Patuxent River

OJAI, Calif. -- Charles P. "Pete" Conrad, the Apollo 12 astronaut who was the third man to set foot on the moon, died Thursday night after losing control of his motorcycle on a mountain road near Ojai, authorities said.Mr. Conrad, a Huntington Beach resident whose lifelong aerospace career started with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1962, died at 5: 07 p.m. at Ojai Valley Hospital, five hours after crashing his 1996 Harley, said James Baroni, a Ventura County deputy coroner.

Laurel City Council member Michael Leszcz was elected chair of the Patuxent River Commission Jan. 11, and Howard County Council Chair Mary Kay Sigaty was elected as the PRC vice chair. Leszcz was first appointed to the PRC in 2005 by Gov. Robert Ehrlich; he was reappointed in 2007 by Gov.Martin O'Malley. He represent Laurel and other municipalities that are adjacent to the Patuxent River Watershed. The PRC is a 34-member, interjurisdictional group created by the General Assembly in 1980 to address Patuxent River watershed issues.

A 15-year-old boy died Tuesday afternoon after he drowned in the Patuxent River in Lothian, officials said. The teen's name will not be released until Wednesday, pending family notification, said Steve Thompson, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County Fire Department. The teen dived into the river near Route 408, near Wayson's Trailer Park just before 4 p.m., Thompson said. Fire officials conducted a search for about an hour and a half, using boats, divers and a helicopter, Thompson said.

When they first detected traces of an 800-year-old wigwam on a bluff over the Patuxent River last year, archaeologists celebrated what they said was the oldest human structure yet found in Maryland. Now, deeper excavation at the site — the front lawn of a modest rental house — is yielding details of much earlier settlement, extending its history back to at least 3,000 years ago. "As far as I know, it's older than anything in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, perhaps the oldest structures in the Chesapeake region," said Ann Arundel County archaeologist Al Luckenbach, leader of the dig. And that's just the age that's been established by carbon-14 dating.

Patuxent River Appreciation Days Saturday and next Sunday pay tribute to Maryland's largest river contained within the state's boundaries. The event is an effort to make the public aware of the river's economic importance as well as its scenic beauty and historic and recreational value. The Appreciation Days, held annually for 15 years, will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the grounds of the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons.Organizations like the Sierra Club, America's Clean Water Foundation and the Southern Maryland Audubon Society will be on hand to discuss environ-mental issues.

Patuxent River Appreciation Days focus attention on Maryland's largest intrastate river and its impact on the local culture, history and economic growth. This year's 14th annual event takes place Saturday and next Sunday on the grounds of the Calvert Marine Museum, on Route 2 in Solomons.Attractions will include boat rides, entertainment, arts and crafts vendors, children's boat building, Southern Maryland food, environmental demonstrations, seafood cooking demonstrations with a parade at 2 p.m. Sunday.

The body of a middle-aged woman was pulled from a tributary of the Patuxent River yesterday afternoon in Davidsonville, and the incident has been turned over to Anne Arundel County detectives. County firefighters responded to the first block of Trails End Road about 1 p.m. after a 911 call reporting a body floating in the swift-running tributary behind homes there, said Capt. Harry Steiner, an Anne Arundel County Fire Department spokesman. Steiner said firefighters at first were unable to locate the body, but that members of the county's swift-water rescue team recovered the body a short time later.

The effort to restore Chesapeake Bay still has a long way to go, but Maryland officials say they already see signs of recovery in the rivers that feed the ailing estuary.New data from long-term monitoring indicate that the Patuxent River, one of the Chesapeake's major tributaries, is getting cleaner, according to scientists with the Maryland Department of the Environment.In the past five years, there has been a dramatic drop in the river's levels of phosphorus, one of two nutrients blamed for choking off bay grasses and fish.

A year after a Glen Burnie man jumped from a popular rock formation and drowned in the Little Patuxent River near Savage, Howard County police are beefing up patrols against swimming and drinking in the area's alcohol-free park.County fire and rescue services say one or two people drown each year at the rapids below the area known as Savage Rocks, usually after disregarding the signs that prohibit drinking and swimming."We have started a high visibility effort to prevent the drinking, the swimming and the jumping off the rocks . . . to try to prevent any more serious things from happening," said Sgt. Steve Keller, a spokesman for the Howard County Police Department.

HOLLYWOOD - Government officials have launched a $2.7 million restoration project on the Patuxent River in areas harmed by a devastating April 2000 pipeline oil spill. The 140,000-gallon spill fouled more than 80 acres of wetlands and shoreline. Potomac Electric Power Co. and Support Terminal Services, the company that ran the ruptured 52-mile pipeline for the utility, agreed to split the costs of the restoration.

Anne Arundel County Police have identified a 15-year-old boy who drowned Tuesday afternoon while swimming in the Patuxent River in Lothian. Witnesses told police that Edward Daniel Knudsen Jr. was trying to swim across a portion of the river near Wayson's Mobile Trailer Park when he got caught in a current. Two people jumped in the water but were not able to rescue him. Officers were called to the scene about 3:50 p.m., and a county Fire Department dive team recovered Knudsen's body about 5:30 p.m., police said.

A 15-year-old boy died Tuesday afternoon after he drowned in the Patuxent River in Lothian, officials said. The teen's name will not be released until Wednesday, pending family notification, said Steve Thompson, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County Fire Department. The teen dived into the river near Route 408, near Wayson's Trailer Park just before 4 p.m., Thompson said. Fire officials conducted a search for about an hour and a half, using boats, divers and a helicopter, Thompson said.

The latest round of state budget cuts is taking a couple of bites out of Maryland's efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay, trimming plans to tackle polluted runoff from city and suburban streets and curtailing monitoring of the bay's health. State officials are cutting $2 million from the Bay Trust Fund, a special pot of money lawmakers had agreed on three years ago to earmark for curbing polluted runoff - a growing and particularly difficult problem for the bay. Originally meant to accelerate the pace of bay cleanup, the fund has been shrinking since its inception.

Anne Arundel County archaeologists have uncovered an Algonquian Indian camp on a bluff above a lush bend in the Patuxent River, a find that includes the oldest human structure ever detected in Maryland. Artifacts show that the campsite - in a location favored by native people for hundreds of years for its bounty of fish, shellfish and game - was in use two centuries and more before Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe. The dig has uncovered traces of oval Algonquian wigwams; rare tools of stone, bone and antler; fragments of a highly decorated pot; an intact paint pot; and a broken gorget, a dark stone polished and drilled for use as personal decoration.

When Nora O'Brien hosts guests at the secluded Victorian farmhouse she has painstakingly restored, friends have been known to carp about the deafening chorus of summertime tree frogs. "I've had dinner parties where people say, 'Can't you make them shut up?' " said the 49-year-old landscape company owner and mother of three. But she and dozens of other families across the state are willing to put up with such inconveniences. For them, living rent-free inside a Maryland state park outweighs getting chased by skunks, startled by snakes or clearing horse droppings from unpaved driveways that double as public riding trails.

A three-year, $100 million effort to cut levels of nutrients coming from Howard County's wastewater treatment plant in Savage got under way Thursday with a ceremonial groundbreaking. More than five years in the planning, the project will use waste from a nearby ice cream plant to help produce enough bacteria to sharply reduce the nitrogen being emitted with wastewater from 3,900 pounds a day now, to 830 pounds per day in 2012, when the work is completed. Reuse of some treated water will also help by diverting it from the Patuxent River.

A young Glen Burnie man died early yesterday at a dangerous stretch of the Little Patuxent River -- the same spot where a woman was rescued after slipping from a rock three days earlier.George Daniel Snyder, 22, was visiting the popular swimming hole with eight friends -- drinking and cooling off after Saturday night's "Rockstock" concert at Columbia's Merriweather Post Pavilion -- when he apparently drowned, police said."We said it was hot, let's go cool off, let's go to the river," said Billy Gunn, 21, one of the friends.

The Patuxent River, the largest Chesapeake Bay tributary entirely within Maryland, is showing its first signs of new life after more than a decade of costly efforts to reverse its decline, state officials say.Nutrient pollution fouling the river has been curtailed significantly in the past two years, thanks largely to more than $190 million spent upgrading eight major wastewater-treatment plants in Anne Arundel, Howard, Prince George's and Montgomery counties.And...

A three-year, $100 million effort to cut levels of nutrients coming from Howard County's wastewater treatment plant in Savage got under way Thursday with a ceremonial groundbreaking. More than five years in the planning, the project will use waste from a nearby ice cream plant to help produce enough bacteria to sharply reduce the nitrogen being emitted with wastewater from 3,900 pounds a day now, to 830 pounds per day in 2012, when the work is completed. Reuse of some treated water will also help by diverting it from the Patuxent River.