Fly Ash

The last time Jon Hyman led a company, he helped turn the golf industry on its head, introducing plastic cleats to replace metal spikes. Now, he's planning a revolution for a similarly staid business: concrete. "This is not a very exciting industry, but we've been able to do things differently," said Hyman, who is chief executive officer of Baltimore-based CeraTech Inc. CeraTech has a technology that seeks to replace the way that cement has been made for nearly 200 years, since English inventor Joseph Aspdin mixed chalk and clay and heated it in a kiln to produce what is now widely known as Portland cement.

Under threat of a lawsuit from state regulators, Constellation Energy Corp. said yesterday that it will stop dumping fly ash from coal at a mine in Anne Arundel County while it negotiates and carries out a plan to clean up neighbors' contaminated drinking water. By Monday, Constellation will no longer drop off truckloads of fly ash, a byproduct of its coal-fired plants, at an 80-acre site in Gambrills owned by BBSS Inc., said Rob Gould, a Constellation spokesman, but he declined to say where it would deposit the debris instead.

The state's environmental agency has ordered the operator of a coal ash dump site to pay a "significant" fine and clean contaminated water recently detected in Anne Arundel County. The Maryland Department of the Environment gave BBSS Inc. 60 days to comply or face legal action, agency spokesman Robert Ballinger said yesterday. He did not elaborate on the amount of the fine or specific actions. "Taking this corrective action is how we deem it necessary to take care" of the contamination, Ballinger said.

Anne Arundel Man pleads guilty in unsolved slayings A man already serving a life sentence for a 1994 slaying pleaded guilty Thursday to three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of rape in a trio of brutal killings that went unsolved for more than a decade. Alexander Wayne Watson Jr., 36, made the formal plea three days after meeting with families of his victims, who were all strangled and fatally stabbed: Boon Tem Andersen at her Gambrills home on Oct. 6, 1986; Elaine Shereika as she was jogging on May 23, 1988; and Lisa Kathleen Haenel, 14, as she walked to Old Mill High School on Jan. 15, 1993.

After nearly 20 years of battling a powerful utility -- and gaining a major victory -- some activists might have celebrated loudly, then returned to the normal business of life.Not the residents of the Solley community in northern Anne Arundel County.Although the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. recently announced an end to its policy of using fly ash as fill in Brandon Woods Business Park, area residents aren't ready to celebrate yet.They vow to keep pressing the utility giant on environmental and safety issues related to fly ash -- the gray dust and chunks that are a byproduct of burning coal at BGE's Brandon Shores and H. A. Wagner electricity-generating plants.

Fly ash problem in Solley is hardly settledThe editorial, "Burying the fly ash debate" (July 16), unfortunately sounded more like Baltimore Gas and Electric Co's public-relations spin than balanced, well-researched journalism.Had the writer attended any one of the 17 hearings before three different judicial bodies or contacted one of the numerous experts, lawyers, governmental agency representatives or participants for the community, he might have been better prepared to make a judgment.1)

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. will end its contentious use of fly ash to level the ground at its Marley Neck business park. Instead, it will use the fly ash to make concrete mix and to fill a Gambrills sand and gravel pit.Company officials said yesterday that BGE has decided to stop depositing fly ash as structural fill for the Brandon Woods Business Park as of Aug. 15 because with a newly operating plant turning much of the ash into concrete additive, it...

BALTIMORE GAS and Electric Co. will finally stop using the recyclable residue from the coal-burning operation at its northern Anne Arundel County business park. That decision should end an old dispute.The utility and its neighbors have battled for years over fly ash, the powdery gray substance that results when the utility burns coal at its Brandon Shores and H. A. Wagner power plants.BGE has used four tons of the substance as fill at the nearby business park since 1982.Neighbors argued that the fly ash dirties porches and threatens underground water and public health.

A bill aimed at strictly regulating the disposal of fly ash has died quickly in committee.The bill was proposed by Del. Mary M. Rosso, an Anne Arundel County Democrat who is a longtime advocate of controlling the fine gray dust left when coal is burned.The legislation would have required owners of power plants -- namely Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. -- to build clay liners under the ash dumping ground and to monitor air and water quality.Delegates dropped the bill on a 16-2 vote Saturday in the Environmental Matters Committee.

After nearly 20 years as the subject of North County community meetings, fly ash made it to the General Assembly yesterday. And the reception was not enthusiastic.Members of the House Environmental Matters Committee sharply questioned supporters of a proposed bill to strictly regulate uses of the fine gray powder left over from the burning of coal. They asked how dangerous the ash could be if the state Department of the Environment has not found it to be hazardous and if the state Department of Transportation uses it to build roads.

It should come as no surprise that some people living in the vicinity of Key Bridge aren't thrilled by the idea of power plant fly ash showing up at a local landfill. In recent years, the effects of improperly handled coal ash have gotten a lot of attention, from the contaminated wells near a Gambrills landfill to the billion gallons of the stuff that accidentally spilled into the Tennessee River last year. But the question before the Maryland Department of the Environment is whether to allow 7.4 million tons of so-called "coal combustion byproducts" to be dumped in an industrial landfill that was built to higher specifications than the failed Gambrills site and is proposed to be upgraded further.

Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold has asked Gov. Martin O'Malley to delay the construction of a proposed fly-ash landfill site in Southeast Baltimore, citing the landfill's proximity to the county and its ban on fly ash Leopold, who banned fly-ash and coal combustion byproducts in 2007 after the discovery that fly-ash dumping in Gambrills quarries was causing drinking water contamination, asked O'Malley to await the Maryland Department of...

The General Assembly passed three environmental protection measures in its recently concluded session that affect fly ash, air quality and storm-water management, according to the county. The legislation strengthens existing regulations requiring air quality monitoring for coal fly ash and extends the statute of limitations for storm-water management plans to three years, providing consistent enforcement of environmental laws. The legislation also requires the state to include county reimbursement claims for environmental health monitoring and testing, in cases where the state collects fines.

Gambrills residents, CEG reach water settlement A Baltimore judge approved a $54 million settlement yesterday between Constellation Energy and a group of Gambrills residents whose drinking water was contaminated by fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal. The energy company will create a $9.5 million fund for the residents of 84 homes that had contaminated wells and spend another $10 million to clean up and improve the former quarry where the ash was dumped, said the plaintiffs' attorney, William "Hassan" Murphy III. "What this settlement really says is that when community are affected by this problem, it's possible to solve it in a creative and positive way," said Murphy, managing partner of the Murphy Group, which worked with Peter G. Angelos' law firm to represent the residents.

Fly ash regulations not strict enough I concur with The Baltimore Sun's editorial that said the Maryland Department of the Environment's new rules for disposing of coal fly ash are "not a full solution to the problem" ("Controlling coal ash," Dec. 5). The rules just do not adequately address the severity of the problem. In 2007, Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold secured County Council approval of a ban on the disposal of fly ash at any site in the county. Mr. Leopold took this action on this issue in response to a county groundwater investigation in Gambrills that concluded that combustion ash used as fill for mine reclamation presented potential health risks.

UM law dean plans to return to the faculty Karen H. Rothenberg, the first female dean of the University of Maryland School of Law, announced yesterday that she will step down at the end of the next academic year and return to the faculty of the downtown school. "We're thriving, so it's a perfect time to say, 'Let's move into our next transition,' and it's a good time for me personally," said Rothenberg, 55, who became law dean in 2000, after a year as interim dean, and is now in her 26th year with the school.

The Maryland Department of the Environment has filed a lawsuit against the Atlanta-based Mirant power company for allegedly allowing polluted water and heavy metals to escape from a fly ash landfill in Southern Maryland. The suit, filed by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler on Friday in Charles County Circuit Court, seeks millions in penalties and an end to coal ash dumping at the 38-year-old old Faulkner landfill. The state also wants to stop the flow of pollutants from the site. "Zekiah Swamp is one of the most significant ecological areas in the Chesapeake Bay watershed," the suit from the Maryland Department of Environment reads.

Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold sharply criticized Gov. Martin O'Malley yesterday for striking down a bill that would have required the state to reimburse the county for a $100,000 investigation that found cancer-causing metals in private wells in Gambrills, calling the governor's veto an "offensive and irresponsible anti-environment action." The veto - O'Malley's only one among 745 bills this year - was a stunning defeat for county officials, whose eight-month investigation helped persuade the Maryland Department of the Environment last summer to fine Constellation Energy and the operator of the 80-acre site $1 million and ordered them to clean up fly ash contamination.

A power plant ash dump in Southern Maryland leaked toxic pollutants into a wetlands described by the state as one of the most important in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, according to a complaint filed yesterday. In the legal notice, environmental groups and Charles County residents advised state and federal environmental agencies of their intent to sue the Mirant power company over runoff from the Faulkner fly ash landfill. The groups assert that Mirant's own records show that the dump's runoff of toxic pollutants such as selenium and lead into Bowling Creek, which flows into Zekiah Swamp and the Wicomico River, violated water quality standards 12,677 times in 2006 and 2007.

An environmental group said yesterday that it had found fly ash on houses and a playground near a coal-waste dump in Anne Arundel County, and it suggested that this poses a threat to public health. "The state should close this facility permanently, require more air monitoring and put more requirements into state regulations to limit air pollution from future dumps," said Brad Heavner, executive director of Environment Maryland, a nonprofit group. Officials with the Maryland Department of the Environment said their air testing around the Gambrills dump had found trace levels that don't pose a threat.