BUSINESS
By Allison Connolly | April 14, 2007
Linthicum Heights-based Foundation Coal Holdings Inc. and its affiliates have struck a deal with the United Mine Workers of America, ending a weeklong strike at mines in Pennsylvania. An agreement also was reached with workers at its Wabash mine in Keensburg, Ill., which Foundation Coal shuttered April 4 after the union announced that workers there and at the two Pennsylvania mines would strike. Foundation Coal said it was no longer financially feasible to keep the Wabash mine open, after it posted a $26 million loss last year.
NEWS
By Timothy Wheeler | April 20, 2007
BARTON -- Everyone seems to know everyone else -- or their family -- in this small mountain town nestled in the George's Creek Valley of Western Maryland. And since Tuesday, nearly everyone has been at least a little on edge waiting for news about two coal miners buried under thousands of tons of rock and dirt. With each passing day, slender hopes are dwindling. "I think we just feel bad for the families," said Jennifer Brandlen, who was tending bar yesterday at the American Legion Hall.
NEWS
April 14, 2007
NATIONAL 8 attorney firings discussed Long before they fired a group of U.S. attorneys, senior White House and Justice department officials were already discussing some politically connected insiders for their replacements, documents released yesterday show, undercutting earlier claims that the prosecutors were terminated for purely performance reasons. pg 3A N.J. governor possibly broke law Gov. Jon Corzine was apparently riding without a seat belt, in violation of state law, when he was critically injured in the crash of his official vehicle, a spokesman said yesterday.
TOPIC
By Peter Slavin | October 3, 1999
BIG COAL River Valley, W. Va. -- Standing in the kitchen of his family's home in their beautiful and tranquil hollow, Jim Wills told me of a nightmare he had as a child, one that still baffles him.Forty years later, it seems a mysterious omen of what was to come. In his sleep, young Jim saw a towering piece of earth-moving equipment astride the mountaintop near his home like some giant science-fiction robot menacing the valley below.Wills' dream has come to pass, though so far his hollow has been spared.
TRAVEL
By Mike Shoup | September 5, 1999
Just south of Riegelsville, Pa., the Delaware Canal towpath we were biking swept close enough to Route 611 to see the yellow numbers on the big digital sign outside First Savings Bank.The time flashed: 11:30 in the morning. Then the temperature: 95 degrees.We'd picked an early June day for our 35-mile, mountain-bike ride between Easton and New Hope, and we were getting the worst kind of August weather. Still, the three of us agreed, as hot as it was -- and we'd already sweated at least a quart of Gatorade apiece -- the riding thus far had been pleasant.
NEWS
May 30, 1999
Greener development better approach for western MarylandI wholeheartedly support House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr's exhortation to create 2,000 new jobs for depressed Western Maryland ("Taylor exhorts 2 western counties to create 2,000 jobs next year," May 21).However, I take exception to his recommendation that we do this largely by exploiting natural resources.Increasing logging and coal mining on state lands and burning more of Maryland's high-sulfur coal would leave the land impoverished, the air dirtier and the region's natural diversity greatly diminished.
NEWS
By Karen Hosler | November 10, 1999
WASHINGTON -- In an overture with potentially far-reaching implications, Republican lawmakers sought yesterday to join Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, in trying to preserve the rights of mining companies to dump waste that environmentalists say causes pollution.Under a deal being discussed last night, the Republicans would back Byrd in his effort to overturn a federal judge's ruling that would curb the practice of mining coal from mountaintops and then dumping rock waste into streams and valleys in West Virginia.
NEWS
By Joel McCord | June 5, 1999
Two of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s power plants released more than 14 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air last year, likely making it Maryland's top polluter.The amount dwarfs the figures of the top polluters of 1997, the Westvaco paper products company in Western Maryland and Millennium Inorganics, a Baltimore chemical company.Although the power company's numbers are included in a report to be released next month by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its national Toxic Release Inventory, BGE announced them yesterday, as did other utilities throughout the country.
NEWS
By Joel McCord | October 27, 1999
KEMPTON -- Less than two years ago, the swamp near this abandoned coal-mining town at the southern tip of Garrett County was a bright orange, discolored by acid discharges from the coal mine that gave the town its name. Nearby Laurel Run, a tributary of the North Branch of the Potomac River, was dead. No fish, no plants, no bacterial life could survive the acid flowing from the mines.After a $290,000 reclamation project and continuing treatment programs, the swamp is covered with grass and trees, and fish have started to poke back into the mouth of Laurel Run. It is an example of how far Maryland's efforts to reclaim abandoned mines has come -- and a sign of how far it has to go.Kempton Mine, which covers more than 2 1/2 times the area of Deep Creek Lake under the Maryland and West Virginia mountains, is the worst contributor to ground-water pollution of the abandoned mines that honeycomb these hills.
NEWS
July 16, 1999
BALTIMORE GAS and Electric Co. will finally stop using the recyclable residue from the coal-burning operation at its northern Anne Arundel County business park. That decision should end an old dispute.The utility and its neighbors have battled for years over fly ash, the powdery gray substance that results when the utility burns coal at its Brandon Shores and H. A. Wagner power plants.BGE has used four tons of the substance as fill at the nearby business park since 1982.Neighbors argued that the fly ash dirties porches and threatens underground water and public health.