Rural Internet access slowed

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

ANNAPOLIS (AP) — A $10 million plan to bring less-expensive high-speed Internet access to rural parts of Maryland is on hold because of a bureaucratic dispute that critics say is a case of red tape getting in the way of progress.

State lawmakers voted two years ago to set aside the money to build a "spine" of fiber-optic cable in three rural regions of the state — Southern Maryland, the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland — where Internet-service providers don't always provide high-speed access.

At the time, supporters said the Maryland Broadband Cooperative would bring big-city Internet access to underserved parts of the state, which would attract high-tech businesses and allow more rural Marylanders to work from home.

The money was set aside, politicians trumpeted the initiative and about 100 miles of cable were laid. Workers laid cable from Wallops Island, 42 miles south of Salisbury, on the Eastern Shore, up to Dorchester County on the way to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

But work stopped last fall at the Choptank River in Cambridge because the Maryland Department of the Environment told the cooperative it would need wetlands permits to cross the river. Though the cooperative is quasi-governmental, and the cable was to be laid along an existing bridge, not under the Choptank or through undeveloped land, environmental officials declared a $1-a-foot annual permit would be needed.

Environmental officials say the broadband initiative is a laudable effort but the cooperative must apply and pay for annual permits just like everybody else.

The cooperative thinks it should be exempt and that the fees amount to shuffling taxpayer dollars from one agency to another, with fees piling up until the rural broadband initiative far exceeds its budget.

"Long after we were heavily into construction and completed that initial link, we learned that Maryland has additional permitting," cooperative president John Dillman said.

The dispute has lawmakers' attention and is headed to the desk of Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, as the cooperative plans to seek a permit exemption from the Board of Public Works, of which Mr. O'Malley is a member.

"Your agency has single-handedly brought rural broadband to a screeching halt," Delegate Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, Talbot Republican, told Environment Secretary Shari Wilson at a recent legislative briefing.