Who knew?

The poultry industry uses chicken feed containing arsenic. Yum.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, Delegate Tom Hucker (D-Montgomery County) and other lawmakers think this is not such a great idea and have introduced a bill to ban the practice in Maryland.

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Videographer William Hughes shot this video and posted it on YouTube, along with this report:

On Thursday morning, March 4, 2010, a spirited protest action was held in front of the “Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center,” on north Gay Street, not far from the City Hall, in Baltimore. The demonstrators demanded “$100 million (in Maryland’s state budget) be converted from youth jails to youth jobs and education,” according to their press release.

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by MARK REUTTER

Mission Accomplished? Sure sounds that way if you read the latest Sparrows Point “Corrective Action Progress Report” issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.

 The document trumpets the progress of the waste minimization projects at the Sparrows Point steel mill and, as evidence, cites the completion of two recycling facilities.

Meanwhile, a Brew posting yesterday highlighted the lack of progress in opening these facilities – 13 years after the company promised to install the equipment.

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Memorial "ghost bike" for Baltimore cyclist John R. Yates. (Photo by Fern Shen)

New details of the hit-and-run accident that killed a Baltimore bicyclist last summer on Maryland Avenue have emerged, with news that the family of John R. Yates has sued the alleged driver and his employer, Potts & Callahan Inc.

The lawyer for Potts & Callahan told The Daily Record there’s no evidence that one of the company’s trucks hit Yates and that police tests of blood and hair on the bottom of the Potts & Callahan truck came back “inconclusive.”

But Yates’ family contends, in the $5 million lawsuit filed yesterday in Baltimore City Circuit Court, that a video captured by a nearby security camera shows one of the company’s trucks turning right onto Lafayette Avenue and failing to signal, just before the collision.

Basic Oxygen Furnace at Sparrows Point, where a court-ordered recycling unit has been out of service since 2008. (Photo courtesy of Severstal )

by MARK REUTTER

Three facilities hailed as crucial to reducing chemical and metal wastes at the Sparrows Point steel mill remain unfinished, out of service or never started — 13 years after the company signed a consent decree promising to install the equipment.

The failure to get these recycling projects in operation is a case study of the halting progress made by regulators in enforcing the 1997 Sparrows Point consent decree – the biggest in Maryland history – that was supposed to stop decades of pollution at the mill.

“Our hands are tied by a number of factors,” said Barbara Brown, coordinator of compliance for the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE). Among those factors? Squishy language in the decree.

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