Where Planning and the Environment Meet: Lessons from Canal Woods 

But infill is not the same as building on a field that has only ever been farmed, or a forest that has never held a structure. Reused land carries the legacy of what came before it: old foundations, fill of unknown origin, buried debris, and the invisible residues of decades of prior use. That is the trade-off at the heart of infill — it spares untouched land, but it asks us to build on ground whose history we may not fully know. Doing infill well, consequently, requires being mindful of toxins that can be unearthed from those prior uses, and of the impacts of construction on those who live nearby — not only because substances like lead, petroleum byproducts, and asbestos can make children and seniors sick, but because they can also reach our waterways and forests.

Unfortunately, I recently learned that the planning process for the City of Salisbury is still evolving to handle the complex questions infill development raises.

I live in Canal Woods, a dense neighborhood of condominiums where a new development has been approved on the site of the old Canal Woods swim club. My neighbors and I support new development — townhouses here are a sensible answer to a shortage of reasonably priced housing. Our neighborhood is walkable, close to shops and restaurants, and exemplifies what smart development can be. Unfortunately, building on a site with structures dating to the pre-lead-paint-ban era, and without a documented demolition history, is complicated. Contaminants left in the soil from prior work can be unearthed during construction and pose a risk to children, or could spread to nearby Tony Tank Pond. The concern here is not that dirt or dust is inherently bad or completely avoidable — neither is true — but that without testing we cannot tell the difference between dirt from a farm or dust and debris from a former building or parking lot.  

Salisbury's planning process could have addressed these concerns. Instead, what my neighbors and I found was a gap in responsibility. Our Planning Commission did not act on community requests to test the soil before approving the project; in important respects the decision appeared to set aside substantial evidence and public concern that are ordinarily weighed in planning decisions across the country. When our community submitted a detailed summary of the potential health risks — grounded in peer-reviewed research and federal health standards — it was waved off as an academic exercise. The developer, for their part, was well-intentioned and engaged with us in good faith — but this is one of their initial residential projects, and they were not up to speed on the public health implications of tearing up a site like this one. That is precisely the point: no one in the process was clearly responsible for, or equipped to address, the health questions the project raised and the harms that could be borne by residents who have no share in the profits from the project. The gap was not bad faith. It was structural — and structural gaps are the ones that hurt people quietly, again and again, until someone fixes them.

 The same gap appeared at every level we turned to. The Maryland Department of the Environment told us that, absent a finding of contamination, there was no issue for it to resolve. And our Health Department, as we understand it, lacks the authority to test soil proactively. Each office was looking at a different piece of the problem, and none of them owned the whole.

The net result is that in a matter of weeks, children and seniors in our community may be exposed to untested dirt and debris as a developer clears several acres and tears up an aging parking lot. If we care about the environment, about land management, and about public health, I'd encourage us to recognize how tightly these issues are intertwined — and to make sure the officials we charge with protecting them are trained and empowered to do so. This question will only come up more often, not less, as we continue to grapple with limited land and many competing demands on how we use it.