Discharge

The Maryland Department of the Environment will hold a public hearing Aug. 11 on Browning-Ferris Industries' application to discharge treated water from its Solley Road hazardous waste landfill into an intermittent stream that leads to Marley Creek.The hearing, a continuation of one held in June, will be at 2:30 p.m. in the fire station at Solley and Fort Smallwood roads in Riviera Beach. The agency planned the hearing because it did not properly notify people of the earlier hearing.Protective environmental measures are failing at the Solley Road landfill, closed since 1982.

Three people were killed Friday after a car lost control on a curve and crashed into a milk truck in Phoenix, Baltimore County police said. A Volkswagen Jetta was traveling northbound on Jarrettsville Pike when it crossed the center line into the path of the truck, police said. The Jetta overturned on its left side. The truck struck a tree and remained upright, but its tanker turned on its left side, police said. The crash occurred at 6:09 a.m. in the 12600 block of Jarrettsville Pike, just north of the intersection with Dulaney Valley Road.

Neighbors of Francis Scott Key High School are appealing a decision allowing the school to discharge effluent from a new septic waste treatment plant to a tributary of Little Pipe Creek.The Maryland Department of the Environment approved a permit in April for the school to discharge up to 17,000 gallons of treated effluent daily into the unnamed stream.Bark Hill Road residents protested at a January public hearing that they should have been notified individually of the school system's plan.

Not sure it was timed on purpose, but weeks ahead of New Year's, city prosecutors have secured a five year prison sentence for a man who celebrated 2011 the way cops wish residents would not -- by shooting into the air. Maybe it's a message for residents to find another way to welcome in 2012. Keith Taylor, 29, was arrested minutes after midnight on Jan. 1 after police heard gunshots from a house in East Baltimore. The officers said they saw Taylor run inside when they pulled up, and found numerous spent 9mm rounds and shotgun shells.

After years of legal battles, Carroll County has won approval to increase the discharge from its Hampstead wastewater treatment plant - but only if it keeps the effluent from getting too warm. The decision Tuesday, from the Maryland Department of the Environment, raises the possibility that the county could have to spend millions of dollars to chill the discharge to the required 68 degrees. It also requires the county to monitor the normal temperature of Piney Run, a stream whose name changes to Western Run in Baltimore County.

A Wal-Mart in Catonsville closed yesterday evening after pepper spray was discharged in the store. Eight customers were treated at the scene for skin and eye irritation.Baltimore County police and fire personnel were called to the store at 6205 Baltimore National Pike about 6: 15 p.m. None of the injured customers sought further medical treatment, police said.Police have no suspects in the incident. The store was expected to reopen today, police said.

Despite neighbors' objections, the state Department of the Environment has issued a permit to allow school officials to discharge treated septic waste into a local stream.The permit allows the school system to discharge up to 17,000 gallons of treated effluent daily from Francis Scott Key High School into an unnamed tributary of Little Pipe Creek.Replacement of the inadequate 40-year-old septic system is part of a $16.3 million expansion and renovation of the high school, which began in the fall.

A plan to discharge treated sewage from Francis Scott Key High School onto a nearby dairy farm was unveiled before Carroll County commissioners yesterday by a New Windsor consultant.The commissioners immediately lauded the idea of David T. Duree, president of Advance Systems, as an inexpensive way to correct a costly error by the county Board of Education. The school board built the $800,000 wastewater treatment plant last year to replace its aging septic system, but failed to obtain state construction and discharge permits.

Several Baltimore County and Carroll County residents raised concerns yesterday about Carroll's request to nearly double the amount of discharge from the Hampstead Wastewater Treatment Plant into a nearby stream.Carroll has asked the Maryland Department of the Environment to permit the Hampstead facility to increase its discharge from 500,000 gallons per day to 900,000 gallons per day to accommodate growth in the Hampstead area. County officials said the increased discharge has been part of that region's master plan.

Villa Julie College can receive a state permit to discharge treated sewage water into a stream that intermittently feeds the Jones Falls, a state administrative law judge has ruled.The decision is the latest in a series of rulings that have allowed the private, four-year institution to proceed with plans to expand at its location in the semi-rural Green Spring Valley over opposition from neighbors.Baltimore County has authorized an amendment to its water and sewer master plan permitting the college to build a waste water treatment plant to replace a failing septic system.

A Baltimore City police officer wounded when a colleague accidentally fired his gun inside a house in Odenton on Tuesday returned fire at the "perceived threat," according to new information from authorities in Anne Arundel County. The city officer, who was struck in the arm, "fired several rounds in response to the perceived threat," according to a statement released this morning that offers new details of the shooting and backs what an occupant of the house has told reporters. Police had gone to the house in the 100 block of Pine Cove Ave. in Odenton searching for a drug suspect.

Blepharitis, usually identified by a sufferer's red, irritated eyelids, is becoming more common. And while doctors aren't sure why, it can be controlled with vigilance, according to Dr. Laura K. Green, residency program director of cornea, cataract and refractive surgery at the Krieger Eye Institute at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore. She said there are some simple things sufferers can do at home, such as keeping the eyelids clean, that can help ease the irritation. What is blepharitis and what causes it?

Working late into the night at a research center at the South Pole, Renee-Nicole Douceur thought she was just tired when her vision suddenly became blurred. Sleep did nothing to improve her eyesight, and a doctor at the center at first thought she had torn a retina. But further diagnosis pointed to a stroke and the beginning of an ordeal where the closest hospital would be nine weeks and a 12-hour plane ride away. "I was very concerned for my health," Douceur said Friday. "I didn't know if I was a ticking time bomb.

A Cambridge country club was ordered to pay an "extraordinary penalty" of $500,000 by a Dorchester County Circuit Court for discharging raw sewage into wetlands along the Choptank River that eventually flow into the Chesapeake Bay, according to a Thursday announcement from the state attorney general's office. BSJ Partners LLC, owner-operator of Clearview at Horn's Point, formerly known as the Cambridge Country Club, was ordered to pay a $485,000 civil penalty for environmental violations, a $15,000 penalty for failing to submit discharge monitoring reports for three years; and a $500 penalty for discovery violations.

A 13-year-old Northeast Baltimore boy, who police said was playing with a gun with a friend, was shot in the head and killed Monday, police said. Charles Diesmesor and a 14-year-old friend had gone into the bedroom of Charles' older brother in the 2800 block of Westfield Ave. and picked up a .380-caliber handgun, said Maj. Terrence McLarney, commander of the city police homicide unit. One of the boys took the clip out of the weapon, but they did not realize it still had a bullet in the chamber, McLarney said.

The two police officers who were shot after they stopped a car Sunday in East Baltimore were discharged from the hospital Monday afternoon, and the police union chief said he expects both will be able to return to work. Police officials said they would make the names of the officers public Tuesday, but a department source identified them as Jordan Moore, 23, and Keith Romans, 34. The name of the gunman, who officers shot and killed during the encounter on McElderry Street, has not yet been released, pending notification of his relatives.

DESPITE a court order that forced Carroll County to clean up its treated sewage discharge to the Piney Run, the state has issued a permit to almost double the permitted discharge into the environmentally sensitive trout stream. The Maryland Department of Environment permit requires monitoring of stream temperatures and sets a 68-degree limit for the wastewater entering the Piney Run. Since Carroll County has repeatedly ignored water-temperature violations at Piney Run -- at least 290 times in recent years, by the judge's finding -- there's a serious question of enforcement here.

An 18-year-old female Army recruit, a key accuser in the investigation of sexual misconduct by drill instructors at Aberdeen Proving Ground, has been granted a hardship discharge from the Army Ordnance Center and School, APG officials confirmed yesterday.A request for the discharge by Pvt. Jessica Bleckley -- who said on a national news program in November that she had been pressured into having sex with two drill sergeants at the military base -- is being processed by the Army and should be completed Monday, said APG spokeswoman Rachel McDonald.

Conjunctivitis, commonly called "pink eye," is an acute inflammation of the conjunctiva, which is the thin, transparent outermost layer of the eye. Dr. John Jackson of Greater Annapolis Medical Group on the campus of Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis describes what causes conjunctivitis and how it is treated. •The conjunctiva comprises many small blood vessels and tiny secretory glands, which lubricate and protect the eye. Conjunctivitis is usually caused by either an infection or an allergic reaction.

A series of water pollution violations reported at the University of Maryland's Horn Point environmental laboratory were not violations at all, but "a reporting error," the Maryland Department of the Environment said Wednesday. The university's laboratory near Cambridge on the Eastern Shore was identified as an example of poor state enforcement of water pollution laws in a report by a coalition of environmental groups. The Waterkeepers Chesapeake of Maryland said federal data show the lab had reported 80 violations of its discharge permit requirements over the past five years, and that there was no record of a state inspection of the facility during that time.