Charles County is asking anyone with a legal claim to a set of drainage and road easement areas in the Carrington neighborhood of Waldorf to come forward, as the county moves to clear up ownership questions ahead of planned infrastructure upgrades.
Carrington, part of the larger St. Charles and Smallwood Village community, sits near a stretch of Smallwood Drive that’s been a known local traffic pinch point for years. The county says it’s now working across multiple departments to improve traffic safety in the area, including a new traffic signal with a pedestrian crossing, alongside broader drainage improvements in nearby residential streets — part of the county’s existing Residential Stormwater Drainage Improvement Program.
Before that work can move forward, the county says it needs to formally resolve ownership of land platted decades ago as “Drainage Reservations” or “Future Road Reservations” — areas set aside when the community was originally designed for exactly this kind of infrastructure use. The parcels in question are identified across seven separate plat book filings in county land records, spanning Plat Books 11, 13, 15, 18, and 25.
To do that, the county intends to pursue what’s known as a quiet title action — a lawsuit used to formally establish clear ownership of property and remove any lingering or ambiguous claims against it. Under Maryland law, anyone can petition a circuit court to “quiet” a title when ownership is disputed or unclear, even if no one is actively asserting a competing claim; the process typically takes anywhere from about 10 weeks to over a year and requires formal legal notice to anyone with a potential interest in the property before a court can finalize the matter.
Anyone who believes they hold a legal claim to these reservation areas is asked to contact Sarah Guy, Charles County’s chief of property acquisition, at GuySar@charlescountymd.gov or 301-638-0806.
