Josh Tulkin has watched the Purple Line being built from the front window of his home in Silver Spring for nearly a decade. His kids and neighbors’ children take a photo in the same spot every year next to the construction site. Some kids in that picture have grown up; others have new siblings.
The 16-mile rail line connecting Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, is an expensive, splashy bet on growth and transportation in the D.C. Region with support that has crossed party lines. It ranks among the largest public transit projects of the 2020s in the country.
It has also drawn opposition from local environmental groups for years.
Tulkin runs the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club. He says environmental groups spent decades getting very good at stopping things from being built. And this has created national tensions in Democratic-lead states such as Washington, California and Maryland where environmental regulation is blamed for slowing down or making it prohibitively expensive for officials to take on massive housing and transit projects. Political leaders are now rewriting some of those environmental-review laws and streamlining permitting.
“We wanted to stop companies from polluting our water, from harming communities, and we want to stop harmful sprawl,” Tulkin explained in a WAMU interview.
The advocacy group Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail sued over the Purple Line three times, arguing among other things that the project’s environmental review was inadequate and that construction through streams and wetlands violated the Clean Water Act. The first lawsuit delayed construction by nearly a year and contributed to at least $215 million in added costs. The group did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.
Tulkin supports the Purple Line, saying all the noise and debris in the air is part of the price paid for getting more cars off the road.
“To stop harmful sprawl you can’t just oppose highway expansion,” he says. “You need housing, you need better development where you want it.”
He also said ‘yes’ to other projects such as solar development, and, more recently, to Governor Wes Moore’s push for more transit-oriented housing.
David Karol studies political parties and national interest groups at the University of Maryland. He has written extensively on environmental politics. He says national environmental organizations, which have become closely aligned with Democrats, have to consider a public that wants growth, jobs and goods at low prices.
“The national leaders of environmental groups have to see the big picture and have to think about the political coalition they’re in. And for a local activist concerned about his or her community, these other considerations are probably less pressing,” he explains.
Delegate Marc Korman, a Montgomery County Democrat who chairs the Environment and Transportation Committee, says there is no formula for weighing local environmental damage against a project’s broader benefit. What matters, he says, is what the damage buys.
“If we are going to cut down an acre of trees, what are we getting for that acre of trees?” Korman says. “Are we building a parking lot? Are we building a shopping mall, or are we building solar panels that are going to power a community or a transit line that’s going to get you from A to B?”
He believes that the answer depends on where you start. Korman says his own tolerance for short-term environmental harm is higher because of the value he places on public transit.
Kit Gage runs advocacy for Friends of Sligo Creek, a small environmental group in Silver Spring. She says her group supports mass transit and, to an extent, the Purple Line. But they did have environmental concerns because the line crosses Sligo Creek. They spent years pushing its planners to account for stormwater runoff and to replant trees close to the same spot they were prior to construction.
Gage understands why groups like hers can get labeled NIMBYs — shorthand for people who oppose development in or near their own communities -– or local greenspace. But she says their position is more nuanced.
“We don’t oppose the idea of building,” she explains. “We opposed the very typical development process, whether it’s one building or a whole new development of cutting down all the existing trees and leveling a property, which does really terrible damage to the soil. And the stuff that lives in it.”
In 2024, her group also went to court to oppose the county’s approval of a project across from the Forest Glen Metro — 390 apartments, 15 percent of which would have been moderately priced. She says the developer’s plan included clearing a small existing forest. They lost in May and the county’s approvals were upheld. Though by then the developer had already walked away.
“Thousands of people live up and down Sligo Creek and the park and love it. They value it. They try to protect it. Truly remarkable to see how much people identify this little park as something really valuable to them. And I think, and that’s true of the little forest,” Gage continues.
Tulkin says he takes concerns from local groups such as Gage’s seriously. He doesn’t think wanting to protect your own neighborhood is a bad instinct — he also doesn’t want to override his own members. He says showing up in every county is what makes the Sierra Club powerful. But he wants local groups to consider the bigger picture before they oppose new development.
“I think we need to listen to the concerns that people are saying,” Tulkin explains. “But you don’t have the right, just because you live somewhere, to stop a project that’s going to bring benefits to lots of people.”
The Purple Line is scheduled to open late next year. They’ve laid the last track and trains are running test laps along completed segments. But the development fight has already moved on to what surrounds it. Montgomery County plans to build sidewalks so people can get to the stations. Some neighbors are objecting — over stormwater runoff, lost parking and trees on their properties. The county has already canceled one proposal near Takoma-Langley Station, citing both opposition and lack of money.
The post Some Maryland environmental activists want to shake their NIMBY reputation appeared first on WAMU.
Published Date : 2026-09-07 13:38:00
Source : wamu.org
