Drainage

To protect Westminster's drinking water from gasoline, oil, antifreeze, salt and other contaminants in road runoff, the city will have to come up with $50,000 toward a county project to improve Lucabaugh Mill Road.At a meeting with a Westminster official yesterday, two Carroll commissioners refused to increase what the county has budgeted for the project, which would raise and resurface the road.The city wants the county to help pay for drainage safeguards that would divert rain runoff away from a stream that Westminster taps for its water supply.

The Orioles' new look this spring won't be limited to a reconfigured pitching staff. It will also include new dimensions for Camden Yards. Weeks after the playing field was plowed under for installation of a new drainage system and fresh sod, the club is expected to announce changes today that resulted from a relocation of home plate. Club officials confirmed that the plate was brought closer to the backstop and slightly angled more toward left field. The new alignment, according to club officials, consists of fences that are seven feet farther from the plate, and foul lines that are almost flush against the left- and right-field corners.

A task force will present three payment options for upgrading the county's aging storm water management system at a public hearing tonight -- all of which would involve increasing assessments or fees on county residents.County Executive Charles I. Ecker said yesterday that he would not accept a proposal that would raise residential taxes or fees.Ecker said there is a good possibility that money for upgrading the county's storm sewers will not be allotted if the task force can't come up with a plan that maintains current tax rates.

A group of concerned citizens is urging city officials to approve plans to polish Patterson Park, the somewhat tarnished jewel of Southeast Baltimore.Limited by a lack of resources, the Patterson Park Master Plan Advisory Committee is seeking cosmetic improvements -- such as refurbished tennis and basketball courts and new perimeter lighting -- to attract funding for more expensive projects.Among those costly projects are a new drainage system for the boat lake and restoration of the Lombard Street gate.

Edward Addison McGinity, a former purchasing agent and founder of a company that sold cast-iron manhole covers and similar products, died Nov. 3 of complications after surgery at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 74 and lived in Phoenix, Baltimore County. Mr. McGinity was born in Baltimore and raised in Guilford. He was a 1949 graduate of St. Paul's School. His college studies at the Johns Hopkins University were interrupted when his Naval Reserve unit was activated during the Korean War. After completing his service in naval intelligence, he returned to Hopkins and earned his bachelor's degree in the early 1950s.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- This and next week's columns take two views of one river, the Elizabeth, which forms Norfolk's harbor and branches through the bay watershed's southeast corner.It is the story of an ironic coupling of environmental ruin and promise, of land and water, and of our continuing inability to treat them as a connected watershed, despite a bay restoration predicated on that approach for some two decades.Next week we will look downstream, at perhaps the first truly wise management of the bay's critically important oyster stocks in well over a century.

What can I do to help maintain the value of my house?One of the first things you should do after you settle into your new house is establish a home maintenance routine. Houses that are maintained in top condition hold their value better than houses that are left to deteriorate.Just before closing, ask your agent to find out from the seller if there are any routine maintenance items you should be aware of. For example, is there a sewer pipe that will back up unless you call out a rooting service once a year?

Baltimore's Center for Urban Archaeology will launch an historical study of Federal Hill and may monitor the upcoming reconstruction work on the north slope of the park for clues to the landmark's early history."

It was decades in the making, this inaugural Opening Day for Al Capitos, the Orioles' new head groundskeeper. His first came on a field long ago, in seventh grade, in his back yard in State College, Pa. That diamond had chalk lines, bases and spotlights scoured from garage sales and then strung on trees in the infield. The night the lights went on, every kid in the neighborhood showed up. He mowed all day, they played all night. He loved that summer routine. Capitos' parents never guessed he'd make a career out of keeping up the lawn.

'Buster' feels the crunchTHERE WAS a pause in the Anne Arundel County board room in Annapolis Monday when school board members reached the bottom of a long list of proposed budget cuts and came to "Buster the Bus.""I am sure you all are wondering who Buster the Bus is," said school Superintendent Carol S. Parham.Even in the middle of that long, tense meeting, during which $9 million worth of books, school repairs and programs were slashed to meet the budget, people had to laugh. Buster, too, was a victim of the cutting.