Anne Arundel is rationing access to Chesapeake Bay, critics say

I was lost in a thicket of pawpaws and towering bittersweet vines at South River Farm Park.

Lisa Arrasmith and Mike Lofton were walking me to the water's edge, picking a path through public land across the South River from Annapolis. It was overgrown and littered with flotsam from hundreds of surging storms.

His knee was dodgy but holding up. She couldn't stop explaining how easy it would be to add an inexpensive kayak launch, expanding the public access map on the Chesapeake Bay by one more dot.

Ten years after I first met these water access advocates, they are angry. They say Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman has slowed the momentum they helped build. The county government has, they said, gotten bogged down in feasibility studies and caters to neighbors who want to keep the public away.

"What Steuart did, and I blame him personally for this, was take away our seat at the table and didn't replace it with anything," Lofton said.

Pittman — a Democrat who prides himself on responsive, good government — is sensitive to the criticism. He preempted this column in his weekly newsletter on Friday, explaining his strategy to tens of thousands of constituents days after our interview.

Instead of adding more places that too few people use, he said, his administration is focused on creating summer river festivals, making fishing piers and docks wheelchair accessible and advocating for public access at state and federal sites like Holly Beach Farm and Greenbury Point. He's made people without boats his focus.

"The advocates had a pretty narrow approach, and they got things started in the county," Pittman said. "Now we're really — we're adding to that in ways that a much broader group of the public benefits from."

More than 700 local, state and national parks sit along the Chesapeake Bay across Maryland and Virginia. If that sounds like a lot, consider they are spread over thousands of miles of shoreline.

Twenty years ago, little of that was in Anne Arundel County. It has five major rivers, thousands of streams and creeks, and hundreds of coves, inlets and bays along 533 miles of shore. But there was only one public beach. There were two boat ramps, one at Sandy Point State Park and the other at Truxtun Park in Annapolis.

If you wanted waterfront access anywhere else, you had to buy it.

People did just that. After World War II, suburban homes sprouted on old farmland. Builders added private beaches, docks and marinas as amenities. Anne Arundel set up special property tax districts to collect funds and allocate them for upkeep. Who needs public access when you've got a private paradise?

Lofton realized this in the early 2000s, when he started looking for places to go fishing close to his Harwood home. There were none. That's when he discovered dozens of pieces of land owned by the county government but unavailable to the public.

"Wait a minute," he thought, "this is all public money."

He and others formed the Public Water Access Committee. They urged county administrations to open public waterfront for public use. They identified dozens of "opportunity parks," where carving out a kayak launch, laying down some gravel for parking and adding a sign would be quick victories. The first was on Jack Creek Park, a tiny space in Shady Side with the bare minimum of amenities.

Progress has been remarkable, maybe even unique in Maryland. Since 2013, Anne Arundel has added two more public boat ramps and two public beaches while creating 22 kayak launches.

For years, the big prize remained closed.

In the 1980s, County Executive O. James Lighthizer bought three pieces of land targeted by developers on the South River. One became Quiet Waters Park just outside Annapolis, with sweeping views, wide lawns, miles of trails and pavilions.

Another was Beverly Beach, once a segregated resort on the Mayo Peninsula. Instead of spending millions to develop a second Quiet Waters, the county leased the sandy strip of beach to the neighboring community for $1 a year. They put up a fence. The rest sat almost forgotten for three decades.

Elected in 2018, Pittman initially opposed advocates' call to end the lease. But the public debate caught the attention of the state Department of Natural Resources. Lighthizer used state Open Space money to buy those three parcels, which came with the requirement to open them up.

Pittman reversed course and launched what his critics have since come to hate, a feasibility study.

"By the time you have a feasibility study, you're looking [at] at least a three- to four-year delay before maybe a change of political leadership. Then nothing happens," Arrasmith said. "Beverly Triton had two before the one that finally went through, maybe three."

Five years later, the rechristened Beverly Triton Nature Area opened. Pittman considers it a success, balancing the environment, neighbors' quiet lifestyle and the public's right to use its own land.

That's how his administration continues to see public access. Small changes are in the works, like a new dock at Historic London Town & Gardens in Edgewater or camping sites at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Lothian. Big changes, like Homeport Farm Park near Annapolis or Valentine Creek Park in Crownsville, involve yearslong studies and discussions.

And it's about to launch a new type of study, looking at 14 "underutilized parks" — including that first simple kayak launch, Jack Creek Park.

"I feel like the county's focus has really changed and I think that's the success story," said Jessica Leys, county director of recreation and parks. "It's not just you have to build two boat ramps per waterway. It's more of a water access comes in many different shapes and sizes to many different people."

Arrasmith sees the studies and small projects as another way to shut the door.

"Every once in a while, someone pokes the county and they do a feasibility study," said Arrasmith, who lives far from the water in Hanover. "The neighbors, who have gotten real cozy with having a defacto private park next door, don't have to buy it, they don't have to maintain it, they don't insure it. The political will goes away, the political backbone goes away, and it's just it's easier for the elected officials not to do anything."

Back at South River Farm Park, Arrasmith, Lofton and I navigated past the county road maintenance shed — its the main structure — and explored the 181 acres of fields, shoreline and trees. This was Lighthizer's third purchase, with views across the river of Quiet Waters Park, marked by a few bike trails cut by volunteers.

There was a plan, done decades ago and long forgotten. Pittman's administration, with two years left in office, has started to talk about what's feasible.

"We just had the stakeholders group created to revisit the South River Farm Park master plan. And that was a really big commitment of this administration to listen to the residents that live in the area," Leys said.

Neither Arrasmith nor Lofton were invited. After the Public Water Access Committee was elevated to a commission under then-County Executive Steve Schuh, Pittman disbanded it. He said it was Lofton's idea, but Lofton disagrees.

Arrasmith, who considers kayakers the guerilla front of water access, said the county could easily put in a kayak launch now and let the planning take its course.

Lofton, who started all this just to find a place to go fishing, sees Pittman's philosophy in one other way — the continued use of reservation systems for parks like Beverly Triton.

"They're rationing systems. That's what they are. They can't supply the demand," he said. "McDonald's doesn't make you get a reservation to buy a hamburger. They put another damn hamburger store up."