By Jeremy Cox/Chesapeake Bay Journal
Through acts of the Maryland General Assembly, thousands of acres of forests in Western Maryland have been preserved as “wildlands.” State law requires those lands to be managed in a way that “will leave them unimpaired” for future generations.
With a crucial assist from that same legislative body, though, a Florida-based energy company is on track to remove those protections from nearly 60 acres of state-designated wildlands. NextEra Energy Transmission MidAtlantic wants to clear-cut those wooded acres to support the construction of a 107-mile overhead transmission line from Pennsylvania to Virginia.
The project, called the Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link, or MARL, is part of a larger transmission expansion throughout the Mid-Atlantic intended to help quench rising energy demands partly fueled by data centers.
Last year, Maryland lawmakers passed legislation at NextEra’s behest, repealing protections from portions of three separate wildland tracts to make way for the line. It was the first time in the wildland program’s 55-year history that the state had moved to take property out of the system.
But it’s not a done deal. The wildland acreage can still be spared if the state Public Service Commission, which regulates the energy industry, denies the MARL project or forces NextEra to use a different route. The agency is expected to decide the case in late 2027 or early 2028.
Environmentalists are deeply ambivalent about the potential loss of wildlands. Some were grateful for the concessions that lawmakers wrung from NextEra, including a requirement that the line run adjacent to existing transmission corridors and that every lost wildland acre be replaced with 2 acres elsewhere of equal quality. But others argue that the action violates the intent of the wildlands legislation.
“Those [wildlands] have been designated as areas not to be touched,” said Judy Fulton, an advocate with the Maryland Sierra Club. “When you put a 200-foot-wide line right-of-way through an area, it’s of course a major disturbance. You’ve got to have roads and a footprint to put it in.”
The entire MARL project is expected to cost more than $1.1 billion by its expected 2031 completion date. NextEra officials say that installing the new line parallel to existing transmission lines will reduce habitat fragmentation and the need for more access roads.
PJM Interconnection, which operates the power grid in the Mid-Atlantic region, tapped NextEra in December 2023 to construct the line. Without it, backers say, the region could face dire reliability issues in the not-too-distant future.
“These types of upgrades are really critical to keeping the lights on in Maryland and the neighboring states,” said Kaitlin McCormick, a senior director of development for NextEra. “Electricity is not focused on state lines and that power is going to be moving throughout that network.”
Proponents also say that the line would give Maryland more capacity to bring renewable energy projects within its borders onto the grid. The MARL project has a planned connection to the Black Oak Substation in Allegany County.
Del. Lorig Charkoudian, a Democrat from Montgomery County, championed the environmental mitigation measures in the 2025 legislation that paved the way for the transmission line to traverse wildlands. She said it demonstrated how the state can strike a balance between its needs for energy and environmental protection.
“I am someone who wants to both protect wildlands and to have a future where climate change requires us to have more [energy] transmission,” Charkoudian said. “Ultimately, we ended up with something that was stronger than what we had before.”
Under existing law, the state could have repealed the wildlands designations without placing controls on the new development or requiring acreage to replace it.
Critics, however, allege that the line has little purpose outside of delivering more fossil fuel-derived energy from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley. “It would allow the energy to come over the mountains to the epicenter of data centers,” said Brent Walls, the Upper Potomac Riverkeeper. “This is what this is all about.”
Those critics have a point, said Anurag Srivastava, an electrical engineering professor at West Virginia University. “The infrastructure benefits the whole region,” he said, “but it mainly exists because of the increase of demand in Virginia.”
In addition to Maryland, the MARL project still needs approval from energy regulators in the three other states in its path: Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
There are nearly 40 separate tracts designated as wildlands in Maryland, totaling 66,000 acres. The MARL project would impact portions of three of those: Big Savage Mountain and Bear Pen Run in Garrett County and Dan’s Mountain in Allegany County.
Lawmakers passed the Wildlands Protection Act in 1971, patterning it after the federal Wilderness Act. The law defines a wildland as any land or water that has “retained its wilderness character,” even if human activity has disturbed it in the past. It also can be a place that hosts rare or vanishing plant or animal species.
Wildlands can be used for certain types of passive recreation, such as hunting, fishing, hiking and horseback riding. New infrastructure is generally not allowed, including roads and transmission lines.
All three sites are ranked as “Type I” wildlands, the program’s most pristine designation. But they’re not completely untouched. Overhead lines already bisected or abutted the wildland areas before they got their designations. The MARL proposes widening that right of way for a total length of about 2.5 miles through those tracts.
Steve Storck, who lives near Oakland, opposes the wildlands route. At stake, he said, is a landscape that, if developed, can never be fully restored. The wildlands are crucial for sending clean water downstream to the Chesapeake Bay, he said.
Recalling a daylong hike in the Bear Pen Run wildlands a few years ago, Storck said, “It was just rocky, rugged, beautiful streams, small waterfalls, dense, dense vegetation — what you would expect when you think of wildlands.”
An analysis conducted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources suggested that at least 60 rare, threatened or endangered species may be found within a quarter mile of the MARL’s proposed route. Among them: the state-endangered Allegheny woodrat and the federally endangered northern long-eared bat.
DNR officials noted that another route proposed by NextEra, which skirted around the wildlands to their north, would have fewer wildlife impacts. Meanwhile, the “Southern/Wildlands Route,” according to their report, “would disproportionately impact these species and habitats to a much greater degree” and, therefore, would not be the agency’s choice.
The proposed route is 7 miles shorter than the northern path, according to an analysis by ERM International. It also impacts 40 fewer structures, parallels more existing transmission line right-of-way and is expected to cost about $70 million less. While the northern route treads into more transmission-line-free territory, Storck said much of it is far from pristine, including wind turbines, strip mines and a landfill.
