Maryland’s environmental chief vowed to make immediate reforms at his agency as he faced sharp questions Jan. 18 from state lawmakers frustrated with its performance over the past year.

Members of the Senate’s Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee pressed Ben Grumbles for answers on the state’s shortage of drinking-water system inspectors; the lack of penalties handed down to chicken farms that run afoul of pollution controls; the agency’s failure last fall to warn of a sewage spill before more than two dozen people fell ill from eating contaminated oysters; and two separate instances in which major pollution violations went unnoticed until watchdog groups gathered evidence and reported their findings to the state.

Democratic Sen. Paul Pinsky, the committee’s chair, said the revelations suggest a pattern of disregard for the public’s wellbeing on par with the federal Food and Drug Administration’s oversight failures that contributed to the nationwide opioid epidemic.

“One of the issues that comes out consistently is it wasn’t an issue of the FDA controlling Big Pharma but Big Pharma controlling the FDA,” Pinsky said. In Maryland’s case, he said he wants to make sure that the Department of the Environment is “controlling the sector that they are supposed to protect rather than that sector controlling them.”

Grumbles pledged to push forward several changes, including hiring dozens of new staff members in the Water Supply Program and significantly increasing the number of inspections conducted at chicken farms this year.

The MDE secretary also took personal blame for the agency’s belated order in November to shut down shellfish harvesting in St. George Creek in St. Mary’s County after a sewage spill. The local water and sewer utility followed protocol by immediately reporting the overflow of more than 25,000 gallons of diluted but untreated sewage, officials say. But the MDE failed to formally act on the information for more than two weeks.

In the meantime, a St. Mary’s oyster farm had unwittingly harvested more than 7,000 oysters from its leased bottom in the creek and sold them. As a result, 27 people in Virginia reported getting sick after eating the raw oysters.

“I accept responsibility for a breakdown, the failure in communication,” Grumbles said. “Our enforcement people were aware of and noted the spill, the infrastructure leakage problem. It didn’t get properly communicated to the hard-working folks who run our Shellfish Sanitation Program.”

The agency has since taken steps to make sure that a similar mistake doesn’t happen again, he added.

A common refrain during the nearly two-hour hearing was that the agency’s enforcement divisions are understaffed and overworked.

A consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted an analysis of the MDE’s workload, finding that its drinking water inspectors conduct approximately 240 inspections per year, nearly four times as many as their peers typically do in other states. At the time of the analysis, there were 27 vacancies out of a staff of 71 full-time positions.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh contended that the lack of staff has contributed to another problem: a decline in the number of certified operators at the state’s 3,300 public drinking water suppliers. The analysis, conducted by the business consulting firm CADMUS, found that 72% of water systems had a certified operator in 2020, down from 84% in 2015.

The state was supposed to submit its response — which the EPA called a “resource investment plan” — in October. But Frosh said it has failed to do so, leaving the public in the dark about what measures the state agency intends to take. Grumbles later told the committee that the MDE has turned in “phase one” of the plan and is currently working on the second.

The situation is so dire that the state risks being ceding responsibility of its drinking water program to the federal government and losing the $21 million in federal contributions toward running the program, CADMUS warned.

“This is an embarrassment to the state,” Sen. Clarence Lam, a Howard County Democrat, said. “It’s like the department is barreling down the highway at full speed with four flat tires.”

Grumbles said that much of the decrease in staffing was caused by a “silver tsunami” of retirements during the COVID-19 lockdown period. The MDE has since brought the program’s staffing level up to 68 people, with the goal of reaching 102 in the coming months. CADMUS recommended 126.

A similar staffing shortage plagues the agency’s oversight of the Eastern Shore’s chicken industry, critics say. An Environmental Integrity Project report last year found that state inspectors are visiting fewer farms than they once did, falling from an average of 218 a year from 2013 through 2017 to 134 per year from 2018 through 2020, with that decrease predating the COVID-19 pandemic.

Grumbles promised to add two inspectors to the current staff of three and increase the number of inspections by 50%, drawing praise from the group that authored the report.

“This is good news for the Chesapeake Bay that MDE will be increasing its inspection staff and has pledged to significantly boost its inspections of the poultry industry,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. Schaeffer, the former director of civil enforcement at EPA, also testified during the hearing. “However, more needs to be done,” he added, “including more routine penalties for chronic violations of pollution control laws to protect waterways and public health.”

One of the ways that MDE will accomplish the increase in inspections will be to conduct “video inspections,” Grumbles said. Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Montgomery County Democrat, questioned whether such a system would work, saying that farmers could simply “show what they want to show” with their cameras. Grumbles responded that MDE staff would direct farmers in real time on what to shoot.

Senators also sought explanations for why environmental groups — and not MDE inspectors — brought to light recent pollution violations at a pair of Baltimore sewage treatment plants and at a chicken-rendering facility in Dorchester County. “We have enough humility to recognize that we’re not the only eyes and ears in the field,” Grumbles told the committee.

But his detailed defense of his agency’s recent actions rang hollow with at least one lawmaker.

“At the end of the day when we pass laws, it’s the law-enforcement entity whose responsibility it is to enforce those laws,” said Sen. Mary Washington, a Baltimore City Democrat. “We continue to hear these statements that seem to suggest that you have intention, that you’re making best efforts and maybe you accept responsibility. But it’s only after getting caught.”

by Jeremy Cox

Since COVID-19 hit the Mid-Shore in March of 2020, The Spy has been turning to Dr. William Huffner, the chief medical officer of UM Shore Regional Health, to provide the Mid-Shore with the most current status of the pandemic and its impact on our local health system. Charged with coordinating the region’s response to the health crisis, Dr. Huffner and his team have now experienced three major surges of the virus, with the current and highly contagious omicron variance now placing a severe strain on the Shore’s health centers and emergency rooms.

In our latest conversation, Dr. Huffner talks candidly about the impact of the omicron surge, its effect on the Shore’s limited resources to manage the disease, and how Governor Larry Hogan’s recent State of Emergency executive order is helping with that challenge. We also talk about the availability and use of monoclonal antibody treatments and his assessment of health worker morale.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length. For more information about UM Shore Regional Health and COVID please go here.

The Dorchester Star reported this afternoon that Cambridge Mayor Andrew Bradshaw, who was on a unpaid leave of absence since mid-December, has resigned effective immediately. Bradshaw is currently facing 50 counts of distributing revenge porn.

Read the full story here (a paywall might be in effect).

Libby Anderson Cater Halaby, who served as First Lady of Washington College during President Douglass Cater’s tenure  from 1982 to 1990, passed away last night in San Rafael, CA, at the age of 96 years old.

Campaigning for Obama at the Chestertown Farmers’ Market

A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Libby Anderson started her remarkable public service career early as the first female SGA President at The University of Alabama. After marrying Cater in 1950, the couple would make Washington, D.C. home for the next three decades, where she became a staff member for Congressman Laurie C. Battle, raised her family of four children, and eventually joined the Johnson Administration as special assistant to Lady Bird Johnson. In the 1970s, she served in a similar capacity at the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aspen Institute, and President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Women.

When her husband became president of Washington College in 1982, she became his primary partner in significantly raising the school’s profile nationally as the couple hosted the Who’s Who of American politics and culture in Chestertown with such novel events like their annual Celebration on the Chesapeake weekend.

Libby Cater, Washington College First Lady

As the college’s first lady, she became one of the key fundraisers for the school’s $41 million capital campaign, which lead to dramatic improvements of the college’s campus and financial equilibrium. The college awarded her an honorary degree for Public Service in 1990.

After Douglass Cater’s death in 1995, she married Najeeb Halaby, the celebrated aviator and the father of Queen Noor of Jordan in 1997. During that time, she joined the Board of Visitors and Governors of Washington College, as well as served on the the board of Maryland Public Television. She was also an advisor to the Spy Newspapers.

The Spy will have more to say about Libby and her remarkable contributions to the Mid-Shore of Maryland over the next few days.

Easton’s Mayor Robert Willey today appointed Captain Gregory S. Wright as Interim Chief, replacing Chief David Spencer. Wright currently serves as Deputy Chief of Police, a position he’s held since 2019. Spencer, who announced his retirement in October of this year, will remain in the post until January 4, 2022.

Interim Chief Gregory S. Wright

Interim Chief Wright has been a member of the Easton Police Department for 34 years, holding various positions including Patrol Officer, Bicycle Officer, Evidence Collection Technician, Community Outreach Officer, Public Information Officer, and a Commander of the Patrol Division and Special Operations. In 1990, Wright created and co-organized the department’s 1st Annual Toy Drive, a program that continues to this day with great success. He’s also a talented artist responsible for designing police patches for Easton, Talbot County Sheriff’s Office, and the former Trappe Police Department.

Wright graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Police Staff and Command and the FBI National Academy. Both programs are intended for upper management and command leadership, skills he’s been able to put to good use. During his time at the police force, he was the first officer trained and assigned to the department’s Evidence Collection Unit. This unit was created to process all major crime scenes within Easton without relying on the assistance of larger departments. 

Wright also became the first Supervisor assigned to oversee the department’s newest initiative to combat street crimes while fostering a greater community relationship with Easton’s citizens. Known as both the Community Oriented Policing Patrol and later Community Outreach, this group began with three bicycle officers, growing to five bicycle officers and three foot patrol officers. During this tenure, HotSpot and CSafe grants were received to improve quality of life concerns in targeted neighborhoods. Easton was considered a “modeled program” by the State of Maryland, and the efforts put forth by these officers created positive changes that remain today. 

“Just as I was honored and grateful to accept Chief Spencer’s appointment as his Deputy Chief,” said Wright, “I am just as proud and humbled to accept Mayor Willey’s request to be Interim Chief of Police. I have always been a proud member of this police department and have always seen the expectations of this police department and community when working together. When the time comes for me to hand over the police department to its newest Chief of Police, that person will inherit an agency full of dedicated professionals eager to serve.”

In appointing Wright, Mayor Willey said, “Captain Wright’s duties will include personnel issues, daily operations, and emergency issues. Please join me in congratulating Captain Wright and assisting him during this time of transition.”