Cleanup

The Environmental Protection Agency's order this week that the Army clean up 17 hazardous-waste sites at Fort Meade and the nearby Patuxent Research Refuge has more to do with a bureaucratic entanglement than the continuing $100 million decontamination effort, several officials on both sides said. Army officials, who have long argued that the cleanup of four parcels should be enough for the regulatory agency to take the base off its Superfund list of the nation's most polluted sites, said Wednesday that they have until the middle of September to respond to the order.

Mayor Martin O'Malley will begin his first major initiative today, leading an eight-day Christmas cleaning of the city's main streets.The effort will be carried out by 200 public works and housing employees using 100 pieces of equipment to remove trash, sweep streets, paint city poles, remove graffiti, and replace deteriorating traffic signs, O'Malley said."

About 60 volunteers marched through Westminster's west-side streets and alleys yesterday, picking up and hauling away six truckloads of trash and debris.The cleanup, spearheaded by city officials, was aimed at a drug-infested neighborhood near West Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue where police have made 83 arrests since August, said Roger Joneckis, chief of police.The most recent arrest occurred Friday night when John Kenneth Tate, 24, of Pimlico was charged with possessing and distributing crack cocaine.

The Inner Harbor was reclaimed from a thick coat of muck yesterday, one day after more than 40 tons of debris nearly grounded the paddle boat business and left onlookers aghast at what looked like a flooded dump.Yesterday, children were once again spotting crabs and fish, and some paddle boats -- though hindered by the occasional bobbing bottle -- left their docks."Today it looks beautiful," said Rhonda B. Suliano, on vacation from Long Island, N.Y. "Yesterday, I looked out the car window and thought I saw ducks on the water and then realized it was just trash."

When the Environmental Protection Agency added Fort Meade to its National Priorities List last summer -- branding the post one of the nation's worst environmental sites and singling it out for special federal help -- many area residents had hoped the distinction would mean a faster cleanup.The military had long been criticized for delays in the cleanup, but purging the 5,415-acre Superfund site of dangerous toxins continues to be a deliberate rather than speedy procedure.EPA officials have only begun to tackle those problems on the site identified as the most significant, to analyze solutions Army environmentalists have suggested and to figure out where else to dig for dirty soil.

When state lawmakers approved a program giving companies incentives to clean up polluted properties, both business leaders and environmentalists heralded the action as an important step toward cleaning up contaminated sites and saving farms and forests from development.But two years after the so-called brownfields program passed with thunderous applause, many state officials, business executives and environmentalists say the program has failed to meet expectations and may need to be changed.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Environmental activist Aaron Maier surveyed the abandoned industrial plant that blights his poor neighborhood here on the banks of the Hudson River. The lot, vacant but for an abandoned factory building, was overrun by weeds, and the soil was soaked with toxic chemicals.A few years ago, he would have called for the standard environmentalist's prescription: Clean up the property thoroughly, no matter what the cost to business or government. But today, Maier is convinced that that approach has frightened off potential developers and left old industrial tracts like the one here orphaned.

Much like the "Twelve Days of Christmas," Mayor Martin O'Malley released his own list of city accomplishments yesterday from his first major initiative: eight days of holiday cleanup.City work crews collected 773 tons of trash from the city's main streets, made 2,632 road repairs, replaced 425 trash receptacles and painted 2,465 street light poles.The city also cited people for 891 violations to city sanitation laws, O'Malley said.The mayor unveiled the numbers at a meeting with about 250 city Department of Public Works employees yesterday at the Clarence Du Burns Arena in Canton.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The Pataki administration has ordered General Electric to clean 700,000 cubic feet of soil contaminated by PCBs at an old factory that dumped the chemicals in the Hudson River, a move that environmentalists lauded as a good, though limited, step.The cleanup order by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, which the department estimated would cost GE $28.4 million, applies only to the defunct plant in the village of Hudson Falls, 50 miles north of here. It does not address the far more contentious question of whether to dredge PCB-contaminated sediments in the river, a step long demanded by environmental groups, and resisted by GE.Lately, there has been a flurry of activity over PCBs in the upper Hudson, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prepares to decide whether to order dredging, paid for by GE, which could cost the company more than $1 billion.

WHILE Superfund cleanup of the nation's toxic dumps drags on, amid legal battles and lengthy decontamination plans, the list of sites continues to grow. Sixteen U.S. hazardous waste sites were added this month and 11 more are proposed.In East Baltimore, near the old Pulaski Highway Incinerator, an illegal dump that has been a community insult for more than four decades may soon become eligible for federal cleanup funds. It would join some 1,200 sites on the Superfund list that began in 1981.

Ryan Howard hit a two-run double with two outs in the ninth and scored on Jayson Werth's single, as the Philadelphia Phillies rallied past the Colorado Rockies, 5-4, to win Game 4 and to reach the NL Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Brad Lidge, left, earned his second straight save, retiring cleanup man Troy Tulowitzki with two on to end it. PG 4

Dundalk commuters on their way to work today are expected to have few traffic difficulties despite partial closure of Broening Highway after Friday's water main break, police said Sunday. The highway will be closed for two to four weeks while repairs to the road and water main are made. The highway areas affected are from Logan Village to Interstate 695 and the highway exit from the Beltway. Detours have been set up to accommodate east- and westbound traffic across the Key Bridge, officials said.

Declaring the Chesapeake Bay a national treasure that needs urgent help, the Obama administration unveiled sweeping plans Thursday for jump-starting restoration efforts, including proposals to crack down on pollution from farming and development in the six-state region that drains into North America's largest estuary. They also called for giving the federal government more say in setting baywide regulations to protect key fisheries like crabs and oysters, long a source of tension between Maryland and neighboring Virginia.

Ending a long legal dispute, the Army has agreed to an enforceable timetable for cleaning up contaminated Superfund sites at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin announced Monday. Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the Army had signed a "federal facilities agreement" governing the cleanup of groundwater and soil contamination on the sprawling base near Odenton. The announcement comes six months after Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler filed suit against the Army for failing to comply with a cleanup order issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Below is part of a post from The Baltimore Sun's Bay and Environment blog and comments from readers about last week's announcement of new Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals. Our view While the press coverage of the annual Chesapeake Bay summit this week focused on President Obama promising a stronger federal role in the cleanup effort, and state officials pledging to accelerate their pollution reductions, Howard Ernst isn't buying any of it. The associate professor of political science at the Naval Academy has written one critical book on the shortcomings of the restoration effort, Chesapeake Bay Blues.

MOUNT VERNON, Va. - -Buoyed by a pledge of federal help from President Barack Obama, state and local leaders across the Chesapeake Bay region vowed Tuesday to accelerate their cleanup of the beleaguered estuary. But some environmentalists said the promised pollution reductions fall far short of what is needed and called for more aggressive federal action. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and other leaders called their commitments announced here on the banks of the Potomac River a "turning point" and "a new day" in the long-running struggle to bring back the Chesapeake, which has missed two previous cleanup deadlines in the past 26 years.

With scientists pointing to some bright spots and even a possible "tipping point" in the long-running struggle to restore the Chesapeake Bay, Gov. Martin O'Malley vowed Monday to more than double the pace of cleanup of Maryland's rivers feeding into the troubled estuary. On the eve of a meeting in Virginia of the bay region's leaders, O'Malley joined bay scientists aboard the state-owned research vessel Rachel Carson for a firsthand look at the Bush River off Aberdeen Proving Ground, one of a handful of places throughout the Chesapeake watershed where there are signs of recovery from decades of pollution and abuse.

The state has received $3.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up soil and groundwater contamination from leaking underground fuel tanks in 70 sites across Maryland - about half of them in the Baltimore area. Horacio Tablada, chief of waste management for the Maryland Department of the Environment, called the EPA funds "a shot in the arm" for his agency's efforts to clean up contamination caused by leaking underground fuel tanks at some 800 locations around the state.

The state attorney general has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Army, alleging that the military branch has failed to abide by a cleanup order for groundwater and soil contamination at Fort Meade. Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler filed in August a notice of intent to sue the Army if the site was not cleaned up within 90 days. The lawsuit alleges that the Army did not enforce an Environmental Protection Agency order to perform specific actions and produce a timeline for cleanup.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler is pushing the Pentagon to do the right thing - obey the law and comply with an Environmental Protection Agency order that it quickly complete a cleanup of serious pollution at Fort Meade. He's threatening to sue if the Army fails to act. The Pentagon's assurance that public health and safety are not imperiled as it cleans up the Superfund site at its own pace and with its own priorities is not credible. The EPA issued the Fort Meade cleanup order last year because it was worried about drinking water and soil contamination from past dumping at the Anne Arundel County base.