Culvert

Trotter Road over the Middle Patuxent River will be closed for five days, starting Dec. 27, to allow construction of a concrete culvert channeling water under the roadway.James M. Irvin, Howard County public works director, apologized for any inconvenience to motorists, but he said the work was scheduled for the week when schools are closed between Christmas and New Year's.The road will be open, at least partially, by the end of Dec. 31, the fifth day, Irvin said.A detour will reroute traffic at Route 108 to Great Star Drive to Summer Sunrise Drive.

A Germantown man was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore after his Pontiac Bonneville was broadsided by a Ford Ranger truck that skidded through a stop sign in Sykesville yesterday, state police said.Frank Avery Johnson, 75, was in serious condition, a hospital spokeswoman said yesterday.Police said Mr. Johnson and his wife, Doris, 76, were traveling south on Route 97 at 12: 40 p.m. Tuesday when the Ford truck, driven west on Bartholow Road by Butchie Junior Stemple, 21, of Westminster, was unable to stop on the wet road and hit their car.The impact knocked the Pontiac into a drainage culvert at the side of the road, police said.

A 1,000-foot stretch of Hollins Ferry Road in Glen Burnie will be permanently closed to allow the restoration of a tributary of Sawmill Creek.The State Highway Administration posted signs Thursday announcing the closure, which will also permit the addition of three acres of wetlands along Muddy Bridge Branch near Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard, said spokeswoman Fran Counihan."

Nearly two years of dickering over whether to free the Muddy Bridge Branch from its concrete culvert in Glen Burnie have ended with the stream still in a man-made channel."

The last time Muddy Bridge Branch meandered freely through Glen Burnie back yards, it flooded homes, angered residents and forced the county to contain it in a concrete culvert.Now engineers want to give the stream its freedom again, but irate homeowners want no part of it."I will not let the county on my land ever again," said Carolyn Stallings, one of 18 Fernglen Manor residents whose property is affected. "Would you be satisfied with a meandering stream, knowing that last time there was a meandering stream it flooded your house?

A 16-year-old girl testified yesterday that she knew for nearly a month that Tara Allison Gladden had been killed and that her body was in a culvert under Columbia's Little Patuxent Parkway -- but she didn't tell anyone.The girl, 13 at the time of the 1993 slaying, testified that she kept the secret for fear of losing her relationship with Curtis Aden Jamison, a 30-year-old man on trial in Howard Circuit Court in the slaying of Miss Gladden.For more than two hours on the witness stand, the girl recounted how Jamison enlisted her help in his plan to kill Miss Gladden, 15, and later made her play a guessing game about where the killing occurred.

A 73-year-old man has sued the county executive and other officials for $100 over a periodically blocked culvert that causes flooding during heavy storms and leaves debris on his property.Luther V. Cox of the 2600 block of Kenwood Drive in the southwestern section of the county paid $61 to file a suit over the flooding at his property and to have several subpoenas served.He thinks that when you have lived in the same house for 22 years and are paying $1,300 in annual property taxes, the county ought to help you out.Retired since 1980, the wiry, gray-haired former insurance sales man and telephone collections business owner is gruff.

Roads agency closes section of Route 853A section of Route 853 between Angell Road and Brown Road north of Taneytown was permanently closed Monday, the State Highway Administration said.During a routine bridge inspection, SHA engineers found that a 5-foot box culvert carrying the road over a small stream had deteriorated.The state has no plans to reopen Route 853 and replace the culvert because the road is not used often and motorists have access to parallel Route 194, Francis Scott Key Highway, SHA officials said.

Transit director asks to extend closing deadlineCarroll Transit System could probably survive its budget cuts with a little more time, Executive Director Linda Boyer will tell the non-profit agency's board.One long-term solution proposed by Mrs. Boyer would be to purchase insurance and vehicle maintenance through Carroll County government.Other solutions could include raising fares, seeking more grants, increasing ridership and fund-raising drives."There's no one offender," Mrs. Boyer said.

The general manager of Halle's Marina and Campground in Calvert County has been charged with violating the federal Clean Water Act by dumping raw sewage into Chesapeake Bay.FBI agents arrested the defendant, Michael T. Strandquist, 34, of Annapolis, last Friday after they allegedly saw a marina employee dumping raw sewage into a culvert at the campground when they went to the Chesapeake Beach marina to serve a search-and-seizure warrant for company records.The...

THE PROBLEM -- A fence that has for years protected a city Public Works project on North Charles Street is unsightly, and in one spot might not offer enough protection. THE BACKSTORY -- The flimsy fence has been there for years, between the neatly trimmed hedges of Loyola College and the rustic gateway to the Evergreen Museum and Library, marring an otherwise pretty landscape along Charles Street north of Cold Spring Lane. The chain-link fence seeks to prevent people from falling down a deep embankment where a wall of dirt has eroded next to the street, creating a vertical drop into Stony Run, a tributary of the Jones Falls that runs through a culvert and under Charles Street.

In Baltimore County Church bus hits concrete culvert on Frederick Co. road TIMONIUM -- A school bus carrying 39 members of a Timonium church home from a trip to Pennsylvania struck a concrete culvert on a road in Frederick County yesterday afternoon, sending them and the driver to hospitals for treatment of minor injuries or precautionary examinations, authorities reported. The bus, driven by Ella Thomas, 66, of Glen Burnie, was one of five in a caravan and carrying mostly young members of Grace Fellowship Church when the vehicle veered off Hampton Valley Road in Emmitsburg and struck the drainage culvert, the Frederick County Sheriff's Office said.

Stepney Road between Route 7 and Carsins Run Road in Aberdeen will be closed to through traffic for about two months, starting tomorrow, for culvert replacement, according to the Harford County Construction Management Bureau.

The water flowing through the culvert under Interstate 70 where three construction workers were making repairs Wednesday was only 2 inches deep at first. About 2:30 p.m., as the rain started falling harder, the water rose to about 4 inches. Within a minute, the project foreman told Baltimore County police, the pipe, which measures 8 feet in diameter, was three-fourths full. The workers were still inside. In a flash, the first worker was swept out. It looked as if he was swimming with the current, other workers at the site told Officer Eric B. Knox, a patrolman who was first on the scene of Wednesday's drownings.

The Gaithersburg company that employed the three workers who drowned in a flash flood Wednesday in Woodlawn had been cited for more than 30 workplace safety violations, state and federal records show. A crane operator for Concrete General Inc. was killed on the job in 1988. Another employee's arms had to be amputated after he was shocked by a power line in 1982, and a Concrete General worker was rescued after a trench collapsed in 1995. Most recently, in 2000 and 2001, the company was cited six times for trenching violations, according to Maryland Occupational Safety and Health records.

The Gaithersburg company that employed the three workers who drowned in a flash flood Wednesday in Woodlawn had been cited for more than 30 workplace safety violations, state and federal records show. A crane operator for Concrete General Inc. was killed on the job in 1988. Another employee's arms had to be amputated after he was shocked by a power line in 1982, and a Concrete General worker was rescued after a trench collapsed in 1995. Most recently, in 2000 and 2001, the company was cited six times for trenching violations, according to Maryland Occupational Safety and Health records.

An 11-year-old North Baltimore boy walking home from school and a worker repairing a culvert under Interstate 70 in Woodlawn were swept to their deaths yesterday as heavy rains and thunderstorms toppled trees, tore off roofs, and turned urban streams into raging torrents. Another worker on the Woodlawn repair crew was missing and presumed dead last night, while a third was rushed to St. Agnes Hospital Center. His condition could not be determined. The child, identified by police as Darryl McTier Jr., of the 6000 block of The Alameda, was walking home from school when he was caught in swollen Chinquapin Run. Firefighters found his body wedged in rocks about 300 feet south of Woodbourne Avenue, said Baltimore Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr. The three men repairing the culvert in Woodlawn were carried off by a flash flood that washed them into Dead Run. Rescuers found the man who died more than a half-mile downstream.

An 11-year-old North Baltimore boy died in a stream while walking home from school and three workers were swept away by floodwaters at a culvert repair site in Woodlawn yesterday as heavy rains and thunderstorms turned urban streams into raging torrents. The child, identified by police as Darryl McTier Jr. of the 6000 block of The Alameda, was walking home from school when he was caught in swollen Chinquapin Run. Firefighters found his body wedged in rocks about 300 feet south of Woodbourne Avenue, said Baltimore Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr. A 30-year-old worker on the Woodlawn repair crew died at the scene.

Beginning tomorrow, the stretch of Woods Road from 11th Street to the entrance of the Lake Shore Athletic Club will be closed for 60 days for construction. The schedule is subject to weather conditions. As part of an Anne Arundel County capital improvements project, the Department of Public Works will replace a culvert under Woods Road. Questions can be directed to the Department of Public Works at 410- 222-7575.

RESIDENTS OF the Trotter Road area in Clarksville were treated to a display of Mother Nature's power Saturday when they found that Trotter Road had flooded and the roadway had caved in. The destruction, which took place at a culvert bridge that had recently been repaired, left a portion of Trotter Road impassable for four days. "We had a lot of flooding in three hours, causing undermining of the soil," said Fred Simmons, senior administrative analyst for the Howard County Bureau of Highways.