Rural

Elizabeth Scott, an art-quilt maker whose work was acclaimed by critics as "filled with hope and sadness and love," died of heart failure April 25 at her home in the Penn North section of West Baltimore. She was 95. Born Elizabeth Caldwell near Chester, S.C., she was a middle child of 14. Her family sharecropped vegetables and cotton on the plantation where her grandparents had been slaves. Her grandfather was a basket weaver, potter and blacksmith. Her father, a railroad worker, made quilts.

When columnist Erma Bombeck published her book "The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank" in the mid-1970s, she was trafficking in suburban, comedic gold. Septic systems were universal — iconic, even — and as close as a waste disposal system could come to being a real-for-sure chunk of Americana. Even in the nicest homes, men sipping scotch would gather around the hearth to discuss drain fields. Your car might have the biggest engine on the block, but if you could only go six months between septic-tank pumpings, you were something less than a man. There was no speed-dial in those days, but everyone had scrawled in the back of the phone book the name and number of a fellow who owned a backhoe, just in case of a septic emergency.

It's just the start of the evening rush, and the cars are everywhere — and going fast — outside Clarence "Sonny" Jordan's house on Ritchie Highway in Arnold. The 87-year-old has lived here since 1932 — before Ritchie Highway was built — and has been trying for years to sell his property. But there's a problem, he says: No one wants to buy a piece of residentially zoned property along a busy thoroughfare. So he wants to get his 51/2 acres of land rezoned from low-density residential to commercial, increasing its value and allowing for a comfortable retirement.

Bryant Bunch, who came from Prince George's County to attend college here at the far end of the Maryland panhandle, first saw the sign on Interstate 68 while traveling with a carload of friends a few years back. He remembers their reaction: Does that say what we think it says? Maxine Broadwater, born and raised on a farm outside Grantsville, and the town's librarian for three decades, recalls the first time she ever gave the name a second thought. It was the early 1990s, and people passing through had stopped at her library to ask about it. Her thought: Why would that bother anybody?

Staking out one of his legislative priorities in this year's General Assembly, Gov. Martin O'Malley argued Monday that rural development using septic systems needs to be curtailed to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay and to preserve the state's remaining farmland from suburban sprawl. O'Malley joined with environmental activists and green-leaning lawmakers to defend the bill he has introduced, which would ban any new major housing projects on septic. It also would require less-polluting but more costly septic systems on smaller housing developments or individual homes not affected by the ban. The governor said he wanted to end a "proliferation" of new housing on septic systems, which allow up to 10 times as much water-fouling nitrogen to leach into streams per household as do homes hooked up to public sewage treatment plants.

Residents of the farms, rolling hills and historic villages of Baltimore County's Long Green Valley have long basked in the tranquility that comes from country living. Now, they are increasingly worried about a rash of crime in their remote communities, and are urging police to step up patrols of the area. In response to the spree, some people have bought weapons to protect themselves, according to a resident, who along with others began to agitate publicly for help after a shootout on Jan. 7 between a burglary suspect and a female homeowner on Glen Arm Road.

Gov. Martin O'Malley stunned environmentalists and builders alike Thursday by calling for a crackdown on housing developments that use septic systems — a bid to curb suburban sprawl and help restore the Chesapeake Bay. His proposal, part of the annual State of the State address, set the stage for a fierce debate in Annapolis. Developers warned that it could stifle growth and cost jobs in a real estate industry still struggling to climb from the recession. Speaking to lawmakers, O'Malley said that pollution from homes being built with septic systems is undercutting Maryland's efforts to clean up the bay. While the state has moved to curb pollution from farms and sewage treatment plants, the governor said, "there is one area of reducing pollution where so far we have totally failed, and in fact it has gotten much worse ... and that is pollution from the proliferation of new septic systems — systems which by their very design are intended to leak sewage into our bay and water tables.

When seated in the great room of Jim and Adrienne Davis' rambling Howard County home overlooking seven acres of bucolic meadowland, it is hard to visualize the rancher that was, and the couple's reason for buying it in the first place. "The house was as ugly as could be," said Adrienne Davis, 56, who works for the Project Literary Program of the Howard County Public Library system. "It was a brown brick rancher with dark brown trim — drab. We bought it for the view. " Coming from a two-story home in Columbia, the Davises desired a more rural area and, perhaps more importantly, one-floor living.

Census takers will begin hand-delivering questionnaires to rural parts of Maryland today, two weeks before mailing surveys to residents in more urban areas. It takes more time to visit households in rural areas, which are usually farther apart, said Joe Quartullo, area manager at the Philadelphia Regional Census Center that oversees the census in Maryland. Also, some rural households have irregular addresses that can make mailing questionnaires difficult. Visiting about 12 million rural households nationwide, census enumerators plan to target rural Maryland pockets, such as some areas in Calvert and St. Mary's counties and parts of Western Maryland.