Water Pollution

Maryland is failing to ride herd on water pollution in the state because of serious funding shortfalls and its own flawed enforcement practices, according to a Washington-based think tank. The Center for Progressive Reform contends in a new report that while Maryland has some of the nation's toughest environmental laws, its enforcement of water pollution is lagging. "They could do better," Robert L. Glicksman, the report's co-author and environmental law professor at George Washington University, said of state environmental officials.

An O'Malley administration proposal to ease Maryland's stringent new storm-water pollution rules won legislative approval last night, capping a fierce debate over whether the Chesapeake Bay would suffer from giving developers more time and leeway in having to clamp down on rainfall washing off their building projects. After a three-hour hearing, the House-Senate Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review overwhelmingly endorsed emergency changes to state storm-water pollution regulations that are scheduled to take effect in a month.

R emember how this winter's snow, so pretty at first, morphed into gritty, grimy mounds laced with road salt, petroleum products and pet poo? Want that stuff in your drinking water? It's probably there. How about in the Chesapeake Bay? You can visit it on weekends. And the air you breathe - well, that's where a lot of the less-visible contaminants came from. The Mid-Atlantic's record snowfall of 2010 made a powerful, if slow motion, case for curbing the rain that washes off sidewalks, streets and parking lots into the waterways that sustain life.

Builders, environmentalists and government officials have reached a compromise in a looming legislative fight that threatened to weaken Maryland's new storm-water pollution rules, they said Monday. The deal, hammered out over more than a week of negotiations, would head off a move by lawmakers in Annapolis to soften or delay by up to a decade the requirements for controlling runoff from development, which are supposed to take effect May 4. Environmentalists were girding for a major battle to defend the rules, which were written to tackle a significant and growing source of pollution that is fouling streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. "Not everybody's going to be happy," said Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, chairwoman of the House Environmental Matters Committee, who pushed the feuding parties to work out their differences.

Responding to a barrage of complaints from developers and local officials, some lawmakers in Annapolis have proposed legislation to delay and weaken Maryland's new storm-water pollution-control requirements before they can take effect. Environmentalists denounced the move, saying it would give developers a "free pass" from having to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. The bill, introduced Wednesday in the House of Delegates, would "grandfather" from the new rules an untold number of proposed development projects statewide that are in the local planning pipeline.

A month after environmental groups alleged that an Eastern Shore chicken farm was polluting a Chesapeake Bay tributary, state regulators have yet to test the fouled waterway or the pile of sewage sludge said to be contaminating it, officials have acknowledged. Robert M. Summers, deputy secretary of the environment, said the owner of the farm near Berlin has refused to allow inspectors to take samples of the pile or of the water in a drainage ditch running through his property. Summers said the department had mailed the farmer a letter Friday and warned that the state would seek a search warrant if he did not permit sampling.

Man fatally struck by Amtrak train near Aberdeen station 3 A man was struck and killed by a southbound Amtrak passenger train Friday south of the railroad's Aberdeen station, according to Aberdeen police. Officers responded to a call at 2:26 p.m. regarding a body that was observed about 15 feet from the railroad's southbound track in the 600 block of S. Philadelphia Blvd., or U.S. 40. Amtrak and MARC commuter service was temporarily suspended. Amtrak police are investigating the death.

The Maryland Department of the Environment says it plans to sue Mirant Mid-Atlantic and Mirant Maryland Ash Management over disposal of fly ash at its Brandywine site. MDE Secretary Shari Wilson said in a statement Friday that Mirant discharges pollutants from leachate into groundwater without a permit. New state regulations took effect in December 2008, but MDE says it has not been able to reach agreement with Mirant on compliance schedules. The department says it will file notice under the Clean Water Act alleging water pollution violations.

Consider the handicaps of Maryland's top cop in charge of policing water quality: Short on manpower and money in good times; really broke now. Guided by enforcement enthusiasm that wavers in the political wind. Impaired by an institutional culture that shrinks from confrontation with the state's major employers and seemingly just wants everyone to get along. So, the recent allegation that Maryland's Department of the Environment is failing at eliminating pollution, as mandated by the 1972 federal Clean Water Act, is hardly shocking.