Howard County Executive Kenneth Ulman this week decided to abandon a proposal in which the county was considering using its powers of eminent domain to seize land in Ellicott City on behalf of two Ellicott City residents.

After the proposal came under fire by other residents, Ulman cut it from his proposed fiscal 2009 capital budget May 19.

Ulman had set aside $40,000 in his spending plan to buy a sliver of land in Ellicott City on which the county intended to install a sewer line.

If negotiations to purchase the parcel failed, the county would have considered invoking its power of eminent domain to seize the land.

Ulman said the county's intervention was an attempt to correct a 35-year-old land record mistake that unfairly left a four-acre property owned by Paul and Georgia Miller landlocked from county sewer service.

Developer Ron Carter hopes to buy the Millers' land and build six houses on it. Carter and county officials have said they would prefer if the houses were served by public sewer rather than septic systems.

But critics of the plan, including County Council member Courtney Watson, said the proposal amounted to an abuse of the power of eminent domain because it would assist Carter and the Millers as opposed to the interests of the citizenry as a whole.

Prior to nixing the project, Ulman said he was loathe to consider condemning the land, but that it would have been a warranted use of the power because a sewer line is a public utility.

This week, he deleted the project from his proposed $420.8 million capital budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The County Council is scheduled to vote on the budget Thursday, May 22.

"It was never our intention to use eminent domain in that case," Ulman said May 20. "The issue's been raised and it's on everybody's radar now. We think the prudent thing to do is give it some time and let the residents work it out."

Time given to work out deal

Under Ulman's original proposal, the county was considering running a sewer line through a quarter-acre of wooded land owned by the Spring Ridge Homeowner's Association, to serve the Millers' property.

County officials said the Millers property had been unfairly blocked from sewer lines thanks to a land recordation mistake committed 35 years ago, officials said.

In 1973, an Ellicott City developer set aside a 35-foot easement that could be used to provide a sewer line to the Millers' property, but the easement was never recorded in the county's land records.

Although the easement was intended to cross a property other than that owned by the homeowner's association, county engineers had determined that the association's open space would be the most logical place for the sewer line since its construction there would have the least impact on surrounding houses, officials said.

Members of the association said they felt unfairly threatened by the county's consideration of eminent domain because Carter had not made a good faith effort to negotiate with them over the use of their land, association president Monica Machovec said.

Machovec said her group was pleased to hear that Ulman had deleted the project from his budget.

"I think a lot of people in the county had serious reservations about this issue," she added.

Carter said he is considering the association's request of $30,000 for its land, and recalculating the cost of his plan in light of a downturn in the real estate market.

Ulman said he's hopeful the parties can come to an agreement without the county's involvement.

"We're going to basically give it a year and hope they come together with the notion that, if they don't, we can always revisit it," he said.

E-mail Jennifer Broadwater at jbroadwater@patuxent.com.

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