Two and a half years ago, it seemed as if the long saga of the secret mansion built in the middle of the Magothy River had finally come to a conclusion.

A local developer had built the compound on Little Dobbins Island in Anne Arundel County without submitting plans for government review or approval. Environmentalists objected, warning of its impact on the Chesapeake Bay. The state’s highest court upheld a decision to have much of it — including the red-roofed boathouse, the riverfront pool, the paved patio — torn down.

The ruling by the Maryland Court of Appeals ostensibly ended a decade of legal wrangling to reconcile Daryl Wagner’s dream home with policies that environmentalists said should have restricted its construction. The highly publicized case tested a deeper struggle: environmental protection versus property rights.

Today, the estate still stands — and so does the broader conflict.

Frustrated environmentalists fear its mere existence at this point shows that laws designed to reduce the negative impacts of waterfront development on the environment aren’t taken seriously. County officials and Attorney General Brian Frosh say they are eager to enforce the limits, and their patience is wearing thin.

Robert Fuoco, the Anne Arundel County attorney who represents Wagner, said his client is doing everything required of him. He called activists’ continued focus on the case “bordering on harassment.”

“We proved we were environmentally correct in what we did,” Fuoco said. “Admittedly, my client didn’t have the necessary permits to do the work. Those will be addressed.”

But environmental groups the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Magothy River Association say the lack of progress only encourages what they consider ecologically reckless development around the bay — and they worry that while overall bay health is improving, water quality in rivers such as the Magothy is suffering. They point to a recent University of Maryland report showing that rules to limit development in state-designated critical areas are routinely waived by local authorities — particularly in Anne Arundel — potentially working against efforts to improve water quality.

What they see on Little Dobbins doesn’t reassure them.

Over Memorial Day weekend, four people sat around a card table on the dock. Adirondack chairs dotted a narrow beach. A historic-looking cannon guarded a small gazebo. A white tarp covered the pool.

An entity registered as DCW Dutchship Island LLC, represented by Fuoco, bought the island in 2001 for $299,000. Wagner began work that year on what state property records list as a 5,000-square-foot house.

The dock points to the northern shore of the Magothy; French doors on the opposite side of the house open to a porch that looks out on Gibson Island to the east. The island’s natural shoreline has been replaced with stone embankments. The house is valued at $1.2 million, the state records show.

The property escaped attention of Anne Arundel County inspectors until 2004, when it sparked a flurry of media coverage and regulatory and legal actions.

A 1984 state law required Wagner to get permission to build so close to the Magothy. The legislation requires regulators to subject any new development proposed in “critical areas” — within 1,000 feet of the bay or one of its tributaries — to special scrutiny. It generally limits the density and size of new construction, and requires buffers of vegetation between roofs, pavement and other impervious surfaces and the water.

At the time, officials said the bay’s poor health — levels of dissolved oxygen, the abundance of underwater grasses and the striped bass population were at or near historic lows — justified the hoops and hurdles. The measure was intended to reduce the detritus that development sends into waterways and promote the native plants that help filter stormwater runoff and pollutants into the ground.

Fuoco acknowledged that Wagner didn’t seek such a review but said his client kept environmental considerations in mind. Wagner built the new house farther from the water than the one he tore down, Fuoco said, and without his work to fortify the shoreline, the island might have eroded by now, its sediment clouding bay waters.

The Maryland Court of Appeals in December 2014 upheld a regulatory decision that gave Wagner permission to keep only about 3,000 square feet of impervious surface — half of what had been built.

That meant the house, a replica lighthouse attached to it and a boat ramp could stay, but most of the structures and pavement around them had to go. And the court required Wagner to add three times as much vegetation as he cleared, to restore a buffer of native plants around the island.

Progress to start that work has been incremental. Wagner applied for a grading permit to start the tear-down in 2010. But that plan has expired, county spokesman Owen McEvoy said, and work cannot begin until a new one is submitted, along with a $629 deposit for sediment control. More permits will then be required, McEvoy said.

Fuoco said he is awaiting word from the state’s Critical Area Commission on whether the boathouse and sheds may be able to stay. Because they date to the 1920s, he has argued, the development limits approved in 1984 do not apply to them.

The work to restore the natural buffer could be closest to reality — a building permit for that work was awarded a year ago, McEvoy said, and this spring the Maryland Department of the Environment signed off on creation of a new marsh area on the north side of the island that also includes removing a chunk of the pier.

The bay foundation has pressed both the county and Frosh to take action. “Nobody seems particularly interested in doing anything about it,” said Jon Mueller, the foundation’s vice president of litigation. He said the group is tired of what seems like an endless cycle of delays.

McEvoy said, “It’s fair to say we are growing impatient and if there isn’t significant movement on the paperwork needed for permit approvals in the next few weeks, further enforcement action will be more likely.”

“This case has taken far too long,” said Christine Tobar, a spokeswoman for Frosh. “If necessary, the office of attorney general will seek authority to enforce.”

The University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic reported in December that many counties approved virtually all requests to build close to a shoreline. Anne Arundel received the most requests by far — 375 from 2012 to 2014 — and approved 89 percent of them.

The clinic recommended several changes to the process of reviewing proposals within critical areas. Regulators, the clinic said, should analyze and emphasize environmental impacts more closely, define more clearly what “hardships” should qualify a project for a waiver, and be held accountable for the numbers of waivers they grant.

David Plott, an attorney with Linowes and Blocher LLP in Annapolis, said concerns that regulators are too lax in their scrutiny of critical-area projects are unfounded. He has represented clients from large developers to homeowners. The projects often involve only minor changes to a porch or driveway, he said, and still can take years to get approved. “A lot of them are reasonable and result in environmental benefits,” he said.

Such policies are frustrating to advocates for property rights. Bill Bishoff, president of the Western Maryland-based Energy and Property Rights Coalition, spent years arguing against the state’s recently passed fracking ban on the grounds, he says, that it strips landowners of wealth.

He said the critical-area laws are similarly unfair. “There has been a migration towards other people having more influence over your property through zoning and regulation,” Bishoff said. “We can’t forget the rights of the individual when we’re evaluating the risk to the environment and the general public.”

Paul Spadaro, president of the Magothy River Association, says he’s entitled to be concerned by what he sees in the waterway.

The river group fears that residents around the river, from Pasadena to Severna Park to Cape St. Claire, still don’t understand the impact they have on water quality. The group is launching a river kayaking “trail” this month in hopes of getting more people on the river and caring about its health.

Spadaro sees the little island mansion as a glaring threat to that message. “A lot of people see that, and they say, ‘Well, if the county can’t do anything about that, if there’s no real penalty, or anything like that, then why should I follow the law?’?”

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