of some 34 feet, and which it was said happens “a lot during the summers”. (A fter the meeting I was able to ascertain that, in recent years, the un- welding and rewelding of the rails methodology of many years, has now been authorized to be replaced by a different system whereby “pins” of some sort can be struck out with “sledges” and the same rails reinstalled with “pins”.) This pin arrangement apparently avoids replacement every third time of the rails due to limitations on rewelding integrity and which had necessitated bigger crew sizes during rail replacement as opposed to rail re-use episodes, if I have this right. Missing from any discussion entirely was the devastating impact that limited weekend-only openings that also have to be arranged have on spontaneous recreational boating.
The two-sided sheet of paper I mentioned above does summarize this difference between the two bridges by pointing out, but as to only the Bush River, that there is “Increased marine navigational clearance”.
The only non-rail employed speaker at this meeting was Sarah Kestner, a local community member, who has worked hard on this matter and again had WMAR TV on hand for this event. She also has become involved with the Gunpowder Riverkeepers–and which very recently got a 4.1-million-dollar judgment in court due to construction sediment now in the Gunpowder and which has a substantial dredging aspect as one would imagine. Her basic concern, and which I believe is well founded, is that the folks that use the Gunpowder River and who otherwise, live and work and enjoy the area have not “had a say” over the years as the area has been impacted by the railroad. It was hoped that this meeting was a step in the right direction in this regard.
The longest speaker of the hour was Christian Brown, an engineer on the project who went over the process involved and mentioning the Harbor and Navigation Acts of Congress of 1894 & 1899 through to the present. While this was a good, relevant overview and with the survey results given of the Gunpowder (1375 surveys mailed and 211 received = to a 15% response rate) and the Bush (482 surveys mailed and 111 received = to a 23% response rate) described as a “high” response reflecting “importance”, this was a general overview only. Specifics as to what all had actually been prepared and submitted to the Coast Guard by Amtrak in these two situations was completely missing nor described or discussed. Similarly, in what ways the “high” response results reflected “importance” of any described sort was not addressed. All of what was said was that Amtrak, as a result, “was listening”.
In summary, and as discussed at the CBYCA delegates meeting on August 29th, this meeting was short, the distributed informational materials consisted of a single sheet of paper, and Q & A part of the meeting very short dealing with only a few questions and not featuring any back- and-forth dialogue or discussion. The presentation was general, and in connection to the resultant “listening”, the meeting closed with the email address (also listed on both sides of the handout sheet of information), was posted on the power point projection screen: BGRBProject@Amtrak.com and with the announcement that the questions that had been submitted on the clip boards at the meeting would be answered and further questions could be emailed in would also be answered.
On the 11 o’clock news that night, it was announced by Denise Miller on camera that there would be no next meeting until there was “news” about the project. Yikes! What happened to the “listening”?
The next day, I submitted a query to the email address spelled out above but got a reply that there was a “delivery failure” due to my email address not being “authorized” to submit emails to the address in question!
While this was apparently ironed out and my query submitted to Amtrak, on the other hand it is now September and I have not yet received any response, and I wonder what has been the success others have had?
My concern is that an asymmetry of information in between Amtrak and the community remains and that absent FOIA requests and a formal request for Coast Guard involvement with public hearings and with no meetings scheduled, the intention of Amtrak is now to do nothing more until the Amtrak requested and granted preliminary determination is rendered as final by the Coast Guard.
This I believe would be unfortunate.
Moreover, because no record of a documented federal process of retiring the operation of the Gunpowder River draw span over the Gunpowder River as a navigable waterway has been identified, the closure of the draw span appears to be presumptively improper under the federal navigation obstruction rules. Therefore, a confirmation of whether the Coast Guard possesses any record of a formal drawbridge retirement, obstruction determination or closure authorization for the Gunpowder River railroad bridge would be a first order of business. If no records exist in clarification of how the Coast Guard treats the navigability status of the Gunpowder River today, guidance on whether the absence of a lawful retirement record affects the evaluation of any new bridge permit for the crossing would be important to clearly understand.
I personally have little doubt that an increase in clearance of far more than the mere three feet provided for in the preliminary determination would enable the Gunpowder River and the parklands there to be opened up and enjoyed more robustly. The undue restrictions the community never has had a public hearing on (or agreed to!), needs to occur with Coast Guard reasonable protection and participation.
A last pair of matters that came up at CBYCA’s annual summer meeting and that were points of confusion and inquiry were:
- While it was said during the August 18th meeting that the Amtrak team that was there that evening was to establish for the community a 10-year availability for information, partnership and transparency. But it was also mentioned at another point that this whole project faced an undescribed funding issue of some sort in “2028”?
- The Bush River Yacht Club had hosted a meeting of concern presented the Gunpowder Bush Waterway Advocacy on June 3, 2026, and which had generated about a score of questions in a handful of categories that were never acknowledged or addressed by Amtrak at the August 18th meeting and thereby remain presumably open questions under this 10-year partnership of listening and communication?