Local residents worry about potential impact

MAGLEV, domain to take properties for access roads, maintenance facilities and ventilation shafts all along the route.

They’re also concerned about the potential harm caused by vibration, noise and electromagnetic fields; the adverse impact on existing local trains that actually stop along the corridor; and problems from the tunneling, which they say could disrupt underground aquifers and expose residents to naturally occurring radon.

Skolnik, president of the Greenbelt cooperative, said his community supports mass transit over further growth of highways in the state. But they believe the maglev would serve only “a small number of rather high-end people.”

A better idea, he said, “would be to spend that money to improve the Amtrak lines so that the Acela trains could actually run at the speeds they are supposed to run at.”

Anay Hernandez, 29, one of about 30 people who recently protested in Bladensburg against the project, said information has not been shared well with the area’s large Spanish-speaking community. Her mother, Leticia Carino, 49, fears she will lose her house if the maglev is built.

“We didn’t know anything about it until like a week ago,” Hernandez said. “My mom was like, ‘We have to do something. Let’s go to the protest.’ ”

Allen, president of the Westport group, said BWRR plans that draw a big circle around her neighborhood as a possible site for a maglev station are “frightening” — especially given Baltimore’s history of black communities’ being destroyed when major infrastructure projects are built.

She said she would welcome the maglev if it were built on the vacant waterfront in Westport, didn’t displace black families and raised local home values. But she recalls family members’ being forced out of their homes when a never-finished highway was built through the middle of West Baltimore years ago.

“This crap has got to stop where [developers say], ‘We’re not going to tell you anything until we have something to offer you,’ and that’s basically a pink slip and some chump change telling us to go find somewhere else to live,” Allen said. “That’s a bad habit in Baltimore.”