Pollution

The Maryland Department of the Environment says it plans to sue Mirant Mid-Atlantic and Mirant Maryland Ash Management over disposal of fly ash at its Brandywine site. MDE Secretary Shari Wilson said in a statement Friday that Mirant discharges pollutants from leachate into groundwater without a permit. New state regulations took effect in December 2008, but MDE says it has not been able to reach agreement with Mirant on compliance schedules. The department says it will file notice under the Clean Water Act alleging water pollution violations.

Stormwater is the only source of pollution to local waterways that is growing. There has been much talk lately of stormwater fees as a "rain tax. " While catchy, the moniker really doesn't tell the story. The story begins when those raindrops hit parking lots, roads and other paved surfaces. As they flow downhill, they pick up pollution - oil and grease from automobiles, fertilizer from our yards, and dog waste that wasn't picked up. That pollution flows into storm drains, then into local streams and creeks, then into local rivers.

No sooner had farmer groups in the Chesapeake region started protesting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's suggestion that some farm production processes might have to be regulated to reduce nutrient pollution loads, than Maryland announced that it intends to place more and better oyster bottom areas off-limits to watermen. Oyster harvesters were quick off the mark, registering their dismay. We have The People's response to greater environmental accountability. They don't like it. We have not yet heard how the screws will be tightened on city dwellers and developers to reduce their pollution loads, but we know that should be coming.

— Charles S. Long was upset to discover that a bulldozer had cleared the land next to his, knocking down trees and uprooting day lilies on his property in the process. A state inspector also found problems with the clearing project: It lacked a plan for controlling sediment pollution, and nothing had been done to keep mud from washing off the land into a nearby creek when it rains. What's more, the landowner, William L. Tarbutton, who lives in Preston, has run afoul of state regulations before— as a contractor, he worked on developments in Queen Anne's and Caroline counties that were cited in 2007 and 2008 for sediment control violations.

While Baltimore's air is healthier to breathe than it used to be, at least one environmental group thinks it could be cleaner still.  The Sierra Club released a report this week contending that two power plants in the area - C.P. Crane in Baltimore County, and H.A. Wager in Anne Arundel County - are releasing four times as much potentially harmful sulfur dioxide as the Environmental Protection Agency now deems safe.  The group,...

Maryland got an infusion of $2 million in federal funds Friday to pay state farmers to plant cover crops in winter, replacing state money cut from one of the most effective efforts to reduce nutrient pollution fouling the Chesapeake Bay. The state's cover crop program was one of six farm conservation projects in the six-state bay watershed to receive a total of $3.5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service....

A new trial date has been set for Oct. 9 in an environmental group's lawsuit accusing an Eastern Shore farm couple and Perdue Farms of polluting a Chesapeake Bay tributary. The case brought by the Waterkeeper Alliance was originally scheduled to begin this week in U.S. District Court, but was postponed by Judge William M. Nickerson to encourage the sides to try to reach a settlement. Perdue spokeswoman Julie DeYoung said in an email Wednesday that despite talks, "it does not appear the case will settle.

Responding to a barrage of complaints from developers and local officials, some lawmakers in Annapolis have proposed legislation to delay and weaken Maryland's new storm-water pollution-control requirements before they can take effect. Environmentalists denounced the move, saying it would give developers a "free pass" from having to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. The bill, introduced Wednesday in the House of Delegates, would "grandfather" from the new rules an untold number of proposed development projects statewide that are in the local planning pipeline.