My name is Kenneth Ingham
I live in Garrett Park, MD 20896-0258
The ICC is not in my back yard.
I speak as a member of Sierra Club, Green Peace, WABA
and the Montgomery County Green Party.

I have spent many hours in solitude
by a vernal pool near Mill Creek,
just above Lake Needwood,
ground zero by any alignment,
watching the polliwogs grow
wondering where the wood frogs go
in winter - and thinking about the ICC
and what, if anything, I could say
that would make it not happen.
Much of what I would like to say
has already been said. But there is one issue
that has not received enough attention,
and that is petroleum,
whose production is about to peak
if it hasn't already.
Soon there will be fewer barrels of oil
harvested each year, compared to the year before.
This at a time when global demand does soar.
And what are we doing to prepare for the trouble??
Building more roads, in denial of the inevitable!

Approving the construction of the ICC
is tantamount to a Declaration of Dependence
on a dwindling nonrenewable resource.
This is not leadership.
This is not homeland security.
This is not facing the facts.
What will our children think
when their economy crumbles
and they learn from this record
that we knew better but failed to act?

It takes energy to build mass transit.
It takes energy to power busses and trains.
It takes energy to maintain/improve existing roads
It takes energy to lay down sidewalks and bicycle lanes.
And petroleum is the most elegant form of energy,
bequeathed to us by antiquity. Let’s not use the last of it
to power the vehicle that paints white stripes down the middle of another superhighway.

The ICC is not about relieving congestion
It’s about expanding congestion.
It’s about a quest for power
by a minority of commercial interests
who have the financial resources
to manipulate public opinion,
employ full time lobbyists
and contribute inordinate sums
to political campaigns,
buying their way into
a multibillion dollar deal
that will pave the way for future sprawl,
destroy dozens of acres of natural park land
disrupt communities
and rob the rest of us
of the resources needed to develop public transit
and other ways of moving people instead of cars.

I repeat:
Approving the construction of the ICC
is a Declaration of Dependence
on a dwindling nonrenewable resource.
We need just the opposite.