Back River

Four city public works and transportation projects have won awards from the Maryland affiliate of the American Council of Engineering Companies. The council recognized the following projects Friday: Repairing a 72-inch water main that broke under the harbor near the Key Bridge on April 10, 2002. Dive teams had to work 35 feet under water, with a 24-inch gas main on one side and electrical cables on the other. The $2 million job was completed in July, restoring water to 250,000 customers.

Although there have been more rumors of crime than actual reports of it in the flooded neighborhoods of eastern Baltimore County, police said yesterday that they will increase visible and covert patrols in those areas this weekend. Officers will be patrolling by air and sea in the neighborhoods of Bowleys Quarters, Seneca Park and Millers Island to reassure the residents that they and their properties are safe, said Bill Toohey, a county police spokesman. However, Toohey said, since Tropical Storm Isabel hit last week, there have been three reports of burglaries, two reports of theft and five reports of suspicious people in Essex.

Deep inside the woods called Muddy Gut, surrounded by century-old oaks, Theresa Guckert bends down to examine a little waif of a plant.On this first day of autumn, the whorled pagonia orchid, its bloom long ago lost, doesn't look very spectacular. But Mrs. Guckert is reassured by the sight of this plant rarely seen in the Piedmont coastal area.She knows this stretch of land. She has walked the woods and ravines of Muddy Gut -- so-called because it surrounds a tidal creek of the same name.

When Charlotte "Mutzi" Maranto was a little girl growing up in the Canton area of Baltimore -- and even later, when she and husband Sam, a sales associate at Norris Ford in Dundalk, were raising a family and residing on a sunny hilltop in Hamilton -- one of her favorite pastimes involved exploring the many areas in and around Baltimore."

For the Somogyis, whose family has farmed its eastern Baltimore County bayside land since before the Great Depression, the latest review of their waterfront building plans seems just one more part of a bewildering process. They feel they've lost the right to build anything on their 90 acres.Baltimore County is in the midst of reviewing proposals by the Somogyis and five others for the right to develop protected land next to Chesapeake Bay or its tributaries.The state's 7-year-old Critical Area law provides jurisdictions some leeway in allowing development near the bay. In Baltimore County, up to 170 acres on its eastern fringe are eligible for development.

A national design team unveiled a broad outline yesterday for improving Essex-Middle River through new community gateways and commercial hubs, abundant public spaces and improved public schools, and issued a call for volunteer "sparkplugs." What must come now, residents and officials agreed, is the investment to sustain the redevelopment of eastern Baltimore County. "It's time to summon that pride and accomplishment that was the hallmark of this area during and after World War II," said Hannah Twaddle, a planner from Virginia and one of 10 members of the Urban Design Assistance Team that studied Essex-Middle River for a week.

Eastern Baltimore County residents celebrated the opening of the Riverwood Family and Youth Center yesterday, the culmination of years of volunteer work by adult and teen leaders who are battling juvenile crime in impoverished pockets of the area.The $750,000 facility in Essex features a Police Athletic League center, a county recreation office, health department substance-abuse prevention programs, a day care center and a job-location program -- along with Orlando Yarborough's martial arts school and family fitness center.

The body of Michael Joseph Gebbia, the second of two East Baltimore brothers reported missing after taking a swim Sunday night in the Back River, was found floating in the river yesterday just west of Porter Point near the Essex Skypark.His brother, James Donahue Gebbia, was found about 10 a.m. Tuesday near the same spot.A state Department of Natural Resources police officer standing on the shore spotted Michael Gebbia's body around 6:15 a.m., said Bob Graham, a natural resources police spokesman.

Walter Kwarta, a former restaurateur and union official, died Tuesday of complications of pancreatitis at Franklin Square Hospital Center. He was 62 and lived in Middle River. Until he sold the business in the mid-1990s, he operated River Watch Restaurant and Marina, a 400-seat establishment overlooking Hopkins Creek in the Middleborough section of eastern Baltimore County. He was also a longshoreman who drove a tractor on the docks of the Port of Baltimore from the 1950s through the 1970s.

About 75 relatives, friends and employees rallied yesterday in support of two brothers apparently involved in the fatal shooting of a man attempting to burglarize their Glyndon concrete plant. Many of those gathered at Back River Recreation Center in Essex - across the street from the original site of the plant and not far from where Matthew J. Geckle and Dominic A. "Tony" Geckle grew up - said they were worried the brother who is thought to have fired the gun could face criminal charges.