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The true impact of an asteroid or comet crashing near the Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago has been examined in detail for the first time. The analysis reveals the resilience of life in the aftermath of disaster. The impact crater, which is buried under 400 to 1,200 feet (120 to 365 meters) of sand, silt and clay, spans twice the length of Manhattan. The sprawling depression helped create what would eventually become Chesapeake Bay. About 10,000 years ago, ice sheets began to melt and once-dry river valleys filled with water. The rivers of the Chesapeake region converged directly over...

ANNAPOLIS (AP) — Gov. Martin O'Malley said yesterday he likely will delay the start of a law that allows only low-phosphorus dishwashing detergent in Maryland — a measure intended to reduce Chesapeake Bay pollution and the first such statewide ban in the country. The General Assembly approved the bill a year ago, requiring companies that make the detergent to use low amounts of phosphorous by the end of 2009. But detergent maker Procter & Gamble Co. said it took effect too soon to make production changes and pushed to delay implementation until July 2010, a change approved by lawmakers in...

<p>At the national Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, the president promoted policies he said would protect habitat for 800 bird species that need resting places as they fly south for the winter and return when warm weather returns.</p> <p>After a helicopter ride to St. Michaels, Bush unveiled an initiative to make red drum and striped bass, known locally as rockfish, more available to sport fishermen but less accessible as a commercial catch. Chesapeake watermen, who rely on the fish for income, are cool to the proposal.</p>

BALTIMORE - Gov. Martin O’Malley and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine called on Congress Wednesday to pass legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions, arguing the health of the Chesapeake Bay is at stake. “We now know with certainty that human activities — including coastal development, the burning of fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gas emissions — are contributing to both the causes and consequences of climate change,” O’Malley told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. But his testimony did not go over well with critics of the Intercounty Connector — an 18-mile toll road that would connect Montgomery and...

ANNAPOLIS -- From the soap used to wash dishes to the cars driven to work, Marylanders will feel large and small effects from the recent legislative session some have called the most environmental in years. Democrats this year celebrated their stronger grip on state government and their return to the governor's mansion with a spate of earth-friendly bills that became the dominant theme of the session. Lawmakers tightened emissions standards on new cars. They slashed the amount of water-polluting phosphorus allowed in dishwashing detergent. They ended the commercial harvest of diamondback terrapins and set new goals for solar energy. Oysters...

After killing and dismembering her husband, a fertility clinic nurse walked through bits of flesh that were picked up by her shoes and left behind in the victim's car when she abandoned it in Atlantic City, a prosecuting attorney charged yesterday. Assistant Attorney General Patricia Prezioso called the discovery of the human tissue a critical piece of evidence and said it directly links the nurse, Melanie McGuire, to the slaying of her husband, William McGuire, in their Woodbridge apartment on April 28, 2004. While the prosecution contends it has substantial amounts of circumstantial evidence implicating the 34-year-old nurse in the...

KENT ISLAND, Md. (Army News Service, Aug. 14, 2006) – About a dozen wounded warriors paddled outrigger canoes with military precision Aug. 13 on the Chesapeake Bay at Kent Island, Md., as a supplement to the ongoing medical care they receive at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The outing was sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project and the Kent Island Outrigger Canoe Club. “Outrigger canoeing sets itself apart as a therapeutic sport because it lends itself particularly to those who are physically challenged and it’s easily adaptable,” said Julia Ray, Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project manager. Volunteers from...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - A crab species from China has been discovered in the Patapsco River, state authorities said Friday, prompting fears about the potentially invasive species' presence in the Chesapeake Bay. The crab, a mature male Chinese mitten crab, was collected at the mouth of the Patapsco several weeks ago by a commercial waterman using fishing crab pots. The species, scientific name Eriocheir sinensis, is considered a potentially invasive species, the state Department of Natural Resources said Friday. "This is the first confirmed recorded case for the Chesapeake Bay," Lynn Fegley, a DNR fisheries biologist said in a statement. "Only...

MILLINGTON, Md. - American eels are crafty fish, able to slither up rocks and around branches in just a tiny bit of water. But it turns out they're not the strongest swimmers — and dams throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed may be blocking their natural migration patterns and contributing to a sharp population decline. Maryland biologists are hoping to boost the fortunes of the American eel, which is found across the Atlantic coast but is most abundant in the Chesapeake and its tributaries. Even in the Chesapeake, though, eels aren't doing so great. Scientists believe they're being stymied in part...

JUST an hour and a half from Washington, across the 4.3-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge, or less than 30 minutes in a government-issue Chinook helicopter, is the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the primly groomed waterside village of St. Michaels. St. Michaels has begun to lure V.I.P.'s who, some boosters would have it, could propel it into the gilded realm of the Hamptons and Nantucket. But that will take a while. There's little for the young — just a few bars and no beaches or nightclubs — and these new householders are too circumspect and perhaps too old to be showcasing...

Philip Merrill, the prominent publisher and former diplomat whose body was found floating in the Chesapeake Bay on Monday, suffered from a heart condition and apparently took his own life, his family said last night. Merrill, 72, was found with a shotgun wound to the head and a small anchor tied around one or both ankles, according to a source familiar with the investigation. ~~~~snip~~~~ In 1996, former CIA director William E. Colby died from drowning and exposure after falling from a canoe off Charles County. ~~~~snip~~~~~ In 1978, another former high-level CIA employee, John A. Paisley, disappeared while sailing...

Rescue crews searched the Chesapeake Bay for a prominent publisher and diplomat after his sailboat was discovered empty in the water, the executive editor of The (Annapolis) Capital said Sunday. Philip Merrill's boat was found around 7 p.m. Saturday, authorities said. Merrill was still missing early Sunday, said Tom Marquardt of The Capital, which is part of Merrill's publishing company. The 72-year-old publisher had been sailing alone on a breezy day, Marquardt said in a telephone interview. He said he did not know what happened to him. "I'd have to speculate," Marquardt said. "There's just too many things that can...

Rescuers using small boats, a helicopter and a C-130 aircraft searched a portion of the Chesapeake Bay today for missing diplomat and publisher Philip Merrill, whose sailboat was found adrift last night, Coast Guard authorities said. Officials from the Maryland Natural Resources Police and the Coast Guard began searching overnight the area between the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the point where his boat was found, which is roughly 20 miles south of Annapolis. The search area is roughly 25 miles by 8 miles, said Coast Guard Lt. Commander Adam Mach. Rescuers using small boats, a helicopter and a C-130 aircraft...

Administration seeks $2.27 million for Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge NASSAWADOX, Va. – The Nature Conservancy today applauded President Bush’s request to fund the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge with $2.27 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund in Fiscal Year 2007. The Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge and much of the surrounding area in southern Northampton County, are widely recognized as globally important habitat for millions of migratory birds. The Nature Conservancy works with the refuge staff, state agencies and private landowners on the Eastern Shore to protect these vital natural areas...

There was an appalling lack of historical perspective in the House debate Friday night on the Murtha Resolution. It called for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq (to a safe haven from which they could return). What would have happened to the United States, had France held a similar debate in 1781? Let’s set the stage. The American Revolution was then four years old. French officers and soldiers under the leadership of General Lafayette, had fought along side General Washington. The French fleet under Admiral de Grasse had recently entered the conflict, and blocking the mouth of the...

The government agency leading the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay has consistently overstated its progress while minimizing threats to the bay and its own failures to address them, according to a federal oversight report released yesterday. ... The criticism comes amid growing angst among policymakers and the public that an agreement reached five years ago for cleaning the bay by 2010 could fail without a big political and financial boost. In the agreement, known as Chesapeake 2000, the region's political and environmental leaders proposed cutting the amount of major pollutants that enter the bay nearly in half over a decade....

Chesapeake Bay Crater Offers Clues to Ancient Cataclysm Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News November 13, 2001 About 35 million years ago—the dinosaurs are dead, but the Appalachian Mountains are still covered in tropical rain forests—a rock from space that was more than a mile wide and moving at supersonic speed crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off North America. Traveling at about 70,000 miles (113,000 kilometers) an hour, the asteroid or comet (bolide) splashed through several hundred feet of water and several thousand feet of mud and sediment. Drilling for Knowledge A trailer hauls drilling rods the U.S. Geological Survey ...

GROVE POINT - Jim Twohy's waterfront home might soon tumble into the Chesapeake Bay from atop a 60-foot cliff. He wants to build a wall to save the house, but some meddlesome neighbors are standing in the way. The neighbors are puritan tiger beetles, a threatened species half an inch long. To protect the bugs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to stop construction of a rock barrier that Twohy and his civic association say is necessary to prevent a half-dozen houses from toppling into the water. Although Twohy had never heard of the beetle until he applied...

FREE STAY For Our TROOPS WHO? Any military personnel who were deployed to the Middle East area during the most recent confrontations are welcome with their spouse and children WHAT? FREE 3-day, 2-night time of rest and relaxation WHERE? Sandy Cove Ministries and Conference Center, North East, Maryland at the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay! WHY? A THANK YOU to those who seek to secure and sustain our freedom HOW? Simply contact Carol Lee Lynch by email at c.lynch@sandycove.org or by phone at 800.287.4843 Click here for the rest of the story.

Jack Brooks observes the 25 or so women sitting at stainless steel tables, picking lumps of meat out of blue crabs fished from the Chesapeake Bay. There are a handful of Americans and about 18 Mexicans packing up small tubs for sale to restaurants and markets. "We have to have the Mexican workers just to sustain our business. American workers simply are not available," the co-owner of J.M. Clayton Co., a Cambridge, Md., business founded by his great-grandfather in 1890, said last month.

Killing unhatched swans 'is preferable to shooting or rounding them up and gassing them' WYE ISLAND - There is nothing silent about the mute swan standing guard on the sandy spit of land across from his nesting mate. Hissing and puffing himself up, the huge white bird makes for biologist Larry Hindman's small boat at ramming speed. But the menacing swan is no match for the biologist armed with a squirt bottle filled with cooking oil. Within minutes, the embryos inside the nest's six eggs will be suffocating. Hindman is part of a state and federal effort to reduce the...

Virginia man charged in alleged plot to assassinate Bush By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press Writer ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- A former high school valedictorian in Virginia was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and conspiracy to support the al-Qaida terrorist network. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, a U.S. citizen, made an initial appearance Tuesday in U.S. District Court. He claimed that he was tortured while detained in Saudi Arabia since June of 2003 and offered through his lawyer to show the judge his scars. The indictment said that in 2002 and 2003 Abu Ali and an unidentified coconspirator...

Sat Jan 29, 5:08 PM ET Patricia Archdeacon of Clarksburg, Md., reacts as the ice falls off her body while participating in the annual Polar Bear Plunge in the Chesapeake Bay, at the Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis, Md., Friday, Jan. 29, 2005. (AP Photo/Chris Gardner)

August 24, 2004, 4:51 PM EDT BALTIMORE -- A man described as a high-ranking Hamas operative was arrested after he drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge while his wife videotaped close-up shots of the structure, authorities said Tuesday. Ismael Selim Elbarasse, long suspected by authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian extremist group, was taken into custody last week and held as a material witness in an unrelated terrorism case in Chicago.

A man described by federal authorities as an assistant to a top Hamas operative was arrested by Maryland Transportation Authority police after he was seen videotaping the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, authorities said Tuesday. Ismael Selim Elbarasse of Annandale, Va., suspected by federal authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, was arrested Friday after two off-duty Baltimore County police officers saw him taping the bridge from a sport utility vehicle, said Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore. Elbarasse was not charged with a crime but was detained on a material witness warrant...

A man described as a high-ranking operative of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was arrested last week as he videotaped the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Virginia, and he then was held as a material witness in an unrelated case, authorities said. Ismael Selim Elbarasse of Annandale, Virginia, long suspected by authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian extremist group, was taken into custody Friday, the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland said Monday. He was held as a material witness in a Chicago terrorism case. Elbarasse made an initial appearance in Baltimore's federal courthouse Monday before U.S. District Magistrate...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

Progress on reducing the pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, North America's largest estuary, has been "significantly overstated," The Washington Post hyperventilated in a front-page story this week

July 21, 2004 Shielding streams from cattle, runoff By BOB STUART The News Virginian A new agricultural buffer program in the Shenandoah Valley, led by two major conservation groups, hopes to succeed like Swoope farmer Charles Drumheller has with his conservation efforts. The Shenandoah Project, coordinated by both the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service, has a one-year goal to attract 100 Valley farmers and landowners to the program. The mission: get those farmers to install 1,100 acres of forested stream buffers. The payback: farmers can recoup 75 percent to 100 percent of their costs...

CAPE CHARLES, Va. - Geologists drilling half a mile below Virginia's Eastern Shore say they have uncovered more signs of a space rock's impact 35 million years ago. For more than two weeks, scientists drilled around the clock alongside a parking lot across the harbor from Cape Charles. They stopped at 2,700 feet. From the depths came jumbled, mixed bits of crystalline and melted rock that can be dated, as well as marine deposits, brine and other evidence of an ancient comet or asteroid that slammed into once-shallow waters near the Delmarva Peninsula. Cape Charles is considered Ground Zero for...

VIRGINIA BEACH — For the third time this month, a suitcase holding human remains has been found, this one floating near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The remains were sent to the State Medical Examiner’s office in Norfolk for examination and police said Sunday night that they believe they are related to those recovered earlier. Don Rimer , a police spokesman, said the latest discovery came just before noon Sunday when a recreational boater alerted police that he had found a suitcase floating off the second island of the bridge-tunnel. ..........

An Eastern Shore legislator wants to know what voters across the state think about the need for a third bridge crossing the Chesapeake Bay. Sen. E.J. Pipkin, R-36-Upper Shore, has introduced legislation that would put the question before the voters on the November 2004 ballot. Pipkin said preliminary figures from the state indicate that such a bridge would probably cost between $1.5 and $3 billion. "The dollars need to come from statewide, because this bridge touches everyone in one way or another," the Kent Island lawmaker said. "The best way to determine that support is by a referendum question." The...

Upgrading 8 Virginia Treatment Plants Would Cost $520M Updated: Friday, Jan. 2, 2004 - 11:25 AM NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) - Meeting demands by environmental groups to dramatically reduce nitrogen and phosphorous in waste water that ends up in Chesapeake Bay would be costly, according to a sanitation district serving Hampton Roads. Upgrading eight of the area's nine big treatment plants would require an investment of approximately $520 million. That, in turn, would cause a 70 percent rate increase that would add about $100 a year to the average residential customer's sewage bill, estimates the Hampton Roads Sanitation District,...

WELL, WE live in nervous times. The terrorists arrive that awful Sept. 11 morning, and the nation spends the past two years trying to cope. The government investigates shadowy places where it never previously stuck its nose, and the civil libertarians shudder. Is Big Brother getting too snoopy? A 12-year-old kid at Boys' Latin researches a paper on the Bay Bridge, and suddenly the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force shows up in the headmaster's office. You could laugh if you didn't know the jangled nerves that set off such a reaction. This fall, Dorsey Boyle, a middle-school teacher at Boys'...

ECO - LOGICPowerhouse It's everywhere... Push for Delmarva Wildlands Project Heats Up By Leo Schwartz Congressman Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) Wants $500,000,000 for Land and Resource Protection Racket The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers are considering rule changes which could "weaken" Clean Water Act regulation of "isolated wetlands and non-navigable streams" in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Environmentalists and government officials in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware are opposing such changes while, at the same time, supporting a five-year, $500,000,000 plan for the Delmarva Conservation Corridor Initiative Program, the brainchild of Maryland Congressman Wayne Gilchrest. In the Bay Journal,...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.Environmentalists Hope New Breed Will Revive Chesapeake's Shellfish Industry ACCOMAC, Va. -- One million disease-resistant Asian oysters, bred to grow plumper and faster than their native counterparts, are being introduced to the Chesapeake Bay in hopes of reviving the bay's suffering bivalve industry. Stan Allen, a geneticist at the Virginia Institute of Marine sciences, on Monday released fingerling oysters from orange nylon onion sacks into Folly Creek, a bay tributary. Allen has bred the Asian oysters, or Crassostrea ariakensis, to have three chromosomes, which renders them sterile and gives them a growing...

Federal Court to Hold Hearing on Whether Mute Swan Slaughter Can Go Forward; Fund for Animals Seeks to Stop MD from Killing Birds 8/29/03 4:16:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: State Desk, Environment and Legal reporters Contact: Heidi Prescott, 301-585-2591, ext. 213; or Michael Markarian, 301-523-3179 (cell), both of The Fund for Animals WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Earlier this month a federal judge in U.S. District Court issued a reprieve for the hundreds of mute swans in Maryland. Officials were set to issue permits to kill up to 525 mute swans in the state this year, when U.S. District...

THE MERLIN DIALECT The Merlin Dialect is spoken by a mixed population which inhabits a triangular area on the western littoral of the Chesapeake Bay, bounded roughly by a line commencing at Towson's Toyota, then westward to Frederick Mall, thence following the western border of the cable TV franchise and the string of McDonalds' along Route 50 to the Bay. All of these lands and the natives thereof are known as the Land of Merlin. They divide it further into semi-tribal areas called "Cannies" (e.g., Ballmer Canny, PeeJee Canny, Hard Canny, etc.). The dialect area is centered on a market...

Md. gets permit to shoot 525 swans Federal agency approves reduction of mute species; opponents file complaint -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Michael Stroh Sun Staff Originally published August 13, 2003 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given Maryland permission to shoot another 525 mute swans, an animal that officials blame for widespread damage to the fragile Chesapeake Bay. But the agency's decision to issue the shooting permit sparked an immediate legal challenge from a Washington-based environmental group that objects to the killings. Under the terms of the permit, which was issued Monday and will take effect Aug. 27, the state Department...

In a giant, dark tank at a marine laboratory at the Inner Harbor, a regal-looking blue crab rests, exhausted, in the corner. A million of her babies, hours old, swim around her in a powdery mist. She has mated and hatched her eggs even though she's never left the tanks at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. She herself was hatched at the lab. Researchers at the institute's Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) are raising their second generation of blue crabs. They're monitoring 25,000 lab-bred crabs they released last year in the Chesapeake Bay, each tagged with a tiny piece...

Maryland Changes Chicken Manure Rules Environmentalists Fear More Bay Pollution ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Some environmental groups are crying foul over Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich's decision to ease regulations for big poultry producers. The regulations deal with hundreds of thousands of chickens that are raised every year on Maryland's Eastern Shore for slaughter. For years farmers have applied manure from those chickens to fields as fertilizer. But when biologists realized manure runoff was causing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, the state sought to restrict that runoff. Previous laws held large chicken companies responsible for the manure by tying their permits...

Activists Renew Call to Restore BayEvent Honoring Environmental Pioneer Includes Push to Tighten Oversight "There simply must be a binding, legal framework if the agreed-upon goals are to be met," William C. Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said at a news conference honoring a retired U.S. senator considered the father of the modern movement. "The momentum to save the bay has been slowed, and it must be restarted." Baker said the effort is failing because of a lack of political leadership and willingness by federal, state and local governments in the region to live up to their...

Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Facing Harsh Fiscal Reality ANNAPOLIS, Maryland, January 20, 2003 (ENS) - Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich says time is running out to save the Chesapeake Bay, but his state needs the federal government to fund its restoration and protection. "Time is of the essence and this has got to get done in the next five years," Ehrlich said. "The magnitude of the problem far outstrips the state's ability to pay for it." CAPTION Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor) The bay watershed encompasses some 64,000 square miles. It includes parts of six states...

Chesapeake Islands Donated to Nature ConservancyCLAM, Virginia, January 10, 2003 (ENS) - A cluster of Chesapeake Bay islands on Virginia's Eastern Shore has been donated to The Nature Conservancy for permanent protection as a natural area. The remote Accomack County islands harbor numerous species of songbirds and waterbirds as well as the northeastern beach tiger beetle, which is federally listed as a threatened species. Mrs. Ernest Carroll Justis and John Justis, whose family has owned the islands for several generations, completed the donation to the Conservancy on December 30, 2002. "This is a very generous and significant gift," said...

Chesapeake Bay's Health Not Improving WASHINGTON, DC, October 17, 2002 (ENS) - Promises by state governments and federal agencies to clean up the Chesapeake Bay have made virtually no impact in the past five years, according to an annual report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The nation's largest estuary rates a 27 out of 100 on the environmental group's health index for 2002, unchanged from last year and a long way from the organization's goal of reaching 40 by 2010. The benchmark of 100 reflects the Chesapeake as described in the early 1600s, when clean water revealed meadows of...

Chesapeake Bay Studied for New National Park ANNAPOLIS, Maryland, September 12, 2002 (ENS) - The National Park Service (NPS) has been asked by Congress to consider whether parts of the Chesapeake Bay should be added to the national park system. The special resource study will explore if and how the NPS could and should further efforts to celebrate and conserve the Chesapeake. The study will examine whether having additional Chesapeake Bay resources within the national park system would make sense and would advance partnership efforts to conserve the Bay. The NPS will try to define whether there are concepts...

Glendening slows flow of Central Md. waterDrought restrictions affect seven counties FREDERICK - Two spring rites - lawn sprinkling and driveway car washing - were declared taboo yesterday in most of Central Maryland as Gov. Parris N. Glendening imposed water-use restrictions that, at least for now, don't include Baltimore. On a dry, sunny morning he considered suitable for the announcement, Glendening issued a drought emergency covering all of Carroll, Cecil, Frederick and Harford counties. Also subject to the mandatory curbs are portions of western Howard and northern Baltimore counties that aren't part of the Baltimore City service area, and sections...