plant openings

County executive Habern W. Freeman told legislators he is too busy running the local government to keep traveling to Annapolis for meetings

Gov. Martin O'Malley's bill has passed the General Assembly, but daunting regulatory, political and financial hurdles remain before a wind-driven power plant could be built in the water 10 miles from Ocean City.

A prominent Harford County businessman wants to develop a 32-lot single family home subdivision on about 22 acres off of West Ring Factory Road, but a county planning official says the project can't proceed until another new development has its utilities built.

The demise of Sparrows Point and its 2,000 jobs last year has forced many life-changing decisions. For a small but growing number of workers, that change is an out-of-state address.

Nuclear is too dangerous and polluting to compete with green energy

Using new media to document a dying industrial past

Solar and wind power are no panacea for climate change

The foresighted purchase helps keep Aberdeen number one when it comes to dealing with number two.

Baltimore city agencies previously attacked energy costs with a series of loosely connected programs funded by a patchwork of grants. But in several months Baltimore will receive its first infusion from a three-year, $52.9 million award for energy innovation, and the process of winning that money transformed scattered programs into what the city thinks will be a much broader and more effective effort.

Among those residents speaking at Wednesday's meeting was Nancy Giorno, a former deputy county now legislative liaison for Harford County Executive David Craig, who lives in the neighborhood

The new My Thai will occupy the nearly 6,000 square-foot space formerly held by another Thai restaurant, Lemongrass.

Harford County Government plans to build a 25,388-square-foot water and sewer office building on the 32.5-acre Abingdon Water Treatment Plant property, and the site plan was reviewed by the county's Development Advisory Committee last Wednesday morning.

Company's application approved for plans for western Catonsville property

Marlin Steel Wire Products is one of the country's fastest-growing companies. What makes that all the more notable is it's a manufacturer. In Baltimore.

The Laurel Historical Society continued its Tasting Laurel series on Wednesday, with a presentation on the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center and the history of agriculture in Laurel and the surrounding Prince George's County.

Laurel resident and artist Karen Isailovic has big production plans for the Laurel Factory, a concept she launched to spark the growth of the city's arts community. Although Laurel Factory is still evolving, in September, Isailovic launched Laurel Factory's first major event by kicking off a 14-week schedule of visual, educational and performing arts events, held mainly at the C Street Gallery on Saturday afternoons.

Talbott Springs Elementary School in Columbia participates in the Green Apple Day of Service, an initiative created by the U.S. Green Building Council's Center for Green Schools. With a focus on the environment and sustainability, the students planted a sensory garden.

Port, Honeywell launch $27 million effort to contain toxic chrome waste under Dundalk Marine Terminal

The Maryland Port Administration is completing its initial review of a multimillion-dollar proposal that would turn Baltimore harbor shipping channel muck into bucks.

Debate over 'fracking' tests 40-year pact with environmental groups

A large, two-alarm fire burned in an abandoned lacrosse ball factory in Kingsville on Monday afternoon, bringing between 80 and 100 firefighters to the scene, according to a Baltimore County fire spokesman.

A proposed new reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland faces a major new roadblock, with federal regulators threatening to shelve the troubled $9.6 billion project unless the French-controlled developer comes up with a U.S. partner in the next two months.

A disputed proposal to build a trash-burning power plant in South Baltimore gets another airing Thursday, as the state Public Service Commission weighs whether to give the New York-based developer more time to build the $1 billion facility.

New security and audit measures added in recent years have helped the company achieve the highest rating from the Safety Quality Foods Institute, an international standards body. Around 150 milk processors across the country have the highest rating from the institute.

Environmentalists paddled kayaks along Dundee Creek Saturday to call attention to the recent sale of three local coal-fired power plants they say should be shut down for polluting the air. Jan Hoffmaster of Millersville, the outings chairman for the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club, told a team of the organization's volunteers they were on a three-part mission: "Enjoy, explore and protect."

Despite tough limits on power plant emissions, state ranks 19th for toxic pollutants

On Aug. 8, Lehigh officials provided the Carroll County Planning and Zoning Commission members and New Windsor residents with a bus tour of the proposed expansion site, which will encompass about 635 acres between Route 31 and Old New Windsor Road, just southeast of New Windsor.

Sykesville's Gate House Museum of History has always highlighted the community's past, but these days visitors entering the small museum can almost feel a sense of renewal and vitality as well.

Doyle McManus assesses the good, bad and ugly of political advertising so far this year

To help our house plants conserve water while I'm away, I move our sun-loving plants, as well as the shade-loving plants, a few feet farther away from their windows.

Administrative office building approved for Abingdon Water Treatment Plant

Medifast Inc. is growing so fast in the weight-loss food product industry that there will soon come a time when it outgrows its sole production facility in Owings Mills and builds plants elsewhere.

A new vegetable garden is growing at Scotchtown Hills Elementary School; the Board of Education prepares to vote on $1.6 billion budget.

Maryland drafts requirement for new development to "offset" any nitrogen pollution it would produce to help clean up Chesapeake Bay.

Sparrows Point to idle plant and lay off workers as it has several times over the last decade raising concerns about its future

Sparrows Point owner RG Steel considers selling the mill and other, out-of-state properties.

West Friendship: West county flowers are abundant to give for Mother's Day

The new Ellicott City library branch will open its Enchanted Garden next week, an outdoor learning space that will be one of only a few in the nation to be owned and tended by a public library.

The "algal turf scrubber" is a long wooden sluiceway through which harbor water is pumped over a bed of slimy green algae that strips nutrients, suspended sediment and carbon from water and inject oxygen into it before returning it to the harbor.

Dominion Resources, the Richmond, Va.-based energy producer and transporter, said Thursday it will move ahead with plans to convert a liquefied natural terminal at Cove Point in Calvert County into an export facility -- a decision that drew the immediate objection of the Sierra Club.

An array of solar panels, spreading across nearly five acres at the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Essex, could deliver significant energy savings and will pay for itself within a decade.

The Lehigh Cement Co finds itself at a crossroads — with its Union Bridge quarry nearly depleted, it is eyeing a new supply from a limestone-rich mine that it owns in another town.

Havre de Grace could roll out steadily increasing water and sewer rates for at least the next three years, if the city council passes the bill it introduced at its meeting Monday night to set rates in advance for up to three years.