Air Pollution

The new owner of a Baltimore medical waste incinerator has agreed to cut air pollution by installing equipment to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent and to pay a $75,000 penalty for past air pollution violations, the Maryland Department of the Environment announced yesterday. Environment Secretary Kendl P. Philbrick said Curtis Bay Energy also has agreed to install continuous mercury emission monitoring equipment, a first for Maryland. CBE also will perform $125,000 in supplemental projects, including research and development on new ways to control and monitor mercury emissions.

Air quality will be poor in Baltimore on Sunday, according to state officials. Higher than normal air pollution concentrations could threaten sensitive groups like children, the elderly and people with asthma, heart disease or lung disease. People who may fall into these categories should avoid strenous activity or exercise outdoors. Late Saturday, the Maryland Department of the Environment issued Sunday's code orange air quality alert for the Baltimore metro region. More information about the alert can be found on the Department of the Enviornment's website or by calling the Maryland Air Quality Hotline at 410-537-3247.

It's happened several times to both Dani Chapman, 17, an Harriett Owens, 69. A casual trip outside from their homes in Dundalk to a shopping mall or other destination brought on attacks of gasping for breath and wheezing so severe and prolonged that they were rushed by ambulance to a hospital where they remained for a week."

Baltimore's air is healthier to breathe than it used to be, but the region still has some of the nation's worst smog and soot pollution, according to the American Lung Association. In its annual report on the state of the nation's air, the advocacy group says the greater Baltimore-Washington region had nearly 41 fewer days of high ozone levels during 2010, the most recent year for which verified federal air-quality data are available. But the region still had the 13th most bad smog days out of 277 metropolitan areas across the country.

As voyages go for the Peter W. Anderson, the Environmental Protection Agency's flagship ocean research vessel, the past few weeks on Chesapeake Bay might have seemed unremarkable.Most days, the converted Vietnam gunboat, docked this week for tours at the Inner Harbor, has scarcely traveled past Poole's Island off Harford County.There, it held position in the "plume" of pollution streaming from Baltimore on the wind, its array of instruments taking the most discerning and comprehensive measures to date of the region's air emissions as they passed over and fell on the bay.But this minor voyage is part of the culmination of critical, decades-long efforts to link the health of the planet's air with that of its waters.

WHILE MARYLAND agonizes over required auto-exhaust tests on dynamometer-treadmills, in order to clean up the air and prevent the loss of $100 million in federal highway funds, those efforts may be undermined by the inaction of other states.Some states have not filed air improvement plans with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seriously hampering the drive for regional solutions to reduce pollution.The Ozone Transport Commission (consisting of Maryland, 13 other northeastern states and the District of Columbia)

Announcing a new, market-driven air pollution control program yesterday, the chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the plan would help rid Maryland of persistent smog that threatens the health of one in three state residents. But state officials, pollution experts and environmentalists disagreed, saying that the plan won't guarantee a solution to Maryland's worst air pollution problem: a stream of gases and particles flowing east from old, coal-burning power plants in the Midwest.

AMERICA'S love affair with light trucks, sport-utility vehicles and minivans is excessively polluting our air, increasing the chances of accident injuries and wasting fuel -- all within government regulations.Last month for the first time, sales of these bigger, heavier vehicles exceeded those of passenger cars in the United States. In 1999, these gas-guzzling behemoths will outsell standard autos.These larger vehicles, which now account for about a third of the vehicles on the road, are classified as "trucks" under federal standards, allowing them to emit twice as much pollution as cars.

A Baltimore developer known for breathing new life into crumbling architectural landmarks has purchased a run-down medical waste incinerator with a history of air pollution violations. Samuel K. Himmelrich Jr. says he has installed a $200,000 pollution filtration system at the Phoenix Services incinerator in Curtis Bay that he hopes will remove more than 90 percent of its mercury air pollution, which can cause brain damage in infants. And he said he plans to invest as much as $4 million over three years to fix up the decaying plant.

IT'S AN ILL wind that blows the smog-forming pollution of Midwest and Ohio Valley smokestacks into the air of Maryland and the Northeast.While Atlantic states have spent tens of millions of dollars to reduce unhealthy smog levels, they are foiled by coal-fired power plants to the west that spew a pall of pollution into eastbound air currents.New federal rules would reduce this pernicious interstate commerce, severely limiting nitrogen oxide output from upwind electric plants and industries.

The Curtis Bay and Brooklyn neighborhoods in industrialized South Baltimore are among the most polluted in Maryland and even the nation, says a Washington-based environmental group, which is calling for tighter scrutiny of air quality there and curbs on diesel truck emissions. Drawing on federal data, the Environmental Integrity Project says the Curtis Bay zip code has the highest toxic air pollution from businesses and factories in the state, accounting for more than a third of all such emissions in the state and nearly 90 percent of of Baltimore city's total.  The neighborhood's emissions also rank 74th highest among all 8,948 zip codes nationwide, according to the group's report.

A friend of mine, who knows more about these things than I do, corrects me when the subject of global warming enters the conversation. The correct term, she reminds me, "is climate change. " The bottom line is scientists who study the weather are pretty much in agreement that the cumulative effect of decades of air pollution will be to change weather patterns over the long haul. They've come up with evidence that it's pretty much started, as several of the hottest years since records started being kept have been in the last 10 years.

The owner of the trash incinerator in South Baltimore has paid a $77,500 penalty to the state for failure to control emissions of toxic mercury into the air. Wheelabrator Baltimore L.P. agreed to pay to settle allegations by the Maryland Department of the Environment and the attorney general's office that its Baltimore Refuse Energy Systems Co. waste-to-energy plant on Russell Street near the stadiums had violated air pollution...

Taken from the pages of The Aegis dated Thursday, Dec. 7, 1961: Harford County officials were up in arms over the Maryland State Roads Commission's decision a half century ago this week to eliminate the interchanges at Routes 155 in Havre de Grace and Route 152 in Joppa from their plans for a Northeastern Expressway. Harford County had a strong supporter in then Comptroller Louis M. Goldstein. Mr. Gold stein stated, "Are you working for the taxpayers of Maryland or the investment houses of New York?"

Marta Mossburg's recent column ("Governor, don't tell us where to live," Nov. 9 ) ties itself up in illogical knots. She bemoans the idea that a rational planning process to reduce runaway urban sprawl would result in more tightly spaced communities, and then goes on to complain that "even massive transit subsidies will not change the fact that the vast majority of people will continue to rely on cars. " I'm not sure how a vast exodus to rural Maryland would do anything to increase the efficiency of mass transit.

If Gov. Martin O'Malley has his way, future generations of Marylanders will be forced to live where current residents are fleeing. His PlanMaryland - and it is truly his, as it was assigned through executive order - will dangle development money at counties abiding by "sustainable" development paths and withhold it from counties pursuing "unsustainable" growth plans. Sustainable is one of those terms, like climate change, whose meanings are so subjective and mutable that they could raise George Orwell from the dead in protest of their abuse of the English language.

Maryland and 11 other states challenging the Bush administration's new air pollution rules won an injunction in federal court yesterday blocking some of the most critical regulations from taking effect. The order from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stops the Environmental Protection Agency from putting in place this week changes to the Clean Air Act regarding coal-fired power plants and other industrial facilities. "We are pleased with the court's ruling," said Richard McIntire, a spokesman for Maryland Department of the Environment.

Power plants and other industries would have to pay more than $2 million a year in new air pollution fees so the state could hire more environmental enforcement officers under a bill being debated in Annapolis. The O'Malley administration is supporting the legislation, which would allow the Maryland Department of the Environment to use the money to fill 26 positions that have been vacant because of several years of budget cuts. "We need to have adequate enforcement of our air pollution laws, and we don't have that - only 18 inspectors looking after 11,600 sources of air pollution," said Sen. Brian E. Frosh, a Montgomery County Democrat and sponsor of the bill.

In a decision that outraged public health experts and environmentalists Friday, President Barack Obama announced that he had directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to do anything further to lower smog in the air until 2013 - after he has been reelected (or so he hopes). EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was about to tighten controls, which are at this moment significantly less protective even than what the Bush administration thought acceptable. But President Obama, apparently anxious to placate relentless critics at the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber of Commerce, told Ms. Jackson to back off. The business groups could hardly contain their glee, disingenuously describing the president's decision as an "enormous victory for America's job creators.

When race fans roll into town for the Baltimore Grand Prix this weekend, they can expect to find the Inner Harbor course lined with more than 1,200 recycling bins, and their drinks will be served in cups made of biodegradable corn instead of plastic. The Indy-style racecars will be burning 100 percent ethanol rather than gasoline as they roar through downtown streets, and drivers in one contest will be judged partly on their fuel mileage and greenhouse gas emissions. Promoters of the three-day motorsports extravaganza vow this will be the "greenest Grand Prix ever.