Landfill

Frank Marion used to light candles to mask the odor. Marion, who owns a home about 300 feet from the Millersville landfill, has complained since 2008 about the smell of rotten eggs permeating his home on an almost-daily basis. Now, Marion and other neighbors say the odor has gotten progressively worse - stronger and more frequent - and is causing nausea, vomiting and headaches among some residents. "It has totally destroyed my life," Marion said. Last week, about a dozen of the residents met to discuss remedies: They are requesting that Anne Arundel County appoint a third party to monitor emissions from the landfill and to test the air and well water to determine if there are any contaminants.

W hen it comes to recycling, Baltimore County is about to go from being a laggard in the region to being a leader. Starting Feb. 1, the county will allow residents to put out all kinds of recyclables - paper, plastic, metal and glass - in one bin. It will accept a much broader range of materials than it did before, and it will begin extending pickup to multifamily residences that were not previously served by recycling. It's a big improvement, and it's about time. Years ago, Baltimore County was a pioneer in the area in its decision to cut trash pickup to once a week and increase recycling to once a week - a shift not accomplished in the city until just this year.

Hoping to make some green out of going green, Annapolis officials are weighing an ambitious plan to convert an old municipal dump into a "renewable energy park" that would generate enough electricity to supply all of the power the state capital consumes, using landfill gas, yard waste and the sun's rays for fuel. The City Council is expected to vote soon on an agreement with a Linthicum-based business group to produce electricity on 500 acres of city-owned land near Parole. The project could net the city up to $750,000 a year in revenue and savings while demonstrating a variety of renewable-energy technologies, proponents say. As a bonus, a little-used public park next to the former landfill would be improved, creating an arboretum-like native plant garden in the meadows and woods surrounding the city's old reservoir.

Baltimore County residents can no longer put most household electronics out for trash collection starting Friday, when a new law takes effect. The county council enacted the legislation to keep potentially hazardous materials such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic out of landfills and waste-to-energy plants. Residents will be responsible for recycling computer equipment, such as monitors, keyboards, printers, laptops, and scanners, as well as televisions, VCRs, DVD players, telephones, including cell phones and answering machines, stereos, fax machines, and video display devices.

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.

Nearly two years after Constellation Energy was fined $1 million for contaminating the wells of some Gambrills residents by dumping coal ash, the company is seeking a new local repository for residue from its coal-burning power plants - an industrial landfill in Southeast Baltimore. But the plan to deposit up to 650,000 tons of ash a year in a chemical company landfill at Hawkins Point is generating opposition from northern Anne Arundel County residents, who live south and southwest of the industrial area.

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...

Maryland celebrated Earth Day on Wednesday at schools, malls, transit facilities - and landfills. Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. began Earth Day posing for photos inside a recycling trailer that was partially filled with discarded electronics. "It's so clean that I don't mind," he said Wednesday at the Eastern Sanitary Landfill in White Marsh. With the collection of unwanted computers, TVs and VCRs at the Baltimore County Resource Recovery Facility in Cockeysville averaging about 100,000 pounds a month, officials are expanding the program to the county's other two drop-off waste facilities at White Marsh and Halethorpe.

Carroll County commissioners are scheduled to be updated this morning on a plan to join with Frederick County in building a waste-to-steam facility that eventually could save both counties millions of dollars but which has drawn opposition because of environmental concerns and large upfront costs. Carroll Public Works Director J. Michael Evans will present the commissioners with a status report on a proposed facility to be constructed in Frederick County that could offset county's needs for dumping trash in landfills or transferring waste to neighboring states.