Stream

All Baltimore schools are now recycling, officials announced Thursday, an initiative that generated 27 tons of recycled material in its first month. Until the systemwide effort began in February, 72 schools out of Baltimore's 205 had separated paper, bottles and cans from other garbage. The announcement, held at Highlandtown Elementary/Middle School, was met with applause from students who have been working to expand recycling this year. As Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and schools CEO Andrés Alonso made the announcement, second- and third-grade students clad in green T-shirts held handmade signs on the front steps of Highlandtown.

Spring cleaning season is upon us, and Saturday there'll be a whole lotta cleaning goin' on along water ways around B'more. Project Clean Stream , the annual stream and shoreline cleanup campaign coordinated by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, kicks into high gear tomorrow (4/14).  There are dozens of cleanups scheduled in the Baltimore area and dozens more around Maryland.  Last year, more than 5,000 volunteers hauled roughly 300,000 pounds of trash and debris from streams and woods at more than 220 sites across the bay watershed.

Kathy Dobropolski pleaded with Baltimore public works officials for seven years to stop billing her for a neighbor's water use. Dobropolski, 60, lives alone in a Randallstown home without a dishwasher or clothes washer; her neighbors are a bustling family of four. Yet beginning in 2005, Dobropolski's water bills soared - from $25 to a startling $470 - while her neighbor's bills plummeted. She hired a plumber, who assured her she did not have a leak. She called the city again and again, once waiting on hold for 43 minutes.

Spring is almost here, and green groups are recruiting volunteers to watchdog Maryland's river and stream health. The Severn River Association is looking for help to protect the Chesapeake Bay tributary from  mud washing off construction sites in spring rains.  A recent audit by Community & Environmental Defense Services, a consulting firm, estimated that the Severn is being polluted with up to 1.4 million pounds of pollutants because...

I went to church on CNN Saturday, and it was one of the most powerful, uplifting and spiritual experiences I've had in years. Yes, watching six hours of cable TV coverage of Whitney Houston's funeral was a spiritual experience, and I am not using that word carelessly. It was profound and elevating, and the way in which media bring us together for such experiences makes up for one hell of a lot of cable TV's daily sins. CNN certainly wasn't the only cable channel with wall-to-wall coverage.

Last week marked an anniversary worth noting. It was on Feb. 1, 2010, that Baltimore County made the switch to single-stream recycling. Two years in, single-stream looks like a success story. "It's just gotten better and better," said Charles Reighart, county recycling coordinator. Once upon a time, people sorted various kinds of recycled materials into separate bins. Participation in recycling, however, was low - people who otherwise might be inclined to recycle didn't like the bother of sorting.

When it rains, not only does storm water flow downstream, but so do the banks of small streams emptying into Red Hill Branch, bringing other pollutants with the eroding soil. In a move to stem environmental problems and add wildlife habitat, Howard County has begun four restoration projects for the waterway in Ellicott City. Officials say they expect the work, which includes overhauling a storm-water pond and stabilizing more than 5,000 feet of the banks of three streams, to be completed by May. Project manager Mark Richmond said the pond behind Salterforth Place will go from being a depression that is dry most of the time to a larger pond that always has water.

Heavy rains routinely trigger big sewage overflows in Baltimore, but there is growing evidence that chronic leaks from the region's aging, cracked sewer lines are a bigger threat to public health. Though storm-fed spills can be dramatic, Baltimore's' streams and harbor are also fouled on sunny days as storm drains yield grayish discharges that look and smell like sewage. That is what they are. Even the nearly $2 billion overhaul under way on the 3,100 miles of sewer lines in the city and Baltimore County won't be enough to make those waters safe, experts and activists say. Leaks allow raw sewage to seep into storm drain pipes, which funnel rain from streets, parking lots and buildings into nearby waterways.

- As the small plane entered the pattern to land at this town on the eastern edge of Kenya, the view from the window was of miles and miles of scrubby landscape, low trees and bushes almost the same brown color as the sandy earth beneath them. Hardly noticeable were the small buildings and many tents that have put this place on the international map. They were covered with the ubiquitous brown dust that would soon blow in my face as I stepped onto the tarmac. Dadaab has become host to one of the largest refugee populations in the world.

They've grown up during an era of unprecedented interest in the environment, and on Oct. 7, students from Pot Spring Elementary School and Dulaney High School turned their knowledge, and public service intentions, into action. Upperclassmen in John Enders' horticulture class at Dulaney joined first- and third-graders from Pot Spring to plant more than 30 trees on the fringe of a forested area between the two schools. Along with other recently planted trees and the long grasses that surround them, the new trees will act as a buffer for a stream that runs through the woods behind Pot Spring.