Federal officials said Monday that they plan to review claims by a coalition of Maryland environmental groups that the state is going easy on water polluters. Evelyn MacKnight, chief of water pollution discharge permits in the Environmental Protection Agency's mid-Atlantic regional office in Philadelphia, said agency staff just received the 58-page petition from Waterkeepers Chesapeake of Maryland. The Waterkeepers contend that the state Department of the Environment is not doing enough to limit pollution piped into rivers and the Chesapeake Bay from businesses, farms and sewage plants, and is not inspecting or enforcing tightly enough. An MDE spokeswoman called the groups' allegations of lax enforcement "unfounded and baseless."

- Timothy B. Wheeler