NEWS
March 29, 2007
Senate panel OKs criminal-records bill A Senate committee voted yesterday in favor of legislation that would automatically expunge criminal records when people are arrested but not charged with a crime. In giving its approval, the Judicial Proceedings Committee rejected an amendment that would have required those who were arrested to sign a waiver promising not to sue the police department. Several senators had asked about the provision -- a prerequisite for expungement under current law. People seeking to have their records expunged must also pay a fee under current law and apply to have the records erased -- a process that typically requires the assistance of a lawyer.
NEWS
By Andrew A. Green | December 6, 2007
The top elected officials from the Chesapeake Bay region acknowledged yesterday what scientists and environmental advocates have been saying for years: They will not achieve their goals for cleaning up the bay by 2010. However, members of the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council -- which includes the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the mayor of Washington -- said they will enact programs and policies by 2010 to reach the benchmarks for reducing pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus in the bay and its tributaries.
TOPIC
By Tom Simpson | June 20, 1999
WE HAVE BROKEN the 15 million population barrier in the Chesapeake Bay basin on our way to 18 million by 2020.Simultaneously, we are making great claims about -- and real progress toward -- cleaning up the bay. Our strongest commitment is to reduce the impact of nutrient pollution on the bay's living resources -- the crabs, fish and oysters, and the underwater grasses that provide critical habitat.We are committed to maintaining our progress in restoring the bay. However, will population growth and development, along with our consumptive lifestyles, halt and reverse our progress?
NEWS
December 10, 1999
FIRST, let's be grateful that all the smiling pols didn't show up at Wye Mills this week for photo opportunities and overblown oratory, marking the launching of the Chesapeake 2000 draft plan.That means the real work of charting and improving the health of the Chesapeake Bay over the next decade can begin in earnest. It means that troublesome differences between bay states can be worked out through professional negotiation and expert persuasion, rather than through public saber-rattling.Controlling growth is the main sticking point of the Chesapeake Bay Program that is to be adopted by Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
NEWS
By Heather Dewar and Frank D. Roylance | March 21, 1999
A new federal farm census shows Maryland's poultry industry is growing on the Upper Eastern Shore, bringing with it the potential for the same water-pollution problems that have beset the Pocomoke River and other Lower Eastern Shore waterways at the industry's epicenter.Farmers in Talbot, Kent and Queen Anne's counties say economic necessity is compelling them to follow their Lower Shore neighbors in taking out six-figure mortgages on large poultry houses and raising chickens under contract for the Delmarva Peninsula's large poultry companies.
NEWS
By Joel McCord | June 30, 1999
OCEAN CITY -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening and a half-dozen federal, state and local officials signed a $6 million plan yesterday to clean up Maryland's threatened coastal bays over the next 10 years.The 175-page blueprint for the management and conservation of Assawoman, Isle of Wight, Sinepuxent and Chincoteague bays is largely voluntary. It relies heavily on education programs, incentives and disincentives to prod developers, farmers, homeowners and watermen to take better care of the waters between the barrier islands and the Eastern Shore.
NEWS
By Joel McCord | June 22, 1999
Sediments from the Magothy River contain arsenic and those from the Severn contain copper, zinc and nickel. In the upper reaches of the Chester River, there are banned pesticides, Dieldrin and DDT, and in the Potomac River, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).Those rivers, isolated from the heavy manufacturing assumed to cause such pollution, are among 10 areas of concern noted in a Chesapeake Bay Program report on tidal rivers released yesterday.Nine of those areas -- the Middle, Back, Magothy, Severn, Chester and the upper and middle segments of the Patuxent and Potomac rivers -- are in Maryland.
NEWS
By Tom Horton | March 28, 1999
SUSSEX COUNTY, Del. -- While Eastern Shore poultry farmers face tough new restrictions on manure pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, their counterparts upstream in Delaware operate under some of this region's weakest environmental scrutiny.Delaware's environmental controls are so lax that a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official is warning that the state must quickly improve on its current "Boy Scout pledge" approach to reducing poultry pollution or the agency will intervene.The differing approaches by the states are most apparent on the Nanticoke River, which runs through Delaware and Maryland and carries excessive loads of "nutrients" -- nitrogen and phosphorus, prime Chesapeake pollutants.
NEWS
By Joel McCord | September 9, 1999
The health of the Chesapeake Bay is improving, with growing populations of oysters, shad and rockfish. But the estuary remains on the critical list, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.Wetlands, which filter pollutants from the water, have declined since last year and could shrink further under a federal court decision that allows wetland development in Virginia. And the blue crab population continues to drop, the foundation said yesterday in its annual State of the Bay report.The foundation gave the bay a score of 28 on a scale in which 100 is the pristine quality described by the English explorer Captain John Smith when he first sailed the Chesapeake in 1607.
NEWS
By Heather Dewar | June 19, 1998
Baltimore's plan to claim millions of gallons of water from the Susquehanna River Basin would have devastating effects on the entire Upper Chesapeake Bay region during a drought, say the Maryland and federal agencies arrayed against the city in a new water war.Opponents of the plan, ranging from the town of Havre de Grace to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, say they want Baltimore to agree to do what all other users of Susquehanna River water must...