Baltimore Harbor

It's amazing how quickly months of caked-on tunnel grime can be whisked away with a jug of Soot-B-Gone and a $250,000 Mercedes-Benz. The potent one-two punch is how the Maryland Transportation Authority keeps tiled walls in the Fort McHenry and Baltimore Harbor tunnels glistening from the beginning of April through Thanksgiving. For the overnight scrubbing operation, workers mix the anti-soot soap with hundreds of gallons of water and place the solution on the backs of two bug-eyed, German-engineered trucks called Unimogs.

He didn't get down on one knee, but Christopher Lee wooed his wife with a skyscraping crane she literally could call her own at the dedication of the port of Baltimore's berth capable of handling the world's largest cargo ships. As founder of Highstar Capital, the Ruxton resident provided the financial backing for a $105 million expansion at Seagirt Marine Terminal to make Baltimore one of only two East Coast ports — the other is Norfolk, Va. — ready to handle the larger ships that could pass through the widened Panama Canal in 2015.

Sparrows Point's landowner turned down a Maryland Port Administration offer to use part of the property for containing dredge material, but both sides said Wednesday that it's not the final word. "We're not really taking this at all as a closed-door situation," said port spokesman Richard Scher, who said the rejection came last week. "This is part of negotiating, and we recognize that. " Scher said the port has a meeting next week with Environmental Liability Transfer, which owns the land and some of the buildings on the former steel-mill property.

Here's one way to be optimistic about Maryland's looming crisis over where to put the considerable ooze dredged every year to keep the Chesapeake Bay navigable for shipping.You could hold it all in a space the size of a football field.Of course, you would have to stack it about half a mile high.Or, it could be spread out, not much thicker than the butter on your toast; but that would mean annually slathering a slice of land a fifth the size of Maryland.Neither solution is realistic, but then Maryland has never yet dealt with the full reality of maintaining a great economic heart like the Port of Baltimore.

Thanks to Alison Prost for her recent commentary ("Beyond 'rain tax' rhetoric," May 1) explaining the health and economic issues that will be addressed with a stormwater fee and debunking the misrepresentation of the fee. The fee is not about rain. It takes aim at the pollution, trash and debris that are washing into our local rivers, the Baltimore Harbor and Chesapeake Bay. The polluted runoff makes these waterways unfit for use and the fish in them unsafe to eat. Many Baltimore organizations - private, public, community and nonprofit - are working hard to make our waterways fishable and swimmable.

This week, in 1888, Baltimore caught the edges of what The Sun described as "one of the severest blizzards ever known on the Middle Atlantic coast." Cold air swept down from Lake Superior, while a powerful storm swirled north from Cape Hatteras. Ice, winds to 48 mph, and up to a foot of snow cut off telegraph and telephone communications with harder-hit cities to the north. Northwest winds dropped the Chesapeake tides 5 feet, emptying parts of the tidal Potomac and Baltimore harbor.

The owner and the operator of the Seaport Taxi that capsized March 6, killing five people, asked the U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday to take jurisdiction over a lawsuit filed by three of the accident's survivors. In their complaint, the boat's owner, the nonprofit Living Classrooms Foundation, and its operator, Baltimore Harbor Shuttle, said their liability for the accident should be limited under a federal maritime law that restricts possible damages to the value of the vessel involved -- in this case, the pontoon boat Lady D. "The Accident and the damages arising therefrom were caused by an Act of God, namely, the sudden, unexpected and extremely violent winds which struck the Baltimore Harbor that afternoon," they said in the complaint.

The Maryland Port Administration is completing its initial review of a multimillion-dollar proposal that would turn Baltimore harbor shipping channel muck into bucks. The plan might eventually replace time-tested dredge disposal methods of piling sediment along the waterline or using it to plug holes in eroding bay islands with a factory that bakes the goo into concrete aggregate for construction. Baltimore would be the first port to use the process. "We're getting ready to take the next step and it's an important step for Maryland," said port commissioner Ted Venetoulis.

Nearly $36 million has been set aside for the port of Baltimore in the U.S. Senate version of the federal Energy and Water Appropriations bill.The House of Representatives will consider the bill next week. If it is passed, it would then go to President Clinton for final approval, said Kara Peterman, a spokeswoman for Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes."This funding is essential for the economic health and prosperity of the port of Baltimore, the state of Maryland and our maritime industry," Sarbanes said in a joint statement with Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski.

In yesterday's Around the Inner Harbor column, the Baltimor Harbor Endowment's phone number should have been 732-8155.The Sun regerts the errors.BUY A BRICKYou can have people walk on your name for years if you buy a brick from the Baltimore Harbor Endowment. The bricks -- engraved with your name -- will make up parts of the Baltimore Waterfront Promenade, a continuous walkway that will stretch 7.5 miles around the harbor when completed. Waterfront residents and business owners are invited to Bohager's Bar and Grill, 515 S. Eden St. from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday for a reception aimed to raise community awareness of the campaign.