Shoreline

Maryland is home to about 205,000 registered boats - a 10 percent increase over a decade ago - and untold fleets of canoes, kayaks and skiffs, with most of them getting their bottoms wet in the Chesapeake. With more than 3,100 miles of tidal shoreline around the bay - almost equal to the distance between the East and the West coasts - it's no wonder that the region is favored by recreational paddlers, sailors and power boaters. But the shoreline is shrinking in a way that has nothing to do with erosion or global warming.

An Severna Park man has been fined $11,500 for cutting trees in the designated shoreline buffer zone without permits or permission, authorities said. William E. Clark, of the 200 block of Lennox Ave., pleaded guilty to violating Maryland's shoreline development law, according to a Friday statement from the attorney general's office. In Mary 2010, Clark hired a tree service to remove several trees on his property and land owned by the Olde Severna Park Improvement Association Inc. that abuts his home and a beach area on the Severn River, the statement said.

It was common gossip within the contractor community that damage to Maryland's waterfront caused by Tropical Storm Isabel in fall 2003 was regarded by some property owners as less a disaster than an opportunity. Piers, bulkheads and shoreline washed away could be replaced at a scale bigger and better than would otherwise be allowed - particularly if no one was paying close attention to hastily issued permits that limited restoration work to the dimensions of what was lost. But in the case of William and Janice Costello, someone was paying attention, and the federal and state governments have effectively thrown the book at them for violating the Clean Water Act and Maryland wetlands protections.

I love the knack Croatians have for taking a humble stretch of rocky shoreline and turning it into a wildly romantic bar or cafe. At Valentino Bar in the coastal town of Rovinj, the woman who runs the place hands out pillows as you arrive, an invitation to find your own nook in the rocks overlooking the bay. As the sunset fades and the flames on the old-time candelabra seem to brighten, you realize that you don't need to be rich to enjoy a luxurious moment...

They don't look like anything more than sunken telephone poles, but these "biologs" might turn out to be a cheaper and more natural way of saving shorelines in Annapolis. As part of a class project, a team of faculty and students from St. John's College has placed biologs, which are compacted coconut fiber, at the bottom of College Creek near the Hodson Boathouse to help stabilize the shoreline for growing marsh grasses. The grasses, which are similar to ones found along the creek in its prehistoric days, will help control shoreline erosion.

The O'Malley administration's bid to tighten shoreline development restrictions won preliminary House approval yesterday, as builders and local officials joined environmentalists in backing the compromise legislation. The bill, which would overhaul the 24-year-old Critical Area law regulating construction near the Chesapeake Bay, has been the subject of lengthy negotiations among all parties. The legislation would grant greater authority to the 29- member state commission that oversees development within the 1,000-foot strip of bay front known as the "critical area" because it helps keep pollution from washing into the water and protects wildlife habitat.

FRANK CITRANO may see himself as the noble suburban property owner waging a principled fight to save his waterside deck from the monolithic state government. He has himself miscast. His role more resembles that of someone who flouted the rules that govern development within 100 feet of the Chesapeake Bay.The argument that his 15-by-20 foot deck overlooking the Magothy River is harmless to the environment misses the point of the state's Critical Areas law that established a "no build" buffer around the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries in 1988.

If the downturn in Maryland's real estate industry weren't bad enough, it has also had the effect of greatly diminishing the state's much-needed land conservation efforts. Program Open Space, which underwrites much of the state and local land purchases, is financed by a tax on real estate transfers. With properties changing hands less often - and at diminished values - the impact on open space has been dramatic. In fiscal 2007, Maryland committed more than $278 million toward creating or expanding state and local parks and conservation areas, the most for the program since it was established in 1969.

Responding to criticism by a state commission that they weren't doing enough to protect the shoreline from development, Anne Arundel County officials have launched an ambitious enforcement program, including the use of a helicopter to locate waterfront trouble spots. Last year, the county was rebuked by the Critical Area Commission, which enforces a state law limiting development within 1,000 feet of the bay, for failing to properly enforce the law and follow up on reported violations.

For more than a half-century, Marylanders have piled heaps of concrete, metal and stone along Maryland's shoreline in a bid to stop erosion, a trend that led residents to name the banks of one waterway "Fortress Severn."Now, backed by new state guidelines, many residents are shunning such expensive barriers for a more environmentally sound approach: placing rocks, adding sand and building a marsh."We're trying to give Mother Nature a hand up," said John Flood, a former bulkhead builder in Anne Arundel County who consults on dozens of marsh projects.

A 13-story structure pitched as Baltimore's Eiffel Tower and a 200-foot-tall Ferris wheel could rewrite the skyline of downtown Baltimore if either is approved by city officials for the Inner Harbor waterfront. The city and the Baltimore Development Corp., its quasi-public development arm, released details this week of nine proposals received last month from companies in the United States and Europe. One or more of the proposed attractions could be installed as part of a city plan to provide family-friendly entertainment along the downtown waterfront.

Margaret Worrall writes: I live on the Little Choptank River. We fish, crab, and oyster recreationally, never a threat to the seafood population on our little river, I can promise. While I have been following the discussion on oyster sanctuaries, I have been unable to get a clear picture of what the rules are. A neighbor told me that as of Oct. 1, the Little Choptank River is declared a sanctuary and we can no longer harvest any oysters from the water adjacent to our own property.

Doug Ashton takes pride in Orchard Beach, his community of small homes and cottages nestled along northern Anne Arundel County's waterfront, where the laid-off construction superintendent has organized cleanups of shorelines sometimes littered with beer cans and other trash. Now Ashton is pushing to clean up his area's reputation as an outpost of the scrappy South Baltimore neighborhood of Curtis Bay, leading an effort for his community to get its own ZIP code. Orchard Beach is one of six waterfront communities of cottages and townhouses that recently banded together to lobby the U.S. Postal Service to officially recognize their communities; though they won't get their own ZIP codes, they'll soon be listed as independent postal destinations.

Students from the Children's Guild who sailed the bay and collected litter from the Inner Harbor shoreline throughout this month found a creative outlet for the trash they brought back to their Glen Burnie school: turning it into a sailboat. The 20 children, who are coping with autism and emotional disorders, converted their stinky collection into a work of art Wednesday, sculpting a sailboat from cardboard, soda bottles and Styrofoam. They decorated its hull with cast-off candy wrappers and snack bags and filled its jib with smiling photos of themselves, taken during their four-week summer course, which showed them their role in protecting the environment.

Turner Development has started construction on the first phase of public improvements for Westport Waterfront, a $1.2 billion mixed-use development on 50 acres along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River in Baltimore. The work includes construction of a "living shoreline wetland" along 900 feet of the riverfront. Maryland's Department of the Environment awarded $620,500 in federal stimulus funds to Turner to help reconstruct the shoreline and create the tidal wetlands. It's the first step in making 25 acres of the Westport Waterfront site ready for building construction.

Atlantic coastal communities have been slow to prepare themselves for rising sea level from climate change, though Maryland has been in the forefront of states in grappling with the issue, a new report says. The report, published Tuesday as Senate leaders push climate legislation, summarizes the results of a $2 million federal effort to map the likelihood of shoreline protections if climate change raises sea level as predicted. The findings of the federal study were suppressed by the Bush administration, but the authors were allowed to air the outcome in "Environmental Research Letters," a scholarly journal.

In a sweeping vision for Baltimore County's shoreline, officials have crafted an ambitious blueprint for a waterfront village featuring tony restaurants and shops, hundreds of new homes and a spruced-up fronting along Middle River. Initially, about $30 million in state and county money would be used to demolish rundown businesses and dilapidated housing complexes, transforming more than 400 acres into an area that could attract developers and new residents. Private investments tallying more than $70 million would be needed to build housing and commercial projects there.

A dying industrial strip between Westport and Cherry Hill has become the latest Klondike for real estate investors looking to create upscale residential communities on Baltimore's gentrifying shoreline. "The next stop is the Middle Branch," Otis Rolley III, the city planning director, said of revitalization that is leapfrogging from the Inner Harbor to other parts of the shoreline. This week, private consultants hired by the planning department identified industrial Westport as an area that should be considered for rezoning as a business and residential area.

State environmental officials said yesterday that they are trying to determine the source of several pounds of undetonated explosives found last month embedded in rocks that were deposited along a private shoreline in Anne Arundel County. A spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of the Environment said that it is unclear how the explosives ended up in the 200 tons of rocks placed behind a home in the Severna Park community of Round Bay, where a couple had sought to stop erosion on the beach behind their house.