Environmental Groups

For four decades, the owners of the liquefied natural gas terminal at Cove Point in Calvert County have given a pair of environmental groups a say over expansion of the sprawling complex, originally built to import fuel from abroad via the Chesapeake Bay. By all accounts, it's been a cordial, cooperative relationship. Now, though, that almost unheard-of pact between industry and its traditional adversaries is being tested, as the terminal's owner, Dominion Cove Point LNG, seeks federal approval to export liquefied natural gas through the terminal to lucrative foreign markets in Asia and elsewhere.

CHESTERTOWN - Eileen McLellan is about to spend her days in a no-nonsense, 20-foot runabout scrutinizing the impaired Chester River. The dead zones where underwater grasses have all but disappeared. The farmland erosion and runoff from every back yard, parking lot and paved road that pours in from a 390-square-mile watershed each time it rains. Its narrow headwaters in southern Delaware, and its wide mouth where watermen catch crabs and oysters off Kent Island. McLellan, a Yale and Cambridge trained geologist, former College Park professor and environmental lobbyist, has been hired as the first "riverkeeper" to patrol Maryland's portion of the Chesapeake Bay. She is the second riverkeeper in the state and one of nearly 100 around the world.

Environmental groups filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, accusing an Eastern Shore chicken farm and poultry giant Perdue Farms of polluting waters that flow into the Chesapeake Bay. The Assateague Coastkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance contends that harmful levels of bacteria and nutrient pollution are flowing from a drainage ditch on the farm into a branch of the Pocomoke River. The lawsuit - the first to target Maryland's chicken industry for water pollution - was filed two months after the groups warned Perdue and Hudson Farms in Berlin that they would sue after spotting what appeared to be chicken manure draining into the ditch.

ASK ANYONE to free-associate with the terms "environmentalists" and "development," and it's a good bet most would think of "against" or "opposed."It is a simplistic and increasingly outdated assumption. Consider the ways leading environmental groups have handled two competing visions of how to preserve the bay region's heritage and natural resources.First was Disney's America, a giant new theme park, residential and commercial development proposed near Civil War battlefields around Manassas, Va., in the Prince William County countryside.

Frustrated by what they feel has been more lip service than action on natural-resources protection, local environmental groups are calling on Howard County officials to make good on old commitments. County agencies don't have enough money to tend parks properly or fix old storm-water management ponds choked with silt, and other environmental issues are getting lost in the shuffle because they are split across several departments, environmentalists say. Members of the loose coalition -- which includes the local Sierra Club, the Middle Patuxent Environmental Foundation and the Howard County Conservancy -- know this is a bad time to lobby for more money, but they say the environment didn't get much during good economic times, either.

PHILADELPHIA - Concerns about the horrific human and environmental costs of scrapping the world's ships on Asian beaches have prompted shipowners, governments and environmental groups to seek ways to safely dispose of thousands of decrepit ships. At a conference here last week, participants agreed that the dangerous working conditions and improper disposal of hazardous materials that typify the industry must be reformed. But there was no consensus about solutions. Among the proposals: The U.S. Navy and Maritime Administration made a case for their decision to pay shipyards to scrap surplus military vessels under strict labor and environmental rules.

FIRST, THE victory: Port officials and environmentalists have agreed to ban open dumping of dredge spoil in the Chesapeake Bay. Now the challenge: Officials must still find alternative disposal sites for muck dredged up to maintain the shipping channels of the port of Baltimore. Facing that challenge will mean confronting serious differences that can still separate the two sides. That was made obvious recently in the battle over plans to create an island of dredge spoil in the Patapsco River near Pasadena.

Hundreds of Anne Arundel County charities are hoping to get a fundraising boost from a round-the-clock, online donation event. The Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County will host the "Great Give" from 7 p.m. Wednesday through 7 p.m. on Thursday. Donors can go to a designated website -- greatgiveaac.razoo.com -- to donate to their favorite charities. Corporate sponsors are paying for the administrative costs, so 100 percent of donations will go to participating charities.

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.

A Delaware bankruptcy judge has allowed environmental groups to appeal RG Steel 's plan to limit its investigation of potential toxic contamination in the waters surrounding Sparrows Point. While bankruptcy filings normally put all litigation on hold, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey granted a motion to pursue the appeal filed by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation , Blue Water Baltimore and the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper . The groups had challenged a Baltimore federal judge's approval of an agreement between RG Steel and federal and state regulators to sample for toxic contaminants no more than 50 feet offshore of the steel mill at Sparrows Point.