Turtle Power: Can it stop the ICC?

According to this article in the Washington Post this morning construction on the Intercounty Connector (ICC) was supposed to begin on October 16^th. As most people who care probably already know, the project has been delayed by multiple concerns including (I think) most notably concerns on the effects of the new four lane toll road on the environment. I say I think mostly because other then seeing a few things in the news and on blogs here and there it’s never really caught my attention too much before moving out to Greenbelt for somewhat obvious reasons. As a DC resident and car free individual it really didn’t affect me at all and I really didn’t care one way or the other.

Image may be found here.

Obviously my situation has changed pretty drastically over the past couple of months. I’m now in a decent position to benefit from this ICC deal; Greenbelt is just South of Laurel and a connection out to 270 would be pretty easy. That said, I doubt I’d ever really use it much; for one there would be a toll and with 495 right down the road I may as well save my $2 and use 495 like I always do. But when I thought about it aside from my general feelings that more roads accomplish nothing but more traffic I didn’t really take an opinion on the matter, even after I saw an article in the Greenbelt Co-Op newspaper that stated the community’s lack of support for the road.

Yesterday morning reading a bit of a random article in the Washington Post, I finally took an opinion on the project and the reason for my swing vote selection was a bit surprising. The intro included in the email from the article included in my daily email pulled me in when it mentioned short tails wagging and when I clicked over and read on a bit I was somewhat surprised reading on about the turtle activists. Passionate turtle lovers are not something I typically think about when I think about activists and most certainly not when I think about proposed highways.

But, here it was, an article in the Washington Post talking about turtles, turtle activists and the ICC. Reading on the article explains that the path the ICC is proposed to cut through is a solid habitat for turtles and that when the construction would likely be taking place the turtles would be in hibernation underneath the leaves and brush. If nothing was done the would be crushed by the heavy trucks and equipment or buried alive. Yes, they are “just” turtles but at what point do we become so much more important then the rest of the planet’s ecology that we can do something like this? I realize that this delves further into our society as a whole then this and further then I am going to go here but sometimes we should really be sitting back and thinking about the effects of these actions of ours have on our surroundings.

Image may be found here.

The article highlights what the state is doing to protect these turtles; finding and tagging them with locating devices so they can find them again later if the project goes through and move them to safety. While I am glad they are taking these things into consideration and making the effort, this has also swayed my opinion against the ICC. It would be very likely that the turtles would not survive in the area since during their lives they don’t travel more then a few miles within a given area and moving them away would take them further from their initial habitats then they’d ever be on their own. It also shows just how much of an impact this road really would have on the environment by shedding light on an issue that I never would have even imagined.

As my thoughts and opinions about our interactions with our environment have developed over the past few years one thing that I’ve come to believe is important is that we limit our impact where we can. Building the ICC could pose a near devastating impact on the environment and would only promote further damage to the environment by encouraging people to drive instead of finding other modes of transportation, drive further distances and in the end produce only more traffic causing even greater damage to our surroundings.

I personally don’t view myself or my commute as important enough to justify that much more damage to the same environment my children and grandchildren will have to grow up in.