NEWS
By Jonah Goldberg | December 26, 2008
Does anyone know what we're supposed to call this decade? Is it the 2000s? The twenty-ohs? We're coming up on the last year of it, and I still have no idea. Personally, I always liked the "oughts," as in, "Back in ought-six, I ate a brick of cheddar cheese in one sitting." But perhaps the best reason to call it the oughts is that one is left with the sense that this decade ought to have been about something, and yet it really doesn't feel that way. As flawed as the American habit of dividing our history into decades may be, it's always made at least some intuitive sense.
NEWS
June 23, 2008
You can easily spend $4 or more for a gallon. Yet you feel you can't live without the stuff. But it may be time to explore alternative sources. We're referring, of course, to that great lubricant of modern life: bottled water. (What, you had some other expensive liquid in mind?) Maybe oil and water don't mix, but that's not to say they don't affect each other. The economy is sagging, and high gasoline prices are taking much of the blame. When filling up the minivan sets you back $75, there's an inclination to cut back on frills - for instance, things you can get almost for free.
NEWS
By Madison Park | May 9, 2008
For more than a decade, Carl and Patricia Morgan rented out their two-story house in Fallston, but it has been vacant for nearly four years now. The Morgans can't rent the well-kept house with the manicured lawn and they won't let their daughter live there either. After a toxic gasoline chemical leaked into their well, the Morgans are afraid of their water. Since 2004, residents like the Morgans have worried about their health, quality of life and diminished property values. Some residents have shouldered the expense of bottled water and maintenance costs on a filtration system, all while waiting to see what happens with the lawsuits against their former neighbor, a major oil company.
NEWS
By David Wood | May 1, 2008
GARMSIR, Afghanistan -- For the Marines fighting in southern Afghanistan, a shortage of drinking water turned out to be nearly as big a concern as Taliban insurgents. When Marines of Alpha and Bravo Companies, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, pushed into Garmsir, a Taliban stronghold, before dawn Tuesday, each toted 18 half-liter bottles of water plus two liters in his pack. Their staggering 100- to 150-pound loads - including weapons, ammunition, mortar base plates, radios, flak vests and helmets and other gear - had troop commanders worried even before the operation began.
NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare | February 17, 2008
Faced with an additional 10 years of filtering an elementary school's water supply, parents are renewing efforts to hook the building into the public system. It could be a decade or longer before the wells at Forest Hill Elementary are free of contamination and providing safe drinking water, officials at Maryland Department of the Environment said last week in meetings with parents and with the Harford County Council. The wells at the school, which opened in 2000 and has an enrollment of about 600, must be filtered to prevent contamination from a gasoline additive that has been detected in the ground.
NEWS
By Tom Pelton | November 30, 2007
An Anne Arundel County family has filed a lawsuit against Maryland's largest power company, contending that a leaky coal-ash waste dump contaminated their neighborhood's drinking water. At a news conference yesterday in Gambrills, Gayle K. Queen, an education counselor, said her husband, David, died of kidney failure last year after drinking water laced with lead, arsenic and other pollutants. Five or six other people in the neighborhood also died of suspicious causes, she said. "The people in this neighborhood are anxious every day if the water they drink every day is safe or toxic," said one of her attorneys, Wayne K. Curry, the former Prince George's County executive, now with William H. Murphy Jr.'s law firm in Baltimore.
NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare | November 25, 2007
Education officials, staff and parents at a northern Harford elementary school coping with contaminated wells are asking for a connection to nearby public water lines. Trace amounts of MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), a gasoline additive, were detected in the two private wells at Forest Hill Elementary School in 2005. By the spring of last year, tests showed the levels had risen to 13.6 parts per billion, a level still considered safe by federal standards, but one that prompted the school to use bottled water.
NEWS
November 11, 2007
Mission accomplished The victory of Navy's football team over Notre Dame earned midshipmen at the Naval Academy a day off from class. Spirituality center Elwood "Bunky" Barlett, the Mega Millions winner and Wiccan high priest, plans to build a center in Baltimore County where spirituality, religions and nature meet. Verdict in dragging death A Baltimore County judge found the driver of a truck guilty of manslaughter in the death of a toddler whose stroller was dragged nearly a mile.
NEWS
By JOHN-JOHN WILLIAM IV | November 11, 2007
The Howard County school system expanded its cleaning efforts to the weight rooms at 13 middle schools after two middle school students were diagnosed two weeks ago with a form of staph infection that is resistant to antibiotics. Initially, school system maintenance workers sprayed disinfectants each night in the locker rooms and bathrooms at each of the 12 county high schools. The effort was extended to the middle schools after cases of the infection were discovered involving a student at Glenwood Middle School and another at Oakland Mills Middle.
NEWS
November 9, 2007
From an environmental point of view, the decision by Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso not to keep trying to get the lead out of school drinking fountains and to put bottled water in coolers in all schools may be disappointing. After all, the packaging and disposal of bottled water are taking an increasing toll on the environment. So it seems a shame to add to that burden when good tap water is available, as it is in Baltimore. But the coolers are somewhat more environmentally friendly than individual bottles, and after 15 years of fighting a losing battle, switching to coolers is more realistic and practical.