ICE Opens New Public Comment Window on Its Williamsport Detention Site, Which Calls for a 750,000-Gallon Water Tank, Extensive Ground Disturbances
The court-ordered environmental review describes a facility for up to 1,500 people, nearly three times the number ICE gave the court through the spring. Public comment runs through July 1.
The environmental assessment that Immigration and Customs Enforcement opened this week for its plan to convert the Williamsport warehouse into a detention facility describes interior modifications designed to accommodate up to 1,500 people and the installation of a 750,000-gallon on-site domestic water storage tank, with a booster-pump system the notice says is intended to limit the facility’s impact on the local distribution system. Comments are due July 1.
That 1,500 figure is the same capacity ICE distanced itself from in court throughout the spring. In filings opposing Maryland’s lawsuit, the agency told the U.S. District Court that initial plans called for 542 detainees and that it had done the environmental and technical work appropriate to a facility of that size — a number it has now repeated across four federal cases.
In April, Rep. April McClain Delaney, whose district includes the area, said the agency was reconsidering the scope of the 1,500-bed plan; the assessment posted today seems to backtrack that reconsideration. The June 1 assessment matches the original capacity that appeared in internal agency documents leaked late last year and in the state’s complaint.
ICE has described the site publicly as a short-term processing facility. The notice lists up to six secure recreation yards, two cafeterias, a kitchen, three multi-purpose rooms, a health services room and laundry facilities, with staff amenities that may include training rooms and even an indoor firing range.
The warehouse as currently configured has four toilets, two water fountains and a municipal allocation of roughly 800 gallons a day. A facility for 1,500 people would require about 209,000 gallons a day, using the per-capita figure drawn from ICE’s own planning documents. A 750,000-gallon tank would let the facility store water on site rather than draw it in real time from Hagerstown, the sole water supplier for Williamsport, which would otherwise have to approve a large increase in the allocation through a process requiring a formal application, an engineering review and full upfront payment for the work.
The notice also describes a three-phase sewer and water plan that may include expanding the off-site lift station and procuring additional capacity from Washington County, steps that run against a state order barring any increase in sewage flow tied to the property, issued because a pumping station serving the site is operating at more than 99 percent of its allocated capacity.
Apart from the tank, ICE’s notice catalogs the extent of the ground disturbance the project would require: trenching and mechanical excavation for the waterline and sanitary sewer, fiber-optic and telecommunication cabling, new freestanding light poles, a new generator, piers for recreational-area awnings and basketball hoops, perimeter security fencing and a prefabricated guard shack.
The new assessment exists because Judge Brendan A. Hurson granted Maryland a preliminary injunction on April 15, barring any retrofitting of the warehouse and limiting work to maintenance and security measures until the review is complete, after finding that the agency had likely failed to assess the project’s environmental consequences as federal law requires.
The only environmental review ICE conducted before buying the warehouse was completed and approved in a single day, the day before the purchase closed. A government lawyer told the court the review now underway could take years.
DHS bought the 825,620-square-foot warehouse on Jan. 16 for $102.4 million in cash. Federal spending records show a renovation contract awarded to KVG LLC of Gettysburg, Pa., worth $113 million, with options that could raise it to $642 million over three years and bring total federal spending on the site to at least $215 million.
In the notice opening the review, which asks the public to identify the project’s potential environmental effects, DHS writes that it “is not aware of any potential for significant environmental impacts.”
"Not any significant impact on current environmental structures within the county" WE ARE LOSING WATER AND OUR GROUND IS BARELY HOLDING ANY! Our landscape is a Karst-Style.....meaning we open ourselves up to sinkholes, underground water caverns, and human pollution buildup within a landscape already heavily impacted by those fleeing DC/Baltimore and other major cities thinking Wash Co is the land of magats. So many developments by Dan Ryan and others are already destroying our ecosystem. Our current infrastructure is hammered and overpopulated by flippin warehouses, it's like we've become the mushroom warehouse county. I miss the green rolling hills, the long srives without ugly warehouses.
Indoor firing range?!