After years of study and haggling over how to deal with the impact of Conowingo Dam on the Chesapeake Bay, the Hogan administration has ordered the hydropower facility’s operator to reduce nutrient pollution passing through the dam on its way down the Susquehanna River — or pay up to $172 million a year for someone else to do it.
The Chesapeake’s underwater grasses — critical havens for everything from blue crabs to waterfowl — surged to a new record high last year, surpassing 100,000 acres for the first time in recent history. “I never thought we would ever see that,” said Bob Orth, a researcher with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who has overseen the annual Baywide underwater grass survey since it began in 1984. “But things are changing.”
ast Friday’s story Poll: Marylanders back spending more on school safety, career education, but less support for pre-K and teacher pay cites a Maryland Public Policy Institute poll in which voters say they are against making cuts to roads and transportation, public safety, or children’s health insurance to afford expansion of pre-kindergarten education. We at Maryland Family Network, one of the state’s leading advocates for pre-K, agree that we shouldn’t trim back on those essential services. But this either/or scenario proposed by the pollsters doesn’t reflect the reality of pre-K implementation, when it’s done right.
Straddling the northeast branch of the Anacostia River just outside of Washington, D.C., is a half-square-mile patch of green called Edmonston. It’s a tiny Maryland town where, despite its distance from the Chesapeake Bay, the residents seem to understand that what they do here affects what happens there. What started in the early 2000s as an effort to ameliorate flooding on the town’s main thoroughfare has snowballed into a series of water quality-minded projects that are sprucing up streets, filling empty lots with community gardens and reducing the amount of polluted stormwater flowing into the Anacostia River. Almost half of Edmonston’s 1,500 residents are Latino and 35% are African American. The median income is $19,000.
College Republicans across the country are calling on policymakers to make clean energy a priority. The College Republicans here in Maryland are no exception.
We get it: The global race to lead the transition to clean, efficient energy is on, and the states and nations that act boldly will give themselves a competitive edge, create good jobs, and grow their economies. Now is the time for Maryland policymakers to build on the state’s clean energy progress.
To meet its cleanup goals, the state-federal Bay Program must now figure out how to offset an additional 6 million pounds of nitrogen and 260,000 pounds of phosphorus reaching the Bay each year.
Oyster restoration in the Chesapeake Bay faces an uncertain future because the federal budget recently passed by Congress failed to provide any dedicated money to continue reef construction in either Maryland or Virginia. But the omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2018 — approved March 23 and signed the same day by President Trump — marks the second year in a row with no specific appropriation for the Corps to continue reef restoration in the Bay.
The Maryland Constitution – and 80 years of state case law – make clear that a person cannot be jailed for disobeying an order to pay money based on a debt. Yet, debtors’ prisons continue to exist in our state. Legislation (SB 1050/HB 1081) to eliminate debtors prisons in Maryland has passed the Senate but is currently awaiting a vote in the House Judiciary Committee.
Even as Baltimore Mayor Pugh is asking for the business community to open their wallets to provide jobs and money for government programs, the Baltimore City Council just passed anti-business legislation that will make it harder for the restaurants, hospitals, and caterers to hire new staff and balance their books.
Caryn York responds to Gov. Larry Hogan’s Sun op-ed on the comprehensive crime bill. She says the bill was rushed, and contains mandatory minimums that will again lead to mass incarceration, contradicting last year’s Justice Reinvestment Act which both she and the governor supported.
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