‘Porky’ project smells bad to locals

RUTHSBURG, Md. | They had the pig balloons flown in overnight from Massachusetts.

Twelve of them. Pink; made of mylar and filled with helium. They loomed over the casually clad crowd that had gathered in the hundreds last month to hear crisply tailored federal officials try for the third time to justify the proposed construction of a security training center sprawled across 2,000 acres of local farmland.

The pigs were a reminder that many in this rural community - and virtually everyone gathered in the high school auditorium that night - viewed the federal project as wasteful. Take the $70 million in stimulus funds and the promises of hundreds of new jobs somewhere else, they said.

For more than three hours, officials from the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the General Services Administration patiently answered questions and withstood scathing comments that revealed an opposition and distrust rivaling the most confrontational displays in last year’s health care town-hall summits.

When it was over, few opinions had been swayed.

Now, after the end of a public comment period that has been extended twice, residents are awaiting the results of an environmental assessment to judge whether the planned center - which includes shooting ranges, driving tracks, reproductions of city streets for live-fire simulations and explosives detonations that would train 10,000 students per year - is an appropriate fit for this bucolic Eastern Shore community.

Federal officials say the center will bring short-term construction jobs along with 400 permanent jobs to Queen Anne’s County, which in January recorded an 8.4 percent unemployment rate - slightly more than the state’s 8.3 percent rate but lower than last month’s national rate of 9.7 percent.

They promised the campus would be a good neighbor and pledged to mitigate traffic and noise problems.

But many residents say the stimulus funds and the jobs come with too big a price tag. They fear that long after the financial crisis has passed, they will be saddled with a facility that spoils the rural character of the area, strains the local infrastructure and further harms the environment around the Chesapeake Bay.

And many are just distrustful of promises made by the federal government.

Regardless of the decision, opponents say, the process by which officials chose to locate this facility has been a model for how the federal government brought millions of dollars in job-creation funds yet alienated a community it was nominally intending to help.

“We have been treated by the GSA and the State Department as if we’re a bunch of backwood hicks who don’t know what’s good for us,” said Centreville resident Sveinn Storm, a local activist who has taken a prominent role in opposing the center.

“In reality, we are mainstream America. We’re angry about wasteful projects that are going to ensure that our children and grandchildren won’t be able to climb out of the pit of debt that projects like this are digging for them. We are absolutely livid at the treatment that we’ve received.”

State Department officials say the consolidated facility is needed to train security personnel who protect embassies and diplomats in the United States and abroad. A 2007 report from State’s Office of Inspector General criticized the inefficiencies in shuttling trainees among 14 facilities in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

“The State Department’s training program is vital to the security of U.S. government personnel and their families,” said Jeffrey Culver, director of the department’s Diplomatic Security Service. “Without this consolidation plan, [diplomatic security] training programs will continue to be hampered by facilities shortcomings.”

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