Baltimore County officials on Tuesday showed off how they've been spending money from the so-called "rain tax" — reviving a street-sweeping program that they say is keeping dirt and debris out of the county's waterways.

Since May, the county has collected 562 tons of debris with the street-sweeping trucks, resulting in a pollution reduction that officials said equates to 843 pounds of nitrogen, 337 pounds of phosphorus and 168 tons of suspended solids — tiny particles of dirt that cloud the water. Nitrogen and phosphorus are nutrients that spur the growth of algae blooms that suck oxygen from the water.

"This program would not have happened without implementation of the stormwater fee," County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said before hopping behind the wheel of a public works street-sweeping truck for a demonstration at Wilson Point Park in Middle River.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the county had a robust street-sweeping program, but it petered out over the years. The county was only sweeping...

About 62,000 gallons of sewage spilled into a tributary of White Marsh Run on Tuesday night, Baltimore County public works officials said.

The spill near Berryfield Drive in Perry Hall was discovered by a resident at about 9 p.m. The spill was stopped at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday and repairs were finished at 9:30 a.m., officials said.

The sewage spilled into a ditch that feeds into a tributary of White Marsh Run, which in turn flows into the Bird and Gunpowder rivers.

Health officials are monitoring water quality in the tributary.

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Maryland Natural Resources Police are looking for a person they said shot and killed a bald eagle in Pasadena last month, the state agency said on Friday.

The bird was found in Rock Creek on Sept. 21 and an X-ray showed two pellets embedded in the 5-year-old eagle's body.

Bald eagles are no longer under protection of the Endangered Species Act but it is illegal to shoot one without a permit from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

A conviction carries a maximum fine of $5,000 and up to one year in prison.

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The second raw sewage leak announced in as many weeks poured 36,000 gallons of untreated wastewater into a Baltimore stream Thursday, the city's Department of Public Works said.

The overflow ran into Maidens Choice Run, a tributary of the Gwynns Falls near the 800 block of Unetta Ave., the department said. The leak, attributed to this week's heavy rain, was confirmed at about 2 p.m. and took three hours to stop.

Last week, the department announced it took eight days to repair a broken sewer pipe that dribbled 17,553 gallons of wastewater into the Gwynns Falls in West Baltimore last month.

The department did not say why the pollution took so long to stop or why it did not disclose the leak to the public until two weeks after the leak was fixed.

In both occasions, the department said it filed sewage overflow notices with the state Department of the Environment and the city Health Department as required.

Signs are permanently posted along stream banks of the Gwynns Falls, and the public...

The Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant will face increased regulatory oversight after an August finding that a miscalculation on the operators' part could have led to an unnecessary emergency response to an insignificant radiation leak.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday released the final results of its Aug. 8 inspection of the twin-reactor facility in Lusby, 70 miles south of Baltimore, which reported that Exelon Generation Co. had made a mistake of "low to moderate" safety significance.

Radiation detectors replaced a year ago on the main steam lines for the plant's Unit 2 were set to trigger an alarm at a radiation level 100 times lower than would be deemed a safety threat, the NRC said. Plant operators discovered and corrected the error four months later, but the NRC said it was concerned the mistake may have prompted an overreaction to low readings, leading to an unwarranted emergency response.

In a formal response last month to the inspection's findings, Excelon...

Federal regulators announced Thursday that the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant may continue to keep its spent fuel at the southern Maryland plant for another 40 years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed permission for the plant's owner, Exelon Generation, to provide long-term storage on-site for its used fuel roads in concrete and steel casks.

After powering a reactor for several years, highly radioactive spent fuel rods are initially kept submerged in a water-filled pool, then transferred to "dry casks" outside with walls thick enough to contain the radiation.

The twin-reactor facility at Lusby is the fifth nationwide to get its license renewed for such "dry cask" storage. At one time, the spent fuel rods from all nation's nuclear plants were supposed to be shipped to a single long-term repository in Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But controversy over the project stalled it for 20 years until President Obama ordered it canceled.

Calvert Cliffs' initial 20-year storage license...