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The Army has been creating an island since 1998 on the Northeast coast of the United States. Slowly, the US Army Corps of Engineers built concrete dikes to establish its perimeter and then have spent more than decade filling them with mud. Its name: Poplar island. Fortunately, no weird stuff is going on there (that we know of, anyway). Poplar Island, which is being rebuilt in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, is 30 miles south of Baltimore Harbor, where all the mud is coming from.

Although negotiations over a package of tax increases and a proposed casino collapsed Monday night, the Maryland General Assembly passed a lot of bills this session — 791, to be exact. Of those, 96 percent were passed in the last week, including hundreds in the hours and minutes before midnight on Monday. Here are some highlights from the 90-day session’s last day: STORMWATER FEE The Senate spent much of the session’s waning hours fiercely debating a stormwater fee bill that was on few people’s radar earlier in the session. The bill requires localities to fund projects to reduce polluted runoff...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington is starting to dig deep in a $2.6 billion underground solution aimed at helping clean up the polluted Potomac River and the ailing Chesapeake Bay, the biggest U.S. estuary. In the U.S. capital's biggest public works project in more than 40 years, work started this fall to cut about 16 miles of tunnels to keep overflow sewage and stormwater from running into the Potomac. The project, designed to be finished in 2025, is seen by environmentalists as part of resolving the next great water pollution challenge facing the United States -- keeping fouled runoff out of...

Analyses of pelagic limestones indicate that the flux of extraterrestrial helium-3 to Earth was increased for a 2.5-million year (My) period in the late Eocene. The enhancement began ~1 My before and ended ~1.5 My after the major impact events that produced the large Popigai and Chesapeake Bay craters ~36 million years ago. The correlation between increased concentrations of helium-3, a tracer of fine-grained interplanetary dust, and large impacts indicates that the abundance of Earth-crossing objects and dustiness in the inner solar system were simultaneously but only briefly enhanced. These observations provide evidence for a comet shower triggered by an...

Contact Information: Dave Ryan (News Media Only) Ryan.dave@epa.gov 202-564-7827 202-564-4355 WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched an online map that shows the locations of federal air and water enforcement actions in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The map is part of EPA’s increased focus on enforcement of federal pollution laws in the Chesapeake Bay region, including a new strategy of targeting geographic areas and pollution sources contributing the greatest amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment to streams, creeks, rivers and the bay. Improving water quality is one of EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s top priorities. “Transparency and accountability...

Aboard a pontoon boat chugging past the marshland of Maryland's upper Patuxent River on a recent Saturday, Ralph Eshelman pointed to the spot where the muddy brown water hides a shipwreck nearly two centuries old, part of the American flotilla that defended the Chesapeake Bay when the British burned Washington during the War of 1812. Nearly 30 years ago, Eshelman helped direct a team of marine researchers who discovered the wreck, one of the war's most significant artifacts. After a limited, month-long excavation of the site east of Upper Marlboro in 1980, the wreck was reburied under four feet of...

"Terrorism expert says LNG project lacks safeguards Opponents of Sparrows Point terminal enlist former CIA official" SNIPPET: "Opponents of a liquefied natural gas terminal in eastern Baltimore County stepped up their attacks Tuesday, hosting an appearance by a former CIA officer who said the $400 million project lacks critical safeguards and raises the specter of terrorism and piracy." SNIPPET: ""AES wants to build this facility without putting in meaningful safeguards to stand up to terrorist threats," Faddis said. In his talk yesterday, Faddis raised the issue of piracy, tying recent incidents on the Indian Ocean to what could happen on...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________ For Immediate Release May 12, 2009 EXECUTIVE ORDER - - - - - - - CHESAPEAKE BAY PROTECTION AND RESTORATION By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America and in furtherance of the purposes of the Clean Water Act of 1972, as amended (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.), and other laws, and to protect and restore the health, heritage, natural resources, and social and economic value of the Nation's...

Government administrators in charge of an almost $6 billion cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing -- even issuing reports overstating their progress -- to preserve the flow of federal and state money to the project, former officials say. The cleanup, which had its 25th anniversary this month, seems doomed to miss its second official deadline for achieving major reductions in pollution by 2010. The goal of rescuing North America's largest estuary was formally entrusted in 1983 to a group of federal, state and local authorities under the loose guidance of the...

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...