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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John Waters and Costas Grimaldis at the opening, 1/20/10 (Photo by Elizabeth Suman)

By ELIZABETH SUMAN

In a new photography exhibit at Grimaldis Gallery (his first art show in Baltimore since 2002), John Waters juxtaposes images of the Palace of  Versailles with shots of the Versailles apartment complex in Towson, comparing the real deal in France with its suburban counterpart. Why? One reason, he told the Brew, is because the building makes him laugh.

The exhibit features a smorgasbord of photographs and sculptures Waters began creating as early as 1992, many of which comment on what Waters knows best: film.  A conversation with Waters opens up new layers of meaning in a show that can appear completely random without context.  One piece has a chillingly ironic connection to terrorism. Another elicits what is probably, it’s safe to say, one of the most exuberant and profound soliloquies  ever triggered by the title of an anal porn movie.

Here’s our Q & A. . . . . .

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