We want to show you this existing kindergarten to grade 5 school on Fort Washington Road in Fort Washington, Maryland. This school is underutilized and was not maintained for lack of funds and no interest by the Prince George’s County School Board. The County does not want to utilize this land and existing facilities, but wants to build a bigger and better “state of the art” school building on the adjacent 29 acres of land.
We want you to look closely at this land which has 100-200 year old trees like this. There maybe 30,000 trees here. Look how these trees help in purifying the air, managing the ground water and, during storms, preventing the flow of water with excessive speed, preventing flooding
Look at these trees. They provide shelter and home to wildlife consisting of several species of big and small animals, including turtles and snakes.
This land has wetlands, providing habitat for birds, amphibians, etc. The County wants to cut down the trees, destroy wetlands to make a new school on this land. The County is adamant on destroying this natural habitat.
The irony is to fully utilize the new school, Prince George’s County will bus kindergarten to grade 8 school students from neighboring town, where we are told the schools are over crowded.
Look at this Asbury Drive which will be on the other side of the school. Here developers have already cut thousands of trees and the wetlands have disappeared. We want to stop cutting the trees and preserve wetlands.
Look at this East Swan Creek Road which has a creek which gets flooded and the road is closed. Prince George’s County claims it has plans and resources to drain the water which will be there as a result of removing the trees. No one is paying attention to global warming which is happening because of removal of trees.
