Brandon Woods

The county has given Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. permission to use 1.6 million cubic yards of coal ash as fill at the last of three sections of its Brandon Woods industrial park property.The decision is being hailed as a victory by the neighboring Solley Road community, which has waged a running battle with the utility over the use of the property.The ruling is the first by Anne Arundel County Hearing Officer Robert C. Wilcox under a 1994 county law that requires BGE to win a special exception to fill a site with combustion ash.In the decision filed Friday, Wilcox made BGE's compromises with the neighborhood conditions of his approval, advised the community that it should bring complaints about violations to him and revived the issue of whether fly ash should be subjected to closer state environmental scrutiny.

A state order requiring BBSS Inc. to clean up contaminated water found near its coal ash dump site in Gambrills has stalled a proposed shopping center expansion that would bring in a Target store. The Village at Waugh Chapel South would be built off Route 3 on part of the 80-acre site where Baltimore Gas & Electric has been hauling its fly ash, a byproduct from its coal-fired power plants.

POLICE LOG* Brandon Woods Business Park: Someone stole a $2,000 jackhammer from a truck parked in the 7600 block of Energy Parkway sometime between Saturday and Monday.* Freetown Village: Someone broke the rear window of a truck in the 7900 block of Liberty Circle Monday night and stole a $250 stereo.

A community organization and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. signed a truce yesterday, ending a bitter dispute that lasted nearly two decades over the utility's use of coal ash to level the ground at BGE's Marley Neck business park.The legal wrangling between BGE and the surrounding Glen Burnie community had reached Maryland's second-highest court. It comes on the heels of BGE's ending its dumping of fly ash on its Marley Neck property last month and promising not to use fly ash there again.

EVEN THOUGH BGE has been burying fly-ash at its Brandon Woods Energy Park for more than 15 years, the utility company faces an unusually fierce fight to continue its disposal plans at that site in the northeast corner of Anne Arundel County. Property owners living across the street are waging a vigorous fight to deny the company the special exception it needs.For many years, BGE did not need a special exception to bury fly-ash at Brandon Woods. From 1982 to '94, BGE only needed a conditional use permit to dispose of coal ash in industrial zones.

Hoping to capitalize on a surge in activity, the Constellation Real Estate Group Inc. intends to develop the first major new speculative industrial project in the Baltimore area since 1989.The new 250,000-square-foot warehouse -- roughly equivalent in size to the 27-story office tower at 201 N. Charles St. downtown -- will be constructed at the firm's 220-acre Brandon Woods Business Park in Anne Arundel County.Constellation's decision to proceed with the $10.5 million project comes in response to a marketwide drop in vacancy rates, combined with slight rental rate increases, for distribution space.

Commerce Corp., the East Coast's largest lawn and garden supply company, has signed a letter of intent for a new $10 million headquarters and distribution center in an Anne Arundel County industrial park.Construction on the 273,000-square-foot project in the Brandon Woods Industrial Park, in the Solley section of the county, is scheduled to begin next month. The shift will affect roughly 200 Commerce employees, now located in the county's Linthicum Heights area facility.The commitment with the Svatos Co. to develop the new headquarters ends a four-month search by the firm, brought on by tremendous growth in its business.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. has been a good neighbor in northern Anne Arundel County. The county Department of Planning and Code Enforcement says of all the long-term grading projects it regulates, BGE's Brandon Woods ash fill on Marley Neck has done a better job of complying than any other. Not surprisingly then, the utility questions the need for pending legislation that would limit how it uses fly ash -- a non-toxic waste byproduct from Brandon Shores' and Wagner Point's coal-fired generators -- to fill and grade the Brandon Woods site, which it intends to turn into an industrial park.

Strong community opposition has caused Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. to withdraw a plan to pile fly ash from its coal-fired generators on the back corner of a Marley Neck industrial park.However, the electric company will continue to use ash generated at its Brandon Shores and Wagner Point power plants to grade and level building lots at the Brandon Woods Industrial Park, BG&E spokesman John Metzger said.James J. Cannelli, a planner with the county Department of Planning and Code Enforcement, said the department has received a letter from BG&E asking that its revised grading plan for the Brandon Woods Industrial Park be withdrawn.

Residents along Solley Road have worried for decades about the effects that Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s fly ash operation at its Brandon Woods industrial park might have on their health and community and the environment.Now, residents are taking their dispute with BGE to the Board of Appeals, hoping the board will rescind a county decision giving the utility permission to use 1.6 million cubic yards of coal ash as fill at the last of three sections of the industrial park."We consider it a serious environmental problem," said Casper Hackmann, 74, a retired pipefitter for the former Continental Oil Co. and one of those who filed the appeal.

After nearly 20 years of battling a powerful utility -- and gaining a major victory -- some activists might have celebrated loudly, then returned to the normal business of life.Not the residents of the Solley community in northern Anne Arundel County.Although the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. recently announced an end to its policy of using fly ash as fill in Brandon Woods Business Park, area residents aren't ready to celebrate yet.They vow to keep pressing the utility giant on environmental and safety issues related to fly ash -- the gray dust and chunks that are a byproduct of burning coal at BGE's Brandon Shores and H. A. Wagner electricity-generating plants.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. will end its contentious use of fly ash to level the ground at its Marley Neck business park. Instead, it will use the fly ash to make concrete mix and to fill a Gambrills sand and gravel pit.Company officials said yesterday that BGE has decided to stop depositing fly ash as structural fill for the Brandon Woods Business Park as of Aug. 15 because with a newly operating plant turning much of the ash into concrete additive, it...

To cut costs and improve profitability in response to widening losses, Fila USA said yesterday that it will outsource its distribution capabilities to Ryder Integrated Logistics Inc. in Miami.The Sparks-based footwear and clothing company said it expects the restructuring, which will take effect in May, to save the company about $10 million over five years.About 85 Fila employees and an additional 85 temporary employees work at the company's two distribution warehouses in Point Breeze and Brandon Woods.

An Anne Arundel County judge denied Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s appeal yesterday of an order requiring the utility to spend $10 million on a clay liner to prevent fly ash from contaminating ground water on the Marley Neck peninsula.Circuit Judge Ronald A. Silkworth upheld a January decision by the county Board of Appeals that required BGE to install the liner under about 150 acres of the Brandon Woods Business Park in Solley, where the company is placing more than 1.5 million tons of fly ash.The board made the requirement after 15 hearings from March to October 1997, during which residents asked the board to rescind the county permit allowing the utility to use fly ash as structural fill on the site.

BALTIMORE GAS and Electric Co. won approval to begin filling another landfill at Brandon Woods Energy Business Park with fly ash, the byproduct of burning coal. But the electric utility doesn't like the conditions that accompanied the permit.The Anne Arundel County Board of Appeals ruled that BGE must install a clay liner at a cost of about $10 million. BGE is challenging that ruling in Circuit Court.During the past 16 years, BGE has dumped several million tons of fly ash produced by its massive Brandon Shores power plant in northern Anne Arundel's Solley area in two nearby landfills.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. must install a $10 million clay liner under its fly ash disposal site in the Solley area to prevent polluting leaks, the Anne Arundel County Board of Appeals has ordered.The board issued the costly verdict to BGE last week after months of hearings in which Solley residents challenged the utility's use of 1.6 million tons of fly ash as filler in a new section of the Brandon Woods Industrial Park.Two other sections of the park have been filled in with fly ash but do not have clay liners.

In a major concession to Marley Neck residents, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. officials last night agreed to a provision in a bill that would require a public hearing before the utility could obtain a grading permit for the disposal of fly ash.The Coalition of Communities and Citizens Against Fly Ash sought the County Council bill -- and the amendment -- to require BGE to go through a special exception process before it could be granted a permit.BGE has used the fly ash, a waste byproduct from its coal-fired generators at the Brandon Shores and Wagner Point power plants, as structural fill material on two parcels of land across from the power plant since 1982.

EVEN THOUGH BGE has been burying fly-ash at its Brandon Woods Energy Park for more than 15 years, the utility company faces an unusually fierce fight to continue its disposal plans at that site in the northeast corner of Anne Arundel County. Property owners living across the street are waging a vigorous fight to deny the company the special exception it needs.For many years, BGE did not need a special exception to bury fly-ash at Brandon Woods. From 1982 to '94, BGE only needed a conditional use permit to dispose of coal ash in industrial zones.

Residents along Solley Road have worried for decades about the effects that Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s fly ash operation at its Brandon Woods industrial park might have on their health and community and the environment.Now, residents are taking their dispute with BGE to the Board of Appeals, hoping the board will rescind a county decision giving the utility permission to use 1.6 million cubic yards of coal ash as fill at the last of three sections of the industrial park."We consider it a serious environmental problem," said Casper Hackmann, 74, a retired pipefitter for the former Continental Oil Co. and one of those who filed the appeal.