The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to increase federal funding for Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts, but it’s unclear if or when the Senate will follow suit. The Democratic majority in the House passed an Environmental Protection Agency budget that includes $85 million for the federal...
As a rule of thumb, it’s not safe to swim in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Even a splash could make you sick. But a new water quality tool could show that some times are safer than others for fishing, kayaking or dragon boat racing. For a decade now, local water quality advocates have been collecting...
For the first time in decades, Glenn Gauvry is lamenting the sight of so many horseshoe crabs getting stuck in the sand along the Delaware Bay beaches. What he's seeing in the sand hints that the crab population might be starting to recover from the days of overfishing them for fertilizer, livestock...
The air became clearer in southeast Baltimore County when the C.P. Crane coal power plant shut down a year ago, settling allegations that it violated pollution limits. But the plant could fire back up under a recent decision by a state regulator. Its owners want to replace the retired coal boilers...
An insect-eating plant has been found in Maryland for the first time. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources tells news outlets that botanists recently confirmed the discovery of dwarf sundew, the smallest native species of sundew in the United States. It was found in open areas with wet,...
Honeybees are no longer disappearing suddenly and mysteriously. They’re dying persistently, in plain sight, and scientists often know why. A parasitic mite is infesting commercial colonies, latching onto bees and sucking out the tissue that stores their energy and protein. The invasion is weakening...
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a company that wants to build a natural gas pipeline in Washington County that the state’s top officials have rejected. Columbia Gas Transmission, which is owned by TransCanada Corp., filed the lawsuit...
Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of occasional articles inspired by readers' curiosity. What do you wonder about the Baltimore area that you'd like us to investigate? Tell us at baltimoresun.com/ask. Strolling the sidewalk on his lunch break, John Chalmers watched customers exit a...
Maryland is asking a regional air quality commission to push for greater pollution controls at Pennsylvania coal power plants, whose emissions often blow across the Mason-Dixon Line on hot summer days. The petition comes as the state continues to pursue a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection...
Baltimore City Councilman Bill Henry plans to propose a ban on plastic bags at city grocers and corner stores, his office said Thursday. His legislation also would establish a 5-cent checkout surcharge for use of other types of bags, including ones made of paper or other compostable materials. ...
During this spring's fish migration season, 81 northern snakeheads attempted to swim up the Susquehanna River through the Conowingo Dam, a “dramatic increase” in the invasive species, state natural resources officials said. In the past two seasons, officials said, only one snakehead was observed...
Two Baltimore County parks are no longer under consideration as sites where ground-mounted solar panels could be installed. County officials have eliminated Mount Vista Park in Kingsville and Southwest Area Park in Lansdowne from a list of properties where the panels could be placed. The county...
A “dead zone” with little or no oxygen content that forms each summer across the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay is forecast to be one of the largest on record in 2019. Rivers have been flowing above normal for the past year, washing an excess of farm fertilizer and sewage pollution into the bay....
Diesel fuel was leaking into the Baltimore harbor Friday from a four-alarm warehouse fire that broke out Thursday night. Authorities said they don’t know how much fuel has washed into the water, leaking through storm drains. The diesel is being contained behind floating booms and with absorbent...
Rocky Rice heads out on the Potomac River as soon as it’s light enough to see. Mostly, it’s not blue crabs he’s after, but blue catfish. With white bellies and long whiskers, the invasive blue cats have been appearing in recent years in rivers and creeks up and down the Chesapeake Bay. They voraciously...
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration says a project adding toll lanes to Washington-area highways would reduce air pollution, along with congestion. But a researcher whose study was used to support that conclusion said it’s not that simple. Hogan is pushing an $11 billion expansion of the...
A great white shark named Brunswick was detected Thursday evening and again Friday morning off the coast of Ocean City. Scientists detected the young male shark via his satellite tracker, with which he was tagged by the organization Ocearch in Hilton Head, S.C., in February. Brunswick spans 8 feet...
The visions for the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River in Baltimore are ambitious: Families playing in the sand along the shore, swimmers frolicking in a floating pool, kayakers paddling amid wetlands, couples strolling along boardwalks over marshes, ospreys swooping down to catch fish. Three...
Nearly five years after Maryland proposed creating a national marine sanctuary to protect a fleet of sunken “ghost ships” in Mallows Bay, the federal government is advancing the country’s first such designation in 19 years and the only one in the Chesapeake Bay region. A notice published Friday...
Two teenagers are facing charges in Allegany County after a Snapchat video captured them allegedly throwing bottles at a deer with broken legs, Maryland Natural Resources Police said. Police were notified on May 23 about a Snapchat video allegedly showing a 19-year-old Allegany County woman and...
Baltimore County officials are considering placing solar panels on a variety of government properties — from a community center in Randallstown to a police station in Dundalk and a park in Lansdowne. The tentative plan, coming three years after an earlier county effort faltered, was disclosed in...
Record rainfall washed 260 million gallons of sewage contamination into Baltimore waterways in 2018. But during dry weather, much of the harbor was technically safe for swimming in 2018, an annual report says. The annual Harbor Heartbeat assessment, based on routine water samples collected across...
A nonprofit that tracks pollution in the Chesapeake Bay lambasted Pennsylvania on Tuesday, saying that the state is failing to protect the nation's largest estuary from farm manure and dirty stormwater. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation released a report saying Pennsylvania's plan to reduce pollution...
A new suitor has joined Barb the Peregrine Falcon in her nest atop Baltimore’s TransAmerica skyscraper. Boh, her previous beau, “disappeared from the nest in late April for unknown reasons,” after Barb laid four eggs and two hatched, according to the Chesapeake Conservancy, which has a livestream...
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Friday that he’s vetoing a bill that would have dissolved the state’s Handgun Permit Review Board, while allowing another measure to become law that creates a first-in-the-nation statewide ban on foam food and drink containers. Hogan’s office announced the decisions...
Maryland lawmakers passed hundreds of bills this year. Here’s a look at which ones became law and which ones Republican Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed. Members of the legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, can vote to override Hogan’s vetoes when they return to Annapolis in January for the next...
The University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability was jointly awarded a $2.3 million grant to evaluate nationwide greenhouse gas reduction efforts along with the Rocky Mountain Institute, according to a news release. The grant was issued by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg,...
Jim O’Leary’s fingerprints are everywhere in the Maryland Science Center. When the Inner Harbor attraction opened in 1976, its slide-projector planetarium shows were his creation. When it began playing IMAX movies, he oversaw the theater and, eventually, helped produce original films that played...
Democratic presidential candidate John Delaney is the latest 2020 contender to come out with a climate change plan, and he's proposing a fee on carbon emissions that he says aims reduce them by 90% by midcentury. That idea is part of the former Maryland congressman's $4 trillion plan, which is...
Instead of adopting President Donald Trump's proposal to all but eliminate the Chesapeake Bay Program, a U.S. House committee voted Wednesday to increase its budget. The federal program that guides state-by-state efforts to clean up the Chesapeake would get $85 million in fiscal year 2020, up from...
Half of Maryland’s energy will come from renewable sources by 2030 under a bill that is set to become law Friday — without Gov. Larry Hogan's signature. The General Assembly passed the measure last month, requiring utilities in the state to subsidize solar and wind farms. Controversially, it also...
The Chesapeake Bay’s recovery took a step back in 2018, but the estuary retained its “C” grade on an annual report card from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. With nearly twice as much rainfall as normal across the state last year, the bay saw increases in nitrogen and...
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is facing pressure to sign bills that would create a state board to monitor drug prices and to increase the state’s requirements for using renewable energy. Hogan, a Republican, has already signed 552 bills and resolutions that were passed by state lawmakers, and has about...
Production at Maryland paper mill will end one month sooner than previously planned, but officials say employees will continue to be paid through June 30. The Cumberland Times-News reports that production at the Luke Paper Mill that employs 675 people will end May 31. Get caught up: 131-year-old...
The Maryland agencies responsible for agriculture and wildlife management say they are stepping up efforts to enforce a ban on a pesticide believed to have killed at least 19 bald eagles in the state since 2016. With seven eagles found dead on the Eastern Shore since March, the Maryland Department...
National Aquarium biologists were tracking a dolphin Thursday that appeared to be in distress in the Baltimore harbor. The dolphin was spotted in waters between the Canton waterfront and Fort McHenry about 9:45 a.m., swimming in circles and flapping its tail “irregularly,” aquarium spokeswoman...
Maryland environmental regulators were in talks with a Western Maryland paper mill about how to significantly reduce the facility’s output of a harmful pollutant when its owner shocked state officials last week by announcing plans to shutter the 131-year-old factory. With data showing the Luke...
There are nearly twice as many juvenile crabs in Chesapeake Bay waters as there were a year ago, according to an annual population survey. Scientists in Maryland and Virginia found that in 2019, the bay’s crabs are at their most plentiful in seven years. The number of spawning-age females, a key...
A once-common farm pesticide killed millions of birds before the U.S. government took steps to restrict its use in the 1990s and ban it in 2009. Since then, such poisonings have made up a small fraction of deaths among bald eagles — except in Maryland. Pesticides were a suspected or confirmed factor...
State and federal wildlife officials are investigating the deaths of at least seven bald eagles and a great horned owl on the Eastern Shore this spring, saying they signal a “systemic” problem with use of an illegal poison on the Delmarva Peninsula. The birds died under similar circumstances as...
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said Wednesday that it will require new restrictions on striped bass next year, amid overfishing of the species known in the Chesapeake as rockfish. The panel, which regulates a striped bass fishery that spans from Maine to North Carolina, launched...
State agriculture officials ordered a quarantine Wednesday on walnut wood in an effort to prevent a blight that kills walnut trees from spreading beyond Baltimore and Baltimore County. The quarantine, enacted by the Maryland Department of Agriculture, makes it illegal to move any walnut material...
The owners of two Baltimore waste incinerators filed a federal lawsuit against the city government Tuesday seeking to invalidate an ordinance passed in February requiring them to drastically reduce the air pollution they emit. The companies say the policy is “arbitrary” and violates federal and...
At the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore County, officials have been carefully watching how many pints of beer they’re selling, worried about running into Maryland’s limit for how much beer can be sold in brewery taprooms. “We were projected to eclipse the 3,000-barrel limit, probably late...
It’s trophy season for Chesapeake Bay rockfish, the only few weeks on the calendar local anglers can hunt for the 40-pound specimens visiting the estuary to spawn. But this year, it’s not as celebratory as it sounds. Three decades after an outright ban on fishing for the species properly known...