Litter

Recycling is up in Baltimore, water consumption and home electricity use down. Thousands of trees have been planted in the past year to green up the urban landscape, while new bicycle lanes and bus and water taxi service offer residents cleaner ways to get around town. But the city's waters remain too filthy to swim in, and the streets are still littered with trash and illegal dumping. Nor is it clear just how many "green" jobs have been created. A little over a year after the City Council adopted an ambitious plan for improving the environmental, economic and social welfare of all its residents, Baltimore is making incremental progress toward sustainability on a number of fronts, while progress remains elusive on others.

Wenonah Hauter and Robert S. Lawrence ("Perdue needs to take responsibility," April 5) are certainly entitled to their opinions, no matter how strained their logic. They could also at least try to get their facts straight. They repeat a mantra that immediately tags them as woefully ignorant about agriculture: that animal manure is "waste" and that farmers are not "compensated" for dealing with it. In reality, farmers understand that manure is a rich, natural fertilizer (just what do you think your "organic" food grows in, anyway?

A proposal in the Baltimore City Council to help clean up the environment by limiting the use of plastic bags in shops and stores is a perfect example of a law so compromised by the demands of competing special interests that it ends up accomplishing nothing. The plan endorsed Tuesday by a City Council panel started out honestly enough. Three years ago, the council began considering proposals to deal with the mounting problem of plastic and paper bag waste accumulating on city streets.

On a day when he could have been out oystering, waterman Mike Edwards trolled the Chesapeake Bay south of Annapolis on Friday for a different quarry. Sitting at the wheel of his workboat, the Miss Renee Two, he felt a "nudge" on the line he was towing astern and winched it in to discover he'd hooked a mucky but otherwise intact crab pot. A lone oyster toadfish lay trapped inside. "I got one this time," said Edwards - meaning the pot, rather than the fish. Edwards, 53, of Grasonville is part of a small navy of watermen who have been hired by the state Department of Natural Resources this winter to pull derelict crab pots from the water.

Message in a bottle? That's just trash One day you are at the beach enjoying your hard-earned vacation. It's a wonderful, sunny day. The sand looks great after being groomed last night. The waves are coming in nice sets. The dolphins are playing offshore. You decide to go ride your boogie board in the surf. Just then, out of nowhere, comes a glass bottle and slams you in the head. Or perhaps, as you are walking out in the surf to get to those perfect waves, you step on a large piece of glass from a bottle that has just smashed against the rock jetty.

Go here: With spring here, many folks may feel like getting out and about. If you want a taste of quaint, quiet rural village life in a spectacular waterfront setting, visiting Whitehaven on the banks of the Wicomico River is a treat. The old two-room schoolhouse has been converted to a museum and community center, where you can learn about the history of the village, which has about 30 full-time residents. The population swells a bit on weekends and in summer, as several houses are maintained by out-of-towners.

Launching the next step in what is expected to be a larger media campaign, Baltimore officials said yesterday that they will soon emblazon trash trucks and garbage cans with new slogans intended to reduce littering. The campaign is more edgy than past anti-litter efforts. One sign pictures a bedraggled rat hunched over text, "He loves when you put your trash out too early." Another sign, to be posted on trash cans, says, "Pick up the litter, lift up the city." "We're going to deliver this message to the public in any way that we can," said Mayor Sheila Dixon, who has made cleaning up the city a major theme of her tenure.

Legislation that would have made Baltimore the second city in the nation to ban plastic bags at grocery stores and retail chains was killed by the full City Council last night. Intended to keep plastic bags from clogging waterways, the proposal would have required large stores - those with $500,000 or more in gross revenue - to bag groceries in paper or reusable bags only. Days after it was approved by a committee, the full council voted against the proposal, 11-3. "I know there has been a lot of pressure on this bill," City Councilman James B. Kraft, the lead sponsor, said of opponents who have lobbied against the measure.

Littering in Annapolis could wind up costing you $250 under a proposal from the city's mayor. City Council members are expected to vote at their next meeting, on Dec. 10, whether the littering fine should be increased from $100 to $250. Mayor Ellen O. Moyer expects the proposal to pass. "We have hosts of public servants and volunteers that spend their time doing just that - picking up the trash," Moyer said. "People's time and taxpayer dollars are important. We want a clean city." A public hearing on increasing the fine was held Monday, but no one spoke about the measure.

As a veteran diver and recreational fisherman, Skip Zinck is used to dodging junk that dots the surface of the Chesapeake Bay and the mouths of its rivers. But there's one kind of debris lurking below the surface that really spooks him: ghost pots. Tens of thousands of derelict crab pots - enough to fill every bleacher seat at Camden Yards for 23 games - litter the shallows of the main stem of the bay. The traps, usually set adrift by storms, are potential deathtraps for fish, terrapins and crabs - and a threat to the bay's fragile ecology.