A Maryland judge has invalidated an Eastern Shore county’s move to advance a long-disputed housing project on the shore of the Chester River. The court found in part that the county’s action violates the state’s 41-year-old law regulating waterfront development.
Queen Anne’s County Circuit Court Judge Lynn Knight ruled in favor of three environmental groups and neighboring landowners who challenged the county commissioners’ approval of a plan to build up to 90 homes on 101 acres of fields, woods and wetlands on Kent Island overlooking the Chester.
Reversing previous denials of intense development on that site, the Queen Anne’s commissioners voted in July 2024 to rezone the tract and include it in a county-designated growth area. Officials called the decision a compromise because it reduced by more than half the number of homes the landowner had originally sought to build there.
Along with eight neighbors, the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Chesapeake Wildlife Heritage filed a lawsuit contending that the commissioners acted illegally in blessing the Chesterhaven Beach development plan.
Some saw the case as a test of Maryland’s Critical Area Law, passed in 1984, which aims to reduce polluted runoff and protect shoreline habitat by limiting the intensity of development near the Bay and the tidal portions of its tributaries. On relatively pristine “resource conservation areas” like this one, the law permits just one home per 20 acres.
Because of its proximity to the Western Shore, Kent Island has been subjected to intense development pressure for decades, even before the Bay Bridge was built. The resulting growth has embroiled the county in seesaw political struggles and some epic court battles.
The partnership seeking to develop Chesterhaven Beach contended the project was “grandfathered” from Critical Area limits because a map laying out 186 home sites there had been submitted back in 1959. But opponents of the development argued that the plan had not proceeded far enough to warrant exemption by the time the law took effect. A 1995 appellate court ruling denied the grandfathering claim.
Queen Anne’s County officials nevertheless proceeded as if the site would someday be developed. They agreed to reserve capacity in the county’s wastewater treatment system for the unbuilt homes and took a down payment for that from the owner.
In 2007, though, the county commissioners removed the growth designation for Chesterhaven Beach as part of a new long-range land use plan. The partnership persisted, though, and in 2022 asked to restore the site’s status as part of a growth area. The commissioners denied it then on a 4–1 vote but indicated they might reconsider.
In July 2024 they did, and this time approved the request on a 3–2 vote, after an attorney for the county opined that the home sites mapped out long before the Critical Area law were legally recognized “lots of record.” The approval included a condition that the developer reduce the maximum number of dwellings to 90.
James Moran, then president of the Queen Anne’s board of commissioners, said the majority decided to redesignate the tract for growth just to get it off their agenda after so many years of debate. Moran noted that it still had to go through several levels of review that could alter or reduce the scale of the project further. “We’re stuck in the middle, damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” he said last year. “Let the courts decide … We want to get it resolved.”
But opponents contended the county was trying to make an end run around the Critical Area law. And the state’s Critical Area Commission, which oversees compliance with the law, intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the project’s opponents.
In a 9-page opinion, Judge Knight agreed with all six arguments opponents raised against the project. She specifically found that the county had failed to notify the state Critical Area Commission, as required by law, of its intent to approve the project. She also ruled that the county had acted illegally in reversing its prior decision to disallow more intense development of the Chesterhaven Beach tract.
Opponents of the project hailed the ruling as a victory for wildlife habitat conservation and water quality.
“Time and again, this developer has wasted everyone’s time trying to convince someone—anyone—that he somehow has grandfathered lots that do not exist,” said Jay Falstad, executive director of Queen Anne’s Conservation Association. “And time and again, the Courts have ruled against him. With this latest decision, hopefully the matter is now settled.”
Falstad added that he hoped the court’s ruling sets a precedent for quashing other development plans hatched long ago that might also claim grandfather exemptions from the Critical Area law.
Erik Fisher, chair of the Critical Area Commission, declined to comment on the judge’s ruling while an appeal could still be filed. But he pointed out that there is a way under the law that the Chesterhaven Beach project might still move forward.
All affected counties have a limited “growth allocation” of acreage where they can permit more intense waterfront development than would otherwise be allowed, he explained. Queen Anne’s officials would need to invoke that provision, Fisher said, and the state commission would have the final say whether to approve it.
By last year, Queen Anne’s had already used up two-thirds of its 1,500-acre growth allocation to permit other waterfront development, and the commissioners opted then not to use any of their remaining allotment on this project.
Joseph Stevens, a lawyer for the Chesterhaven Beach partnership, did not return a phone message seeking comment.
This story first appeared at bayjournal.com on Dec. 15, 2025.
