Opinion
Watershed
Maryland made a quiet but remarkable promise this summer. Since July 1, the state’s official policy has no longer been to avoid losing forest; it is to gain it, measured every four years, under changes to the Forest Conservation Act that the Maryland Forest Service summarized as a shift “from no net forest loss to net forest gain.” The law behind it, Senate Bill 526, passed in 2023.
Now comes the first test. In Waldorf, a developer wants to build three multifamily buildings and a community building on a 2.88-acre forested parcel off Old Washington Road. Every acre of that forest would be cleared, with no planting on site, a county planner told the Charles County Planning Commission last week, according to the Southern Maryland Chronicle. To meet its replanting obligation, the developer proposes to buy credits for existing forest protected somewhere else to cover 60% of what it owes, and to pay a fee for the rest.
The new law caps that kind of offsite credit, which the state calls “qualified conservation,” at 50% of a project’s mitigation. It can rise to 60% only with justification, after a public comment period and with approval from the Department of Natural Resources, which is reviewing the request now.
I want to be fair to the project. It is affordable housing, and the region needs much more of it. The developer’s attorney, Sue Greer, made a reasonable point: the parcel sits in the county’s development district and priority funding area, in the Waldorf redevelopment corridor and in a federal opportunity zone, exactly where governments say growth should go. My colleague Leah Okonkwo-Hart will make that case in this space later today, and she will make it well.
But look at what this particular parcel is. It is mapped as priority urban forest in a Tier II high-quality watershed, and the plan would disturb trees measuring 30 inches in diameter, the Chronicle reported. Tier II waters are those whose existing water quality is “significantly better than the minimum requirements,” according to the Maryland Department of the Environment, the kind of streams that feed the Chesapeake Bay. Priority urban forest is the state’s label for the patches of canopy that do the most work where people actually live.
That work is not abstract. Trees and vegetation lower surface and air temperatures by providing shade and through evapotranspiration, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In a growing suburb, the residents of new apartments are often the people who benefit most from the shade outside their windows.
Credits are not trees
The offsite credits in this case would not plant a single new tree. As the county planner explained, qualified conservation means buying credits for existing forest that is already protected in a retention bank elsewhere. Charles County has plenty of retention banks but no planting banks, she said, which is why the rest of the obligation would be paid as a fee.
So the arithmetic is simple. Waldorf loses 2.88 acres of priority forest. A forest that was already standing somewhere else stays standing. Under a law whose stated goal is net gain, that is a net loss, and it is the first decision made under the new rules.
The 50% cap exists precisely so that mitigation means something. Lawmakers already wrote in relief for exactly this kind of housing. Under the revised act, multifamily projects of 25 or more units and transit-oriented development can reforest at a quarter-acre planted for every acre removed, or mitigate through preservation at half an acre for every acre, according to the Forest Service overview. That is a generous discount. The cap is the line that keeps the discount from becoming a pass.
Build the housing, keep the line
Nothing here requires choosing between homes and trees. It requires design. The new law gave neighbors a stronger voice when priority forest is cleared, requiring notice at least 20 days before a forest conservation plan is approved. Use that window to ask whether the buildings can be sited to save the biggest trees, whether some planting can happen on site or nearby, and whether Charles County can finally stand up a planting bank so that fee money becomes real forest in the same watershed.
The District has shown that a city can grow and protect canopy at the same time. This year the D.C. Council passed the Tree Preservation Enhancement Amendment Act, which lowered the threshold for a protected “Special Tree” from 44 inches in circumference to 40 and requires removal fees and fines to rise with inflation starting in 2029, with Tree Fund money going to planting on public land and help for residents replacing hazardous trees.
The county’s planning staff will bring an update of Charles County’s own forest ordinance to the planning commission on Nov. 16, the Chronicle reported. That is the right place to work out how future projects get reviewed. The wrong move would be for the very first case under a net-gain law to be decided by stretching the offsite cap to its limit on a parcel the state itself has flagged as high-priority forest.
Approve the homes. Hold the 50% line. Make the credits buy new trees. If Maryland bends on day one, the promise of net forest gain will not survive the second test, or the hundredth.
Juniper Hale is the pen name of a Washington Inquisitor opinion columnist writing from an environmentalist perspective. The views expressed are the author’s own and not those of The Washington Inquisitor.
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