The St. Mary’s County Board of Appeals has again approved a 1,100-foot stone revetment to protect an eroding Wicomico River farm near Chaptico, after a circuit court judge sent the case back for a closer look at two points the state’s Critical Area Commission had challenged.
The board voted unanimously on two motions at its Oct. 8 meeting, finding that the Wicomico Valley Foundation of Southern Maryland met the standards the court said had not been fully addressed when the board first granted the variance last year.
A farm losing ground to the river
The foundation owns a 181.15-acre farm on the Wicomico River, zoned Rural Preservation and inside the county’s Resource Conservation Area of the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area. It wants to build the revetment along the river face of the property, above mean high water and inside the 100-foot shoreline buffer, which requires a Critical Area variance.
Bobby Stahl, testifying for the foundation, said the farm is losing several feet of shoreline a year along the river and that the bank there stands 12 feet or higher. The foundation has already had to move a farm road back into the field where the bank has cut in, he said.
“Just in my lifetime, and I’ll be 64 in a month, I would say we’ve probably lost a good 10 acres off the front of that farm from erosion,” Stahl said. His grandparents owned the farm across the creek, and his mother grew up on the property, he said.
Stahl said the revetment would cover only the river face, where storms roll in across a long stretch of open water. The foundation’s several thousand feet of shoreline back in Bramley Creek, which is not eroding the same way, will stay a living shoreline, he said.
When the project was first permitted, he said, the revetment was estimated at about $600,000 and a living shoreline at more than $1 million. The foundation is a 501(c)(3) private foundation, he said.
How the case got here
The board first approved the variance unanimously on Oct. 23, 2025, and issued its written order Nov. 19. The Critical Area Commission, the state agency that oversees development near the bay’s shoreline, petitioned the circuit court for review in December.
Visiting Judge Gregory Sampson heard the case in St. Mary’s County Circuit Court in June and issued his order June 17. He upheld the board on most of the variance standards but sent back two narrow issues: whether other similarly situated properties had been granted the same kind of relief, and whether the project met the county zoning ordinance’s standard for structural shoreline protection, which requires showing that a nonstructural approach would be impractical or ineffective.
The board listened to the recording of the judge’s ruling from the bench before taking new testimony.
The case for stone
Steve Peterson, a senior engineer with the marine construction firm working on the project, walked the board through four nearby properties where, he said, the Maryland Department of the Environment had granted waivers allowing stone revetments instead of living shorelines on high, eroding banks.
Living shorelines, which use sand, marsh grasses and sometimes stone sills to build a wetland edge, typically cost about 50% more than a revetment, Peterson said, “and don’t work when you have a long fetch and a high bank.”
With a bank of 10 to 12 feet, he said, storms keep cutting into the bank behind a living shoreline, and the plantings can wash away. He described a living shoreline his company built in Charles County that washed out.
“We’re not opposed to living shorelines,” Peterson said, noting his firm has built them and has permits pending for more. “You can’t use living shoreline every place.”
The Critical Area Commission’s view
Nick Kelly, who testified for the Critical Area Commission, argued that neither standard was met. The properties Peterson cited went through the state’s shoreline waiver process, not a local Critical Area variance, so they were not similarly situated, Kelly said. Denying the variance would not deprive the foundation of a use others enjoy, and granting it would confer a special privilege, he said.
Kelly also pointed to a letter from MDE in the record from October 2025 stating that a nonstructural shoreline measure was feasible for the site and would address the erosion.
Asked by a board member whether the commission uses a set measure of land loss to judge hardship, Kelly said it does not. “I think a variance for a revetment, this is probably the first one I think we’ve seen,” he said.
The board’s decision
Board members said the foundation answered the judge’s questions with testimony the commission did not rebut with its own expert. One member said the contractor’s explanation of how high banks keep eroding behind a living shoreline persuaded him.
“I don’t believe that a living shoreline would work here,” he said.
Both motions passed unanimously. Staff will prepare a written order for the board to sign within 60 days. Any aggrieved party then has 30 days from the signing to appeal to circuit court.
The board’s next meeting is Nov. 12.
