the Potomac River upstream from the area of River Bend to Watkins Island. Virginia residents and the United States Department of the Interior objected to the proposed bridge over the Potomac River because they wanted to create state and federal parks along the river in order to protect sugar maple trees, vegetation, and bald eagles. Because of these concerns, the Maryland State Roads Commission moved the proposed Outer Beltway to a route north of Rockville and eliminated a new bridge crossing the Potomac River. The Montgomery County Planning Board accepted the state's newly proposed route in 1970, but the Montgomery County Council rejected it, and Prince George's County and Virginia dropped it from their plans. In 1975, the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments endorsed a request from the State Highway Administration "for federal support of a $1.1 million planning and engineering study of the first segment of the road", which was to "run from the Baltimore-Washington Parkway near Beltsville westward to a point near Interstate Rte 70S at Gaithersburg." By 1976, Maryland's Secretary of Transportation no longer supported state financial support of the Outer Beltway, although Montgomery County still supported it in concept. Initial Intercounty Connector plan In 1980, the state of Maryland dropped the Washington Outer Beltway from its plans except for the Intercounty Connector. Meanwhile, the State Highway Administration was studying constructing a Intercounty Connector with a spur called the Rockville Facility. After six days of public workshops, the Maryland State Highway Administration released its first report about the Intercounty Connector and the Rockville Facility in January 1980. The majority of participants supported the highway, although almost everyone said they would prefer building more east–west public transportation instead. In 1983, the federal National Capital Planning Commission formally requested that the eastern end of the Intercounty Connector be shortened by so that the eastern terminus of the road would be at I-95 rather than the Baltimore–Washington Parkway. In 1984, Maryland Secretary of Transportation Lowell K. Bridwell designated land in Montgomery and Prince George's counties as the future site of the Intercounty Connector so that the right-of-way would be preserved, even though Montgomery County Executive Charles W. Gilchrist had voiced very critical comments about the Intercounty Connector as it was envisioned in 1983—at least in part because he felt that construction of the ICC by the year 2000 was "infeasible", and advocated