Cement Plant

Because of the severe drought and associated crop losses this year, the Maryland Agricultural and Resource-Based Industry Development Corp. has created a loan fund to help farmers with weather-related income losses. The 2007 Farm Drought and Weather Event Recovery Assistance Loan Fund offers low-interest operating loans to producers who have suffered significant crop, livestock, feed or dairy losses. The program helps pay for all or part of production costs associated with the drought, as well as essential family living expenses.

A 74-year-old Pennsylvania woman was injured Friday when the car she was driving on Route 27 veered across the highway and struck three vehicles on the parking lot of a cement plant south of Westminster.The woman, who police said may have become ill before the accident, was taken to Carroll County General Hospital for treatment after complaining of chest pains, police said. Her head struck the windshield, shattering it.Investigators said the northbound car ran across the lot of the Thomas Bennett Hunter cement company, in the 700 block of Route 27. It missed some large cement delivery trucks and crashed into the left side of a pickup truck parked in front of the office.

The mixed blessings of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls as they are known to scientists, are well documented. Like asbestos and DDT, the benefits of these compounds to mankind were immediately apparent and seemingly without disadvantage, leading to widespread and often uncontrolled use.PCBs were widely used in industry for lubrication and insulation of electrical devices, because they are nonflammable and have a high electrical resistance. Then the chlorine-based chemicals were found to cause cancers in laboratory animals and liver damage to humans, leading to their virtual ban in 1979.

The Carroll County Board of Zoning Appeals determined yesterday that Martin P. Hill, son of prominent housing developer Martin K. P. Hill, is operating an illegal business in Greenmount. After lengthy public discussion, the board found that Hill's operation of a mulch storage and sales facility in the 2600 block of Hanover Pike (Route 30) is an "illegal business" that violates county zoning laws. Martin P. Hill Landscaping has been operating the mulch business for two years at the corner of Cape Horn Road north of Hampstead.

D. Kenneth "Pappy" Grimes, a World War II combat veteran who formerly operated a diner in Carroll County and served as a New Windsor town councilman, died of heart failure and emphysema Wednesday at his home there. He was 89. A Carroll native, Mr. Grimes was born in Union Bridge and raised on a farm. He was 4 when his father died in an accident while working at the local Lehigh Cement plant. Mr. Grimes often rode a horse to school but attended to only the seventh or eighth grade, said his daughter, Ruth Lease of New Windsor.

Baltimore County: Interstate 95 Driver, students hurt after bus hits rig The driver of a private bus was seriously injured and several hearing-impaired student-passengers were also hurt after it went out of control on northbound Interstate 95 north of the Baltimore Beltway yesterday evening after colliding with a tractor-trailer, state police said. The bus, carrying 27 students and five staff members, was heading back to New Jersey after an athletic event at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Columbia about 7:20 p.m. when it struck a tractor-trailer near White Marsh, police said.

IF THE county relied on Commissioner Donald I. Dell to negotiate all of its land deals, the public treasury might soon be depleted. His personal negotiations, with the enthusiastic support of Commissioner Robin Bartlett Frazier, acquired a piece of a dairy farm near Union Bridge for more than six times its appraised value. He threw in a bunch of other financial sweeteners for the owners. That's $850,000 for land independently valued at maybe $130,000. Its remote location and lack of public water and sewer don't make it a prime site, even if the land is mostly zoned industrial.

Eusini is hired by sports rehab centerTammy A. Jacobson Eusini is the new business manager at the Carroll County Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center, 125 N. Court St., Westminster.Mrs. Eusini is a 1989 graduate of Westminster High School and is working on her business administration degree from Empire State College.She is the former ticket manager at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, where she lives with her husband, William. She began work in her new position on May 3.Krywucki wins honor at Northwest HospitalJanet Krywucki, R.N., is the Northwest Hospital Center's nurse of the year.

Russian businessman Nicolai I. Sinilkin visited the United States to see capitalism at work. So naturally, he ended up in Crofton.At least to town manager Jordan L. Harding, the West County community was, unquestionably, the natural choice for a group of 14 Russian business executives learning free-market economics."