Southern Maryland

UPPER MARLBORO -- The bad news is that the Patuxent River is in deep trouble, struggling against a tide of pollution and sediment that has turned this once-fertile river into a mucky brown mess. The good news: Scientists, legislators and local activists have a better understanding of what ails the river and what they can do to fix it. The Patuxent Riverkeeper, an advocacy group, released a report yesterday outlining a dozen major problems that are causing the river to slowly die and recommending a plan of action to stem the decline.

Readers of my last column agreed enthusiastically that Interstate 95 south of Washington takes the crown as the worst traffic nightmare in the Mid-Atlantic states during peak holiday travel. Quite a few of them offered the same alternate route: a pleasant jaunt through Southern Maryland via U.S. 301, crossing into Virginia on the Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge. Among the readers who recommended such a strategy were Ann Heether and Ted Lingelbach of Parkville. "We agree that I-495 and I-95 South in Northern Virginia are a Nightmare," they wrote.

An Anne Arundel County family has filed a lawsuit against Maryland's largest power company, contending that a leaky coal-ash waste dump contaminated their neighborhood's drinking water. At a news conference yesterday in Gambrills, Gayle K. Queen, an education counselor, said her husband, David, died of kidney failure last year after drinking water laced with lead, arsenic and other pollutants. Five or six other people in the neighborhood also died of suspicious causes, she said. "The people in this neighborhood are anxious every day if the water they drink every day is safe or toxic," said one of her attorneys, Wayne K. Curry, the former Prince George's County executive, now with William H. Murphy Jr.'s law firm in Baltimore.

Gov. Martin O'Malley described yesterday a scary scenario if the General Assembly fails to take action during a special session starting Monday to eliminate a projected $1.7 billion shortfall in the state budget next year. The first-term Democratic governor released a 20-page report, dubbed the "Cost of Delay" budget, that outlines cuts of $850 million to local jurisdictions and $800 million to state agencies and programs. Democratic legislative leaders released a similar list of doomsday cuts over the summer in arguing for new revenue measures.

ST. MICHAELS -- The Dibbs family was on a mission. The car was packed with snacks. The route was mapped out. The goal was clear: nine Maryland lighthouses - and one lightship - in two days. But while most of the hundreds of people aiming to complete the entire annual Maryland Lighthouse Challenge bunked in area hotels and inns during the weekend, Mike and Monica Dibbs layered one more obstacle onto their family's undertaking. They drove home to Lancaster, Pa., on Saturday night between the two legs of their tour.

LEXINGTON PARK -- Military base realignment has been a bonanza for Southern Maryland, boosting incomes and lowering unemployment in a rural region known largely for tobacco farming. But more than a decade after thousands of new military and civilian workers transferred to work on and around Patuxent River Naval Air Station, traffic still clogs the two-lane bridge over the Patuxent that many commuters use, despite hundreds of millions spent by government on road improvements. Housing prices also have climbed beyond the reach of many St. Mary's County residents.

When Navy reservist David Lindsey was called up to go to Iraq, his employer gave him extra vacation time and offered to pay the difference if his military salary was less than his civilian pay. While he was away, his bosses at Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative made sure that he routinely received care packages filled with soup and cans of coffee, which made him the envy of his unit. The company re-shuffled staff to temporarily fill his job during his absence, then promoted him soon after his return in 2005.

WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, already the highest-ranking congressman in Maryland history, became the longest-serving yesterday. "I guess if one lives long enough and stays put ... , " the Southern Maryland Democrat said with a chuckle over the telephone from New York, where he was helping a pair of freshmen raise money for re-election in 2008. "It's surprising because it doesn't seem that long to me." It was 26 years and a day, in fact, since Hoyer was sworn in to replace the ailing Rep. Gladys Noon Spellman.

An agency charged with overseeing land-use planning in the Washington region identified yesterday three possible routes to divert freight rail traffic -- including tankers containing hazardous chemicals -- away from the center of the nation's capital. A nine-month, $1 million feasibility study by the National Capital Planning Commission suggested two possible routes through Southern Maryland to Jessup and another that would run through a tunnel under the Anacostia section of Washington and into Prince George's County.

Gathered in the back room of a St. Mary's County restaurant the other day, an aging collection of folks whose families have been farming in Southern Maryland for generations, even centuries, worried about how many will be the last of the line. Estate taxes, low profits, labor and equipment costs, the decline of tobacco, the sheer drudgery of working the land and - most dangerous of all - the siren call of developers eager to pay handsomely to buy them out have drastically thinned the ranks of Maryland farmers and spell further losses.