Drilling

On Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air, members of Harford County's first responder agencies and the Harford County Emergency Operations Center will be holding an emergency drill at a specified area of its campus. This exercise will allow the hospital to test its readiness for rare, but critical emergency scenarios. "It's important to make our neighbors, visitors and patients aware of this exercise since we will have a fair number of first responders, including law enforcement, fire and EMS, on-site to make the drill as 'real' as possible," Martha D. Mallonee, director of corporate communications, marketing and public relations for Upper Chesapeake Health, wrote in an email.

A baby Drill monkey holds on to its mother, Nora, at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland. The baby monkey, which was born in August, is the first drill monkey birth at the zoo. Drills are the rarest and most endangered primates in Africa.

Maryland's 7.2 percent unemployment rate is below the national average but still too high. Families need help. Aging roads, sewer systems and other infrastructure need repair. Revenue projections for 2012 and beyond will not cover these programs, along with education, health care and public employee pensions, the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute cautions. Budget shortfalls next year could reach $700 million or more, the institute warns. Many of our cities and counties likewise face mounting debt.

The departure last week of Marianne Banister from WBAL-TV after 15 years of co-anchoring a team that always finished first or second in its time period raised big questions about the changing face of television news in Baltimore. In the past year and half, several long-time anchors have signed off the local airwaves, including Sally Thorner at WJZ, and Mary Beth Marsden at WMAR. By long-time, we're talking 15 years or more of coming into Baltimore homes every night with the local news.

A year ago at this time Ed Reed limped around his football camp and spoke with uncertainty about when he would start the season. These days, the only question on the mind of the Ravens safety is the one fans have wondered about all summer: When will the lockout end? Enjoying a surgery-free offseason, Reed declared himself "full go" for training camp Wednesday, although he hopes the Ravens will "be smart" with his reps this summer. "I'm feeling fine," Reed said during his second Baltimore-area football camp.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's executive order on natural gas drilling in Western Maryland has three major components, but it ought to have four. It calls for a report this year on the liabilities of such drilling and whether a special tax should be levied to pay for oversight. It calls for best practices for natural gas exploration by August 2012. And it calls for a final report, by August 2014, on the environmental and economic impact of drilling in Maryland's stretch of the Marcellus shale formation.

BWI-Marshall will conduct an emergency exercise at the airport on Saturday. Airport officials say the drill will allow for BWI and other agencies to practice responding to an actual emergency. Normal airport operations will not be affected by what's being called a "full-scale" exercise featuring police, fire units and federal, state and local agencies. The drill takes place Saturday from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. "Emergency vehicles and personnel will operate at BWI Marshall Airport as part of the exercise.

Your editorial on oil prices and drilling ("Beware the snake oil sales pitch," April 26) is disingenuous at best. While your points on the amount of available domestic oil and the development of alternative energy are valid, you fail to mention the minimal potential for alternative energy over the next 10 years. My recollection is that alternative energy would produce less than 5 percent of the needed energy in that period, and anecdotally, consumer interest (or lack thereof) in electric cars speaks volumes.

Prices at the pump are rising, and Americans are none too happy about it. Small wonder that President Obama's approval ratings have fallen like a sack of hammers in recent weeks: Nothing annoys voters quite like a $75 fill-up at their local service station. But if paying $4-a-gallon for regular wasn't painful enough, filling station sticker shock has launched a deluge of nonsensical proposals to lower the price of gas. Perhaps the most dishonest of these is a renewed call for domestic oil drilling.

I appreciate your editorial support for offshore wind energy. However, Jay Hancock on the Business and Jobs page has it all wrong. He proposes natural gas as a solution while dismissing environmental concerns as relatively minor ("Stop O'Malley's offshore wind folly now, not later," March 27). In fact, natural gas drilling is a serious environmental hazard in the areas affected by that drilling. Oil and gas industry lobbyists have eviscerated both the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act so that unsafe practices result in dangerous smog-including hydrogen sulfide in the area of the drilling and ground water polluted with carcinogenic chemicals and radioactive materials.