Shoreline

Over the past several days, the few paths through the snowy woods had become a dozen or so as handfuls of early season anglers made tracks down to the shoreline of Blackwalnut Creek, just east of Annapolis.The word was out: The white perch were in.Blackwalnut is a shallowbackwater with a channel to the bay wide enough only to squeeze through in a canoe or small jon boat. But late each winter, the perch congregate, and the fishermen come down through the woods as they do throughout the tidewater to creeks and streams.

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.

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.

Things get particularly nasty on tonight's season-ender for "Star Trek: Voyager," where Janeway and her crew find a surprising ally."The 24th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Will the 17th time be a charm for Susan Lucci? All America holds its breath. ABC."The Sentinel" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54) -- The all-sensing Sentinel comes to the aid of a young woman recently awakened from an eight-year coma, caused by a car accident she claims was staged to cover up the murder of her parents.

Linda Amtmann displays her passion for the Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore County's waterways on colorful castaways.Using bushel crab baskets, door panels, flooring and boat parts found on shorelines, Amtmann paints waterfront scenes: historic lighthouses, a snow goose floating in a marsh, the Crisfield dock, work boat napping at anchor.As she converts pollution into art, Amtmann -- one of the featured artists at Sunday's Coast-weeks celebration in Essex -- hopes to erase images of the stereotypical Eastside resident as a beer-swilling, tattooed redneck.

IT WAS A lovely paddle down Worcester County's Trappe Creek yesterday, the shorelines thickly textured with greens of maples, gums, cherries and magnolia, backdrop for the pinks and creams of hibiscus in bloom, and the occasional bald cypress.Then the canoe nears the several hundred feet of nasty mess where Kenny Baker is building waterfront homes for himself and his daughter.Baker, a developer who also runs the Francis Scott Key motel in Ocean City, is quite familiar with the county's zoning requirement that the last 25 feet of shoreline between a development and tidal waters be preserved in its natural state.

Despite the brief return of winter this past week, local fishing conditions are improving daily. Last Saturday, after getting an on-the-spot minor rod repair at the Reisterstown Bait and Tackle fishing shop, I ran by Liberty Reservoir's popular Nicodemus Bridge, which connects Baltimore and Carroll counties. A number of anglers were lined along the bridge.I parked my car and walked the Carroll County shoreline and came across a dozen or more hopeful anglers. A few hundred yards south of the bridge, Jim Myers, of Eldersburg, was casting for bass on a point of land jutting into the water.

The American Dream rolled off a truck at Wicomico Shores.It was then screwed together into a spot by the water. The people from American Dreams Inc., a modular home company, wasted no time in assembling the factory-built contemporary for Grant and Sandy Williams and their two golden-haired daughters."

In her campaign for governor, Ellen Sauerbrey has been embracing the Chesapeake Bay Foundation as she never did during all her years as a legislator.In debates and to people who call her campaign, the Republican candidate says she can accept 25 of 26 prescriptions for the environment, published by the foundation as issues for the governor's race.She contrasts the "mainstream" foundation with the League of Conservation Voters, a coalition of most of the rest of Maryland's environmental groups.

CLARENCE Du Burns beat Kurt Schmoke by 150 votes in WCBM's mock election at the State Fair. Republican candidate Joseph A. Scalia got 20 votes fewer than "none of the above." In the U.S. Senate race, Helen Bentley got 762 votes to Barbara Mikulski's 516. For president, George Bush walloped Mario Cuomo, 760-228. Asked if the economy is improving, 866 fair-goers said no, and 465 said yes.Twice this summer, groups of Maryland junior high school-agkids visited the city as part of a two-week educational trip on the Chesapeake for gifted and talented youth.

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.

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.

The president of a Pasadena civic association and much of its board have resigned after a revolt by residents over the use of community tax money. Residents said they were set to impeach Patrick Kiley, president of the Riviera Community Improvement Association, amid allegations that it awarded a no-bid contract for shoreline improvement work and signed off on the sale of a property to that same contractor without community approval. In a March 31 letter to the 1,400-member community, Kiley, a retired BGE employee and 47-year resident, said he was resigning because the controversy had become "all-consuming."

House agrees on shoreline limits The O'Malley administration's bid to tighten shoreline development restrictions won preliminary House approval as builders and local officials joined environmentalists in backing the compromise legislation. Domestic partner bill advances The Maryland Senate gave preliminary approval to a bill that would allow domestic partners the same right as married couples to avoid paying taxes when adding each other to home property deeds to create joint ownership.

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.

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.

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.

Twenty-two years after the enactment of landmark legislation to protect the sensitive shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay, a study of how well it's working confirmed much of what critics had long suspected. Most county officials charged with enforcing Critical Area Act protections aren't particularly aggressive about it, concluded the University of Maryland Law Clinic in a report issued last month. They rarely fine lawbreakers, don't have enough inspectors to find violations and tend to accommodate landowners and developers rather than take a harsh line in defense of the bay. Thus, when Anne Arundel County officials recently unveiled an update of critical-area regulations intended to streamline and simplify the permit process for landowners still further, environmentalists cried foul.

Many restaurants to offer deals this week The Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Conference and Visitors Bureau will sponsor the Annapolis Area Restaurant Week today through Friday. Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer said the event is an effort to get residents and tourists to try a new restaurant or patronize local favorites. For $23.95 for dinner and $9.95 for lunch, participating restaurants will offer a three-course, prix fixe menu. Moyer said more than 800 restaurants in Annapolis and the surrounding community generate more than $800 million annually to the economy.

The slogan winked at me from the rear window of a bright red Chrysler minivan parked in a furniture showroom lot. "Veni, vidi, VISA: I came, I saw, I charged." It seemed fitting. We were in High Point, N.C., the self-proclaimed home furnishings capital of the world. An indulgent shopper can do serious damage to the household budget in a place like this, where a single Oscar de la Renta dining room table sells for upwards of $22,000. But if you're in the market for furniture, nowhere else in the nation compares.