Back River

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.

Dividing county from city moves state backward The new redistricting plan is awful ("Court revises political map," June 22). Forget about the issue of holding onto Baltimore's political power. Many organizations have studied the city's ills only to find that they extend into the surrounding counties. Districts that cut across jurisdictional boundaries are necessary for state senators and delegates to develop innovative ways of eliminating problems with transportation, poverty, affordable housing and employment issues.

The Maryland Department of the Environment said yesterday that it will be posting up to 10 signs "within days" warning people not to eat fish caught in the Back River, which have been found to contain high levels of a suspected carcinogen. The announcement came one day after the Herring Run Watershed Association and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation chastised the MDE for failing to put up the signs while people have continued to fish in the polluted river for the past five months. The department, however, denied that it had promised to post the signs as early as February.

Despite finding high levels of a suspected carcinogen in fish in Back River six months ago, Maryland officials have failed to post signs warning people not to eat the fish - partly because they can't agree on how the signs should be worded. Maryland Department of the Environment officials say they expect the signs to be posted by the end of the month. But the lapse has irked at least two environmental groups that want the warning signs posted on the popular eastern Baltimore County waterway, where people fish every day. "What irritates me most is that they identified the problem and there was supposed to be some notification earlier," said Richard S. Hersey, executive director of the Herring Run Watershed Association.

Samuel J. Weaver Sr. is an old salt who can fill an afternoon spinning colorful tales. Some of them might even be true. "I'm old enough that some of my stories can't be checked," said Weaver, winking at his wife, Josephine. Weaver, 85, is a living scrapbook. He owns Weaver's Marine Service on Back River in Essex, reports to work every day armed with his carpenter's pencil and folding ruler, and is one of the oldest active marina operators in Maryland. "He's one of a kind," said Jeff Zahner, 39, the marina's business manager who started working for Weaver cutting his lawn when he was a kid. "He's taught me a lot, but right at the top is that there is no replacement for hard work."

The basketball hoops are in place, and the court's lines have been painted. The only thing missing at yesterday's dedication of the Back River Community Center were kids running up and down the courts. Baltimore County lacks recreational space, and the $775,000 Back River center in Essex replaces an outdated facility scheduled for demolition. In addition to a 6,000- square-foot gymnasium, baseball and softball fields, and a soccer field, the new center has several meeting rooms. Lighted horseshoe courts are available, too. "They have some wonderful times out there," said John Weber III, director of the county's recreation and parks department, as he spoke about the Baltimore Metro Horseshoe Club during his remarks at the center's dedication.

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.

A 588-acre parcel of waterfront land on Baltimore County's Back River is in line to be added to Maryland's Rural Legacy Program, forging another link in a conservation chain along the county's Chesapeake Bay margin. The property, Essex Skypark, is owned by the I. D. Shapiro family of Baltimore. The county has agreed to pay the Shapiros $2 million, money set aside by the state two years ago. The state's Board of Public Works is expected to approve the deal at its meeting in Annapolis today.

From Nick Foehrkolb Jr.'s wall of windows at his house on Breezy Point, he can see the shores of five counties - Kent, Cecil, Harford, Baltimore and Anne Arundel - that touch the Chesapeake Bay. From his front yard he can see the high brown grass that hides a creek where he played as a child. "It was like an aquarium in that creek," said Foehrkolb, who grew up to become a waterman and owner of Breezy Point Seafood on Philadelphia Road. Although there's about 200 miles of waterfront in eastern Baltimore County, very few have the sense of remote comfort of Breezy Point, the tip of a peninsula that has been slowly developed by Foehrkolb's family since the 1930s.