-
Baltimore’s water system, which serves 1.8 million homes and businesses in the city and Baltimore County, contains measurable levels of so-called “forever chemicals” that the EPA said last week pose health risks even at minute levels.
- The tiny Eastern Shore community of Trappe voted two decades ago to annex more than 900 acres so a developer could build some 2,500 homes. That vision is starting to become reality, but it's meeting with opposition from residents and environmentalists.
- The White House is launching a formal partnership with 11 East Coast governors, including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, to boost the growing offshore wind industry, a key element of President Joe Biden’s plan for climate change.
- Baltimore’s spending board unanimously approved on Wednesday an agreement with the state over its troubled Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant — the state’s largest such facility.
- Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972 altered the Chesapeake Bay's ecosystem and decimated the oyster population — problems that the bay still suffers from today.
- It used to be that the Chesapeake Bay was all Maryland candidates needed to talk about when it came to the environment. But that has changed as voters look to a future — and even a present — of uneven and severe impacts from climate change.
- Loring Emsley Hawes, a retired Baltimore attorney who was part of a 1964 public accommodations civil rights case and who was later a leader in Eastern Shore conservation efforts, died of COVID complications and congestive heart failure May 20 at Heron Point in Chestertown. The former Bolton Street resident was 92.
- Baltimore County’s inspector general is investigating a complaint about whether a fundraising event for County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. influenced his administration’s decision to approve plans for a private trash transfer station, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.
- Baltimore and Maryland agreed to a consent order in regards to improvements at the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant — one day after a damning report from regulators chronicled a “lack of leadership” at the plant leading to “years of neglect” at the facility plagued by understaffing and crumbling infrastructure.
- The report blasted Baltimore Department of Public Works officials for a “lack of leadership” and providing a first look at a failing culture inside the facility, where problems first came to light publicly last summer.
- About 50,000 fish, mainly Atlantic menhaden, were found dead near the head waters of Marley Creek on Wednesday, according to a spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment.
- The Chesapeake Bay watershed received an overall grade of C+ on its latest report card, released Monday by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
- The federal agency responsible for reviewing offshore wind projects will hold a series of virtual public meetings in June as it begins the process of evaluating a planned wind farm off the coast of Ocean City and southern Delaware.
- A May inspection of Baltimore’s Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant showed continuing failures to properly treat and dispose of solid waste, preventing the plant from filtering out pollutants to a level to be expected after millions of dollars of investments at the facility in recent years.
- Jack Trimper wanted to participate in "No Mow May," but the county code meant he could be charged $200 per day for not mowing his lawn.
- The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is asking anglers to look out for northern snakeheads in the Chesapeake Bay and Blackwater River, and offering monetary rewards.
- An annual survey of the Chesapeake Bay has found the blue crab population at its smallest since scientists began tracking the beleaguered species in 1990.
- Officials at the Maryland Department of the Environment are “in discussions” about issuing an order that would place the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant in Baltimore under state control, said Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles.
- Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed into law Thursday new laws protecting public computers against cyberattack, old-growth forests against logging and state nursing jobs and careers.
- More than 100 black vultures have been found dead near the Conowingo Dam since mid-April after an outbreak of the highly pathogenic avian flu, officials say.
- Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles, the longest serving environment secretary in state history, is stepping down next month to take the helm of a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, the group announced Monday.
