Asphalt

THE ASPHALT PATH CARVED a wide swath around the Todt Hill apartments on Staten Island, N.Y. Built as public housing in the early 1950s for young postwar families, the five buildings, each five stories high, were squeezed into one square block, accessed from the street by this path. I walked to first grade by myself down that path and called up to my mother from it when I got all A's on my report card and couldn't wait to tell her. I walked my little brother down to the playground at the bottom and once waited there with him when he stuck his head through the wrought-iron fence surrounding it and had to be rescued by firefighters.

A deal that would have a Laurel-based quarry company buy the asphalt-making and road-construction business of Reston, Va.-based Lafarge Corp. is taking longer to complete than insiders in the local road-construction business had expected.Industry sources say Laurel Sand & Gravel has outbid a consortium of local contractors to buy the assets, which Lafarge acquired last year when it bought Towson-based Redland Genstar Inc. as part of a $690 million deal. Lafarge put the asphalt plants and road-paving business up for sale last fall because they did not fit with Lafarge's core mining business -- and because they put the company into direct competition with customers who bought its sand and crushed stone, ingredients of concrete or blacktop for roads.

County officials have given the go-ahead to a proposed asphalt plant in northern Anne Arundel County that has come under strong criticism from elected officials and residents worried about environmental pollution in the area.They maintain that important questions about the project's operations remain unanswered, and that the facility does not belong in an area that for years has been affected by poor air quality."This is another blatant attempt to pollute North County," said community activist Marcia Drenzyk, referring to the concentration of heavy industry in the area.

THE BATTLE goes on for residents of northern Anne Arundel County. During the past 30 years, they have fought waste incinerators, fly ash, trash transfer stations and an oil refinery. Now they are waging a campaign against a proposed asphalt products plant.You have to have sympathy for North County residents, just like the Wagner's Point residents across the city-county border who were beseiged by industrial polluters until the city bought out their homes.The area has a heavy concentration of businesses that are important for job growth but that nobody wants in their backyards.

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley was full of smiles as he hit the city's streets yesterday to break up asphalt with a jackhammer and blast graffiti with a hose that fired water and sand.It was the third day of the mayor's eight-day campaign to clean the city's main streets. Public works crews worked through the rain and dense fog to fill potholes, mow grass, paint electrical poles and clean curb gutters.As of yesterday, the crews had collected 143 tons of trash; cleaned 111 city lots; painted 614 electrical poles; filled 537 potholes; planted 55 trees, and issued 246 citations for trash problems.

County officials have given the go-ahead to a proposed asphalt plant in northern Anne Arundel County that has come under strong criticism from elected officials and residents worried about environmental pollution in the area.They maintain that important questions about the project's operations remain unanswered, and that the facility does not belong in an area that for years has been affected by poor air quality."This is another blatant attempt to pollute North County," said community activist Marcia Drenzyk, referring to the concentration of heavy industry.

Sykesville has awarded contracts for two public works projects that will begin within the next month.The town will pay $71,000 to Bosley Inc., a Reisterstown contractor, to repave Second Avenue.Melvin Benhoff & Sons, a county-based company, will construct a 4-foot-wide asphalt path along the perimeter of Burkett Park, making the 7-acre site near Norris Avenue accessible to the disabled and more comfortable for joggers and strollers.Cost of the park project is about $17,000 and will be paid for through a Program Open Space grant, which will also allow for the purchase of several trees to be planted this fall.

TYSONS CORNER, Va. -- Dave McCall holds up a football-sized chunk of asphalt that looks as if it might have been collected fresh from a pothole out on Leesburg Pike. He points it at a couple of somber Mexican security men, potential customers passing by his booth.Their surprised faces appear on the little Sony video screen nearby."You put this on the street in front of a building, and nobody's gonna notice it. Nobody," McCall tells them, rotating the asphalt so that the pinhole video camera hidden inside pans the exhibit room at the Sheraton Premiere Hotel.

FOR 50 YEARS, ever since mass production and regimented military power carried us to victory in World War II, we Americans have routinely applied standardization techniques to our highways and bridges, our schools, commercial strips and housing tracts.Small wonder so many look so similar -- and boring. And in fact, the standardization has its enforcers. They're the ''professionals'' -- the engineers, planners, fire marshals, public work directors -- who tell the rest of us what's best, safe, allowable to build, from street widths to setbacks to minimum parking.

Speed humps have been embraced by officialdom in suburbia as one of the most effective ways to slow lead-footed drivers and discourage motorists from using side streets as shortcuts.Now, the humps themselves have run into an obstacle: Some drivers don't like them.Montgomery County, the state leader in speed humps with 950 on the road and 450 more proposed, is holding a hearing Thursday to find out if citizens prefer their streets smooth or chunky."This is the most popular program we have, and this is the most hated program we have," acknowledged County Councilman Isiah Leggett, chairman of the council's Transportation and Environment Committee.

Jos. A. Bank reports increased Q1 earnings Jos. A. Bank men's clothing store said late Tuesday that fiscal first-quarter earnings increased as people continued to buy its suits and other products despite the recession. The Hampstead-based company reported net income of 62 cents per share, or $11.5 million, compared to 53 cents per share, or $9.8 million, the same period a year ago. Comparable store sales, or those at stores open at least a year, increased 4.3 percent. Internet and catalog sales increased 12.1 percent.

A man who had applied for a job at a South Baltimore asphalt company returned yesterday morning and shot a supervisor in the leg, city police said. After the shooting, which occurred at a factory in the Curtis Bay neighborhood, the man drove to his house and fatally shot himself, police said. According to authorities, the shooting stemmed from a dispute over a minor car accident last week in the company's parking lot. Police said they responded to the Seaboard Asphalt Products Co. about 9:20 a.m. for a report of a shooting.

It's time to fess up. One of my very favorite places to watch trains is the Sisson Street Bridge, which received low marks in the safety ratings scores published in this newspaper this week. Is it the amusement park-like shake and thrill I get when a auto or truck passes over its deck? Is it the 1890s ironwork that makes this span seem trussed up with oversized Tinkertoys? Is it the quick fix of not having to wait very long before a roaring freight train grinds up the Jones Falls Valley and shoots toward Greenmount Avenue?

THE ASPHALT PATH CARVED a wide swath around the Todt Hill apartments on Staten Island, N.Y. Built as public housing in the early 1950s for young postwar families, the five buildings, each five stories high, were squeezed into one square block, accessed from the street by this path. I walked to first grade by myself down that path and called up to my mother from it when I got all A's on my report card and couldn't wait to tell her. I walked my little brother down to the playground at the bottom and once waited there with him when he stuck his head through the wrought-iron fence surrounding it and had to be rescued by firefighters.

Howard County : Simpsonville Several vehicles involved in crash A dump truck carrying asphalt erupted in flames during a multiple-vehicle accident yesterday afternoon that closed westbound Route 32 in the Howard County community of Simpsonville during rush hour and caused backups on nearby U.S. 29. One injured person was taken by ambulance to Maryland Shock Trauma Center; three people with minor injuries were taken to Howard County General Hospital, fire...

The earthy, pungent and oddly beguiling bouquet of hot, fresh-poured asphalt wafted into the night air on southbound Interstate 95 between Baltimore and Washington. It's an aroma Mike Strong loves. "When I smell that, I know springtime's here," said Strong, a project engineer for the State Highway Administration. While Strong savors the fragrance of asphalt, nighttime motorists on I-95 have been breathing the exhaust fumes of traffic jams as four lanes of traffic in each direction are reduced to two lanes five nights a week on the busy interstate.

THE PROBLEM -- Water is flowing continuously from a pipe in back of homes in North Baltimore's Homeland neighborhood. THE BACKSTORY -- Jay Rubin of Homeland complained that he has twice called the city's 311 number and his homeowner's association to report the leak, which he said began flowing last fall. Watchdog visited the wide alley between Taplow and Broxton roads used as an access way to parking spaces and found water spilling from a small pipe. A steady stream ran down the alley and filled two potholes.

More than 5,500 volunteers removed 460 tons of trash from Baltimore streets, alleys and parks Saturday as part of the annual Super Spring Sweep Thing organized by the mayor's office to help clean up the city, the Department of Public Works announced. The eighth cleanup involved 260 neighborhood groups that collected 55 more tons of trash and debris this year than in 2006. But the total did not come close to the first year the event was held, in 2000, when officials say 2,500 volunteers collected 3,000 tons of trash.

On a crisp fall day outside Franklin Square Elementary School, children fill the playground. A group of boys and girls scout for butterflies in a garden. Others run around the grass, their bulky coats half-buttoned in the breeze. There's nothing remarkable or shocking about this scene in the large yard at the corner of Lexington and Calhoun streets in West Baltimore - but just last year, it would have been unthinkable. For decades, all of Franklin Square's 2-acre playground was asphalt - much of it cracked, covered in broken glass and weeds.

A fatal accident and a dump truck that spilled asphalt on a roadway snarled traffic for hours yesterday in Anne Arundel County, delaying school buses and commuters throughout the morning while parts of Interstate 97 and Route 100 were closed, authorities said. Travis Stephen Dyer, 26, was killed when his pickup veered off the westbound side of Route 100 near Lake Waterford Road, struck a guardrail and overturned. Dyer, of Pasadena, was not wearing his seat belt, state police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after the 6:50 a.m. accident.