Dump

A Carroll resident has accumulated a 10-foot-high pile of garbage that could be an illegal dump, but county officials say they may not beable to do much about it unless the landowner has violated zoning ordinances.Although dumping violates federal and state water pollution laws, small problems don't get much attention from the large agencies that enforce them, said James E. Slater Jr., director of the county Department of Natural Resource Protection."That's why it's important for local governments to establish a way to deal with these things," Slater said.

SUPPOSE I TOLD you that a big company had been allowed to dump thousands of pounds of industrial poisons, including carcinogens, into the Chesapeake Bay each month for the last 15 years. Suppose I added that, in 1998 alone, the company had dumped 15,000 pounds of lead and other cancer-causing chemicals into the Patapsco River. You'd be outraged, wouldn't you? You'd want state regulators - if not the state police - to do something about it immediately, wouldn't you? Too bad. What I just described has been done all these years with the blessing of the government of Maryland.

After visiting the burning tree stump dump in Granite, Baltimore County Executive Roger B. Hayden said its operator probably won't qualify for a county permit he is seeking because he doesn't have the money to post a required bond.Meanwhile, county environmental officials said a weather front expected today may blow away most of the smoke from the fire. It has wafted as far as eastern portions of the city and county and become an irritant for residents 20 miles or more from the blaze in western Baltimore County.

WASHINGTON -- With George Bush's re-election prospects at their lowest level yet, some Republicans are suggesting the president should cut his losses and replace his controversial ticket mate, Dan Quayle.A new poll, released last night, showed Mr. Bush trailing Democratic nominee by 28 points. The president was the choice of just 30 percent of voters surveyed in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, which had a margin of error of 5 percent.Despite of Mr. Bush's political nose dive, there seems to be no significant "Dump Quayle" talk within the White House or the Bush-Quayle campaign, where the vice president is viewed as an asset -- or at least a fact of life.

A troubled stump dump in Baltimore County is in danger of being closed permanently after environmental officials revoked its permit yesterday and ordered its owner to pay $50,000 in penalties.The Maryland Department of the Environment issued an order to revoke the natural wood waste permit of Patapsco Valley Farms Natural Wood Waste Recycling of Baltimore.The state also ordered owner James F. Jett to pay penalties for environmental violations.The dump, on Dogwood Road in Granite, was the site of an 18-month fire in 1991 that sent smoke billowing into neighboring communities.

FOR MANY OF US, one of life's great pleasures is a weekend trip to the dump. OK, right now, a lot of you guys out there are reading this and nodding and thinking: "You got that right, brother." Because going to the dump is still largely a guy thing. Oh, sure, you see women unloading stuff at the dump all the time. But women aren't in their element when they're at the dump. Women don't look comfortable at the dump. Even if they're wearing the official dump uniform - work boots, jeans, T-shirt, old flannel shirt - everything in their body language screams that they want to get out of there as quickly as possible.

GUATEMALA CITY -- Rosario Lopez wants to be a professional photographer when she grows up. For a 10-year-old indigenous girl living in a wooden shack on Guatemala City's garbage dump, such a wish sounds like an impossible dream.But Rosario's photos already have been exhibited as far away as Tokyo, and her scenes of life on the dump will soon be on show in Texas, Alabama and Paris."I like to take photos of animals and people working," says Rosario, who keeps her camera with her at all times.

Police arrested three men Saturday and charged them with illegally dumping trash on an empty lot in Severna Park, county police said.An officer saw a dump truck stuck in the mud in a field at Douglas Road and Center Drive shortly after 12:30 p.m. The dump bed was up and half a load of leaves was on the ground, police said.The men were trying to put a tow chain on the front of the dump truck to pull it out of the lot, when the officer approached them.The driver told the officer that they worked for a landscaping company and had permission from the lot owner to dump.

TANGIER ISLAND, Va. -- A brochure that promotes Tangier Island to tourists hints at something no one here is eager for visitors to see.It says: "Tangier is a romantic destination for those who would see a largely unspoiled fishing village. . . .""Largely unspoiled" are the words to note because a portion of this Chesapeake Bay island -- which Indians parted with in 1666 upon receipt of two overcoats -- couldn't be more spoiled. Accomack County Administrator Arthur K. Fisher describes it as "a festering sore."

Nearly a decade after hundreds of rusted, leaking drums were found in overgrown fields behind a Brooklyn Park cemetery, government agentsare cleaning up the hazardous dump.Spurred by the discovery of alarmingly high levels of lead in the soil, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided to remove the 55-gallon drums strewn across sections of an 86-acre site near Mount Calvary Cemetery.The dump has been under observation since rusted barrels were found there in 1982. When soil tests last fall showed extremely high levels of lead and other heavy metals, the EPA declared the contaminatedsite an "immediate threat."