Plant

The state will nearly double its financial contribution toward upgrading the Annapolis wastewater treatment plant to improve the quality of water being discharged into the Chesapeake Bay.The Board of Public Works yesterday approved paying an additional $3.2 million toward the $18.4 million treatment center, bringing the state's payment to nearly $6.8 million. The county is paying the remaining $11.6 million.Construction of the biological nutrient removal facility is expected to begin in May and be done by February 1998.

Although economic news in recent days has been generally good, try convincing workers at some of the state's oldest businesses that brighter days are here.The Arundel Corp., the Sherwin-Williams Co. and Crown Cork & Seal Co. Inc. all disclosed plans this week to close Maryland operations within the next year, eliminating 186 jobs throughout the state.Economists said yesterday's news -- that the state's unemployment rate remained much-improved compared with a year earlier -- combined the bittersweet reality that well-established companies have continued to cut while new, smaller and lesser-known companies continued to hire.

Maryland lost a five-state battle for a key economic-development plum yesterday, as fast-growing Seattle coffee chain Starbucks Corp. said it would open a coffee roasting and distribution plant in York, Pa. The plant could produce 500 jobs.The decision to move to York came at the end of a nine-month search that eventually narrowed itself to a choice between York and the Riverside Business Park in the Belcamp section of Harford County."The reason it was attractive was that, at a minimum, in the first phase they were talking 275 jobs.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s Wagner plant in Pasadena has been fined $11,250 by the Maryland Department of the Environment for failing an air pollution test last month.One of the smokestacks at the plant was releasing to many too much particulate matter, according to an MDE spokeswoman.The standard is .02 grains of particulates per cubic foot of air, and the unit showed .026 grains. Particulates are the part of the fuel that doesn't burn during combustion."We were surprised we failed," said John Quinn, supervisor of air management in BGE's environmental affairs unit.

Armco Inc. and Cyclops Industries Inc., two companies that are posed to merge, are studying the possibility of linking Armco's Baltimore operation with that of Cyclops' plant in suburban Pittsburgh.Such a combination is seen as a way of bolstering the two struggling operations. But executives at the two companies said it was too early to say what form the arrangement would take or how it would affect the Baltimore work force.A union official in Maryland, however, said linking the two plants could mean fewer jobs at the Baltimore plant in exchange for a healthier operation.

One thousand volunteers turned out along Delaware's oceanfront shoreline this weekend to plant beach grass in hopes of preventing erosion from future storms.The turnout was the largest in the three-year history of the Planting O' the Green program on Delaware's beaches. Groups gathered on beaches from Kitts Hummock to Fenwick Island Saturday.

The whir of sewing machines came to an end yesterday at two London Fog Corp. plants in Maryland as the company closed its Hancock operation and temporarily shuttered its Baltimore plant.With 270 employees in Baltimore and 280 in Hancock a month ago, each plant was employing just 15 workers by yesterday, according to Edward Zitka, manager of domestic manufacturing for the Darien, Conn.-based company.In Hancock, it was the end of the line for that plant, which first started making London Fog raincoats in 1962.

The County Commissioners have agreed to amend the county water and sewer master plan to allow expansion of and improvements to the Taneytown and Mount Airy sewage treatment plants.Taneytown will build a larger sewage treatment plant about a quarter-mile from the existing facility on Piney Creek near Route 140. The city could not add to the existing plant because it is in a flood plain.Mount Airy plans to expand the daily capacity of its plant from 600,000 gallons to 950,000 gallons and to reduce pollutants discharged into the South Branch of the Patapsco River.

Murry `Joe' Plant, 74, owned drywall company Murry "Joe" Plant, a former railroad worker who owned a painting and drywall installation company, died of heart failure yesterday at Chapel Hill Nursing Center in Randallstown. He was 74. A former longtime resident of Milford Mill, he had lived in Rockdale since the late 1990s. Mr. Plant was born and reared in El Campo, Texas, and after graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Army in 1948. He served as an instructor with the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C. After being discharged as a sergeant in 1952, he moved to Baltimore and went to work as a brakeman for the Western Maryland Railway.

Squeezed by the growing popularity of plastic bags, Stone Container Corp. is closing its 30-person paper-sack plant in Howard County on Oct. 31, shifting the production to operations Richmond, Va., and Elizabeth, N.J."We're in a market that is declining, and we have other plants close by that can absorb the business," said plant manager Mike E. Graham. Plastic bags have captured 50 percent of the grocery bag market in the last 10 years, he said.Stone Container of Chicago, the country's largest paper bag maker, has produced large grocery bags for 15 years at the 98,000-square-foot plant at 8700 Larkin Road in Savage.