Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up.
Okay, so this news has been around for some time, but I’m hearing it more and more these days so here it is.
’Round these parts we’ve got this subway/train system called “the Metro.” First developed in the 1960s and built mostly in the ’70s and ’80s, “the Metro” is a series of connected, rapid transit rail lines connecting Washington and its suburbs. The latest piece of this puzzle is the still-being-built Silver Line, which I hope someday really jacks up the value of my home.
Proposals to add a new line to the expanding spider web of existing routes have been at least partially green-lighted in Maryland, where the “Purple Line” is projected to open in the year 2020 (at least according to experts on the Internet).
The thing about rail lines is, not everybody wants them going through his or her backyard. Say you already have a valuable home, like in suburban Maryland, why would you need a nearby train station to offer as a selling point? (Your chauffer doesn’t ride the train either.) Oh, how to stop the train, how to stop this oncoming train?
Leave it to the folks in tony suburban Maryland to come up with the most cliché white liberal response. The golfers at nearby Columbia Country Club? No, no, that’s too obvious. (Though they’ve voiced their objection as well.)
Ever heard of the Hay’s Spring amphipod?
How about the Kenk’s amphipod?
Answer: shrimplike crustaceans living (perhaps) in Rock Creek Park, possibly threatened, possibly endangered, possibly able to halt construction of a $2.4 billion construction project.
Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up.
The Chevy Chase (Md.) Town Council has already voted to give $10,000 to the Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail (seriously) so it can hire an American University professor to study how construction of the Purple Line will impact the shrimp and its natural habitat. Seriously.
According to the Washington Post: “Maryland transit officials said neither the Maryland Department of Natural Resources nor the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service mentioned any endangered species along the Purple Line’s proposed 16-mile route between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.”
But that didn’t stop John M. Fitzgerald, a Chevy Chase resident and lawyer, who said, “This statement should not be interpreted… as meaning that rare, threatened or endangered species are not in fact present. If [an] appropriate habitat is available, certain species could be present without documentation because adequate surveys have not been conducted.”
I guess the question now is, when do you stop looking for endangered species.
I think that’s your sign the environmentalists have already won.