Flow

Take three months' worth of normal rainfall, drop it all onto a mountainous watershed in just one weekend, and you get the sort of flooding residents along the Potomac River have suffered from the remnants of Hurricane Fran.The mud-brown, roiling torrents have damaged riverside communities and carried billions of pounds of sediment and nutrients toward the Chesapeake Bay."The stream flows we measured this past weekend are among the highest we've ever seen in the Maryland area," said Robert W. James Jr. of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

There was no ribbon to cut, but smiling city officials did the next best thing yesterday: dragging away a barrier from the junction of Howard and Lombard streets to show that the key downtown crossing was back in service. Traffic flowed freely again for the first time since a water main broke seven weeks earlier and caused $1.5 million in damage to the intersection. Such was the celebratory mood that Mayor Martin O'Malley, who does not usually attend street openings, was on hand. After police motorcycles escorted a firetruck and city vehicles over the new pavement, motorists got their turn about 7:15 a.m. But light rail is not expected to resume on Howard until Sunday at the earliest, in time for the Ravens home opener, said Mass Transit Administration spokeswoman Suzanne Bond.

WE LAUNCHED in shirtsleeves, swatting December mosquitoes, and landed with a north wind blowing tundra swans down from Alaska. It won't be the year's last paddle, but it was the last paddling trip -- trip defined as enough days afloat to settle into "river time," to let tide and wind and the allure of unplanned side excursions control the pace and direction. A factual accounting -- the Chesapeake river's name and location, history, trip length, even the flora and fauna -- would miss the point of the journey.

SAN DIEGO - A new labor agreement between West Coast dockworkers and shipping companies is expected to help speed the flow of goods to the nation's stores and manufacturers, just in time for the holiday shopping season. Representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping companies, signed the six-year agreement early yesterday after weeks of negotiations that were ordered by President Bush and led by federal mediators.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. reported yesterday that its total revenue for the third quarter jumped 13.1 percent, from $110.3 million to $124.7 million.In addition, the Baltimore-based company said its broadcast cash flow -- a critical measure of the industry's financial health -- grew by 19.1 percent to $57.3 million in the third quarter, after considering lags in the timing of program contract payments relating to the company's 1996 acquisitions.Sinclair owns or operates 28 television stations, including channels 45 and 54 in Baltimore, and 34 radio stations.

Baltimore's school system likely will face a severe cash flow problem again in March, but city officials say they will consider several options in coming months to prevent a crisis of the magnitude of this spring's near-financial collapse. For the first time since lending the school system $42 million to avert insolvency, city officials are offering concrete proposals for solving the long-term financial problems. The proposals were revealed last night in a report released by the new Financial Operating Committee, composed of representatives from the city, the state and the school system, that was created several months ago to make the system more financially accountable.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. said yesterday that it is embarking on an aggressive round of investments in its television stations nationwide, and warned Wall Street analysts that this spending will temporarily drag down the Cockeysville company's financial numbers.Sinclair cast its announcement as a reaction to changes in the television industry. Independent television station owners like Sinclair face ever-increasing competition from cable and satellite television, movies and the Internet.

Without an advance of state funds to cover the Baltimore public schools' cash flow problem - one so great that it threatens to bankrupt the system - a deal brokered over the weekend to ease the system's $58 million deficit will not happen, sources close to the negotiations said yesterday. The Abell Foundation, a local nonprofit organization, tentatively agreed Saturday to lend the school system $8 million, matching the $8 million pledged by Mayor Martin O'Malley last week from the city's rainy day fund.

Dear Mr. Azrael: My neighbor several years ago filled in a low area on their property, changing the contour so that rainwater now drains onto my property. Much of the fill was being pushed past the property line. I dug a drainage ditch along my side of the property line to divert water back where it formerly drained. I did this to stop erosion of the bank between us, which was created 60 years ago by a previous owner, and was not a problem until [my neighbor] filled the low areas of their property.

Boaters using the Susquehanna River at the Conowingo Dam may face tough going, as the river's flow has dropped to an all-time low for this time of year.Philadelphia Electric Co., which operates the dam between northern Harford and Cecil counties, issued an advisory yesterday saying that the low river flow might limit boating on the creeks and marinas that serve the dam.Water at the marinas and in thecreeks might not be deep enough for people trying to get some vessels into the river, said Bill Jones, spokesman for the electric company.