Lexus, at 4.8 percent, was the only automaker with a failure rate under 5 percent. Subaru and Honda followed closely, with 5 percent and 5.1 percent failure rates, respectively.

Even more impressive, Japan produced  the nine car models with the lowest failure rates on the On Board Diagnostic (O) Test, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of all emissions tests in Maryland.

But a Japanese automaker also ended up on the bottom on the heap. If you drive an Isuzu – a Japanese vehicle manufacturer that produced automobiles with General Motors — and had your vehicle emissions-tested in Maryland in 2010 or 2011, you had a nearly one-in-five chance of failing.

Vehicles branded by Plymouth, 15.6 percent, and Mitsubishi, 15.2 percent, had the second- and third-highest failure rates over this period.

State law requires vehicles to be tested before registration and every two years.

Motor vehicles account for one third of all carbon dioxide emissions in Maryland, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment. And excess carbon monoxide or hydrocarbon emissions can cause lasting environmental damage.

“The goal behind the Vehicle Inspection Program is to make sure that vehicles are running the way they’re supposed to,” said Tad Aburn, director of MDE’s air and radiation management administration, which oversees the program. “I personally believe it’s worked extremely well.”

About 90 percent of days are considered “good” or “moderate” air quality days in Maryland, according to the agency’s 2012 Clean Air Progress in Maryland report, representing a steady increase in the last 10 years.
“In Maryland, we have some fairly complicated air-pollution issues. We’ve made tremendous progress over the last 20 years in reducing emissions,” Aburn said.

Vehicles can fail the test if they exceed standards for hydrocarbon or carbon monoxide, according to a guide produced by Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Administration, which jointly administers the program.

Other reasons for failure include: leaks in the exhaust system, improper engine adjustments, a faulty malfunction indicator light on the dashboard, malfunctioning or missing emissions control equipment or an improperly-fitting gas cap.

Two Toyota vehicles — the energy-efficient Prius (.3 percent failure rate) and the Yaris (.4 percent failure rate) had the lowest failure rates of any model tested at least 5,000 times. Just 14 of 5,455 Prius vehicles failed the emissions test.
The next-best model performance was turned in by the Lexus ES 350, with a .8 percent failure rate.

Overall, 92 percent of vehicles passed the O Test. The other test, the Idle Tailpipe (B) Test, is administered to older passenger vehicles (model year 1977-1995) and the heaviest vehicles.

Maryland’s General Assembly toughened emissions standards in 2007, though the change only applies to model year 2011 cars and later.

“Maryland is doing a really good job in reducing its emissions,” said Hakob Avetisyan, a civil and environmental engineering doctoral student at the University of Maryland who studies vehicle emissions.

The Ford Windstar was the worst-performing model on the O Test, with a failure rate just under 25 percent. The Cadillac Deville (19.9 percent failure rate) and Nissan Maxima (18.9 percent failure rate) also performed poorly relative to other models tested at least 5,000 times over the two-year period.

Many Chevrolet models did not fare well on the B Test, as the American manufacturer produced the five vehicles with the highest failure rates among models tested at least 1,000 times. Chevy’s Astro, G20 and G30 vans all failed at a clip of over 30 percent.

It was a different story for Chevrolet’s Silverado pickup truck, though, which had the lowest failure rate of any model   — 3 percent.

When all models are included, Volkswagen (21.8 percent), GMC (18.2 percent) and Isuzu (17.4 percent) all had higher failure rates than Chevrolet on the B Test. Hummer was the surprising winner, with just a 5.1 percent failure rate, owing largely to the success of its H2 model.

“Government officials must ensure that emissions programs are both reasonable and cost effective, and produce the desired emission reductions,” said Ragina C. Averella, a spokeswoman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which advocates for motorists. “State programs should be subjected to comprehensive and periodic review to ensure accuracy of the data collection and the EPA’s computer modeling system.”

Vehicle age matters, the data shows. The failure rate decreased steadily with each model year, starting at around 20 percent for cars made in 1996 . Just .2 percent of cars made in 2010 failed the test.

“It’s all about the technology,” Avetisyan, of the University of Maryland, said. “New technology emits less. They use less energy or they use cleaner types of fuel, like hybrids or electric vehicles.”

Aburn agreed. “The general rule of thumb is that older vehicles aren’t as clean as newer vehicles,” he said, adding that the testing system is set up to acknowledge this difference by creating separate standards.

Failing vehicles can be retested once for free; after  that, owners must fork over another $14 for the test. Vehicles must be retested until they pass or receive a repair waiver, which requires proof that the car underwent at least $450 in emissions-related repair work.

But, Aburn said, the test has become far less of a hassle than it used to be, even as standards remain high.
“We have continued to evolve the program to simplify it and to make it more streamlined,” he said. “We’re the best.”

“I felt a bit isolated. That’s coming from me, and I was fairly popular. I was an athlete,” said Williams, 43, now a social studies teacher at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda.

He is among the 3.7 percent of black, male teachers in Maryland Public Schools teaching a student body that is nearly 18 percent black and male.

Mike Williams explains a homework assignment to Brianna McKinney, a junior at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, during an AP World History class.
(Capital News Service Photo by Yagana Shah)

The state continues to recruit a teaching corps to try to accurately reflect its student population because experts say it’s good for students to be taught by a diverse faculty. Maryland has managed to boost Asian and Hispanic representation in its teaching corps over the past decade, but still has seen a fall in the representation of black teachers.

“There’s been a conscious effort. We want our teaching population to reflect our student population. Now that’s a very lofty goal,” said Jeff Martinez, director of staffing at Montgomery County Public Schools.

The percentage of black teachers in Maryland Public Schools has dropped more than 4.5 points to 16.57 percent over the past decade, while the percentage of Asian and Hispanic teachers has grown relatively sharply along with their respective student populations, according to a Capital News Service analysis.

The percentage of Asian students has grown 1.1 percentage points, from 4.85 percent in 2003. The percentage of Hispanic students has grown even more sharply — more than doubling from 6.39 percent in 2003 to 12.86 percent for the current school year. (The Maryland State Department of Education added Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and two or more races as self-reporting categories in 2010, which may contribute to a small degree of variation.)

Diversity in the teaching corps is critical in many ways, education experts say.

“When we look at this particular issue, not only in the state of Maryland but across the country, one of the things we have to understand is that the picture for students of who is in front of the classroom sends a very important message about what they can be when they grow up,” said Chance Lewis, professor of urban education at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who has authored several books on diversity in education.

That message is one that Williams said he received growing up and stayed with him until he got to college.

“It was going to Howard University and seeing others like me…other black males, despite what you saw in the media, despite all the negative images, I saw how brilliant and sharp black men were,” Williams said.

Those examples of outstanding black men at Howard University instilled extra motivation in him to achieve.

The diversity of teachers, or lack thereof, sends a strong message to students as it did to Williams.

“When you look at African-American teachers, African-American students along with students from other racial groups see low or no representation and so the perceived ability for African-American students to become a teacher doesn’t become real,” Lewis said.

That’s why Williams originally wanted to work for Prince George’s County Schools when he entered teaching in 2002. Black students are 66.1 percent of the population in Prince George’s County Schools, and Williams saw this as an opportunity to serve as a positive role model for them.

He ended up landing a job with Montgomery County Schools but quickly came to realize that it’s not only important for black students to see teachers that look like him.

“It’s just as important for white, Asian and Latino students to see me as an African-American, male teacher,” Williams said. “Diversity across the board is essential because what we’re trying to do is dispel myths that help us to equalize and treat people as people first, as opposed to stereotypes.”

Montgomery County is one of the more diverse districts in the state, with more than 25 percent of its students identifying as Hispanic and nearly 15 percent identifying as Asian.

Its teaching corps has grown from 3.4 and 3.6 percent Asian and Hispanic teachers, respectively, to 5.3 percent of each in the past decade, mirroring the same upward trend as the state. The Asian student population has stayed relatively steady over the past decade but the percentage of Hispanic students has grown almost 8 percentage points, up to 26.6 percent since 2003.

“We’ve gone from a suburban sort of school district to a very dramatic urban school district…part of what we want kids to do is see they have opportunities and that those opportunities are represented in front of them with the people that are teaching them,” Martinez said.

The percentage of Asian teachers statewide has more than doubled to 3.29 percent through an addition of more than 1,150 teachers in the last decade. The percentage of Hispanic teachers statewide has also grown nearly a point, up to 2.24 percent, an addition of nearly 550 teachers.

Montgomery County Schools have made considerable efforts in attracting diverse candidates in recent years, Martinez said.

The district has stepped up recruiting efforts at Maryland’s many historically black colleges and universities and offers career paths for support staff who want to transition into teaching. Many support roles are filled by minorities, which helps explain the upward trend, Martinez said.

“We’ve been diversifying pretty consistently. It’s not where we want it to be yet, but we’re always making an effort,” he said.

There are still challenges when it comes to minority growth, educators and districts say.

Prince George’s County Schools have seen growth in the percentage of both Asian and Hispanic teachers since 2003, but school officials say they have to balance that with maintaining the highest number of black teachers in the state.

“We’re trying to keep our pace with African Americans and we have to work at it. We target all diversity,” said Robert Gaskin, director of human resource operations.

Gaskin said compensation is a key challenge in remaining competitive as a district, when districts across the region are often vying for diverse candidates from the same pool.

“African Americans and Latinos are gaining greater access to undergraduate education and a lot of them are tasked with the decision of ‘Do I get a teaching job that has low pay and prestige or this other job with a higher pay?’” Williams said. “There are quality candidates out there who are choosing not to be teachers and that’s across the board.”

Lewis said he believes the problem extends beyond just the lack of appeal for the profession, and points to inadequate recruiting efforts at the college and professional level.

“Recruitment in education is very minimal when you think about other fields. Other fields, when they see candidates they want, they go after them and do what they’ve got to do to get them,” Lewis said. “One thing I propose is that colleges that train teachers should use the same sort of athletic model they use when they are recruiting African-American students for sports.”

Thurman Bridges, associate professor of teacher education at Morgan State University, an HBCU, thinks community engagement and culturally responsive teaching are the way to beat racial hurdles.

Universities and districts need to target their efforts at finding these candidates, from recruiting at fraternities, communities and even at high schools.

Diversifying classrooms won’t happen overnight, but that doesn’t mean students of all races can’t connect with their teachers, Bridges said. 76.4 percent of Maryland public school teachers are white, but 58.2 percent of students are not.

“The need for a more diverse teaching population lies in the need for teachers to understand the lives and experiences of students they teach, in deep and meaningful ways…it transcends race, class and gender. But from my perspective, all teachers need to engage in this to help our students.”

Keeping this in mind, Martinez stresses that the search isn’t solely for diverse candidates.

“We’re hiring for excellence and equity. We’re looking for outstanding candidates,” Martinez said, “but we’re also looking for minority candidates in that group. We want the best of the best across the board.”

“Lucky,” is the word she used to describe her circumstances on the cusp of a paid three-month maternity leave, which she hopes will be followed by a nanny-share program she’ll arrange with a neighbor. The parents plan to share the cost of a single, child caretaker during the workday.

“I feel very fortunate that I can make that decision, that I can choose from different child- care options,” said Salsbury, a board member at the Women’s Law Center of Maryland.

Salsbury’s luxury of choice aligns with the experience of some pregnant women navigating the workplace in Maryland, but the experience for others, like Shayvon Omosanya, 24, could hardly be described as luxury, or even choice.

In an effort to correct that imbalance, Omosanya testified in a March hearing that led to Maryland’s passage of a pregnant worker protections act. The bill ensures that pregnant women cannot be forced out of their jobs or denied reasonable accommodations in the workplace.

Shayvon Omosanya feeds her new baby. She told the Maryland General Assembly that she was fired from her job and lost her home after she told her employer she was pregnant and barred from lifting heavy objects. (Capital News Service photo by Kayla Faria)

Maryland — where, according to Department of Labor data, 78 percent of women in the childbearing age range of 20-44 are in the workforce — is one of at least eight states to pass pregnant worker protections.

Nationally, the number of pregnancy discrimination charges in the workplace has increased by 35 percent over the past decade, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Omosanya, as a woman within that demographic, had a personal stake in the cause.

Shortly after she became pregnant with her second child, the young mother learned that she had an incompetent cervix, a medical condition that prevented her from lifting anything more than 20 pounds.

She loved her job at Spa Creek Center, a Genesis HealthCare rehabilitation and nursing home in Annapolis where she had been working for eleven months. But lifting food trays and pushing heavy carts would put her and her baby at risk, so she asked to be moved to another department or work in the café making soups and salads.

Omosanya submitted a note from her doctor about her medical circumstances and was called to the human resources department soon after. There she was told that the home could not accommodate her requests and her employment would be terminated.

“Not only did I lose my job, I lost my home, I lost my income, I couldn’t take care of my children,” said Omosanya.

Today, she lives with her family in a transitional homeless shelter in Annapolis.

“I felt that they made me choose between being able to provide for me and my 5-year-old or risking the safety of my unborn child. It was just really unfair to me, and it broke my heart,” she said.

Omosanya gave birth in April and plans to look for a new job as soon as she recovers. For Omosanya, it is a relief to know that once the bill takes effect on Oct.1 she will not face the same outcome if she becomes pregnant again.

Salsbury, the expectant lawyer, is one of the 75 percent of Maryland women between the ages of 16 and 54 who are in the labor force, meaning they are working or looking for work, according to 2012 data from the Maryland Department of Labor. By comparison, 82 percent of men in that age range are in Maryland’s labor force.

Nationally, the effects of these numbers can be seen in the outpouring of feminist voices on what it means to be both a professional woman and modern mother.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department, are just two of the many high-profile women to recently weigh in on the rewards and challenges for ambitious females in the workplace.

Sandberg’s book, “Lean In,” argues that women ought to dedicate more energy to professional success, while Slaughter’s 2012 Atlantic article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” suggests that professional success often comes at the cost of a satisfying motherhood. Both pieces have reinvigorated the ongoing feminist debate as women gain more powerful business roles.

But for many women, climbing to the top of an executive ladder is not what defines their work-life struggles when they become pregnant.

“We are working on federal legislation for reasonable accommodations for pregnant women in the workplace, particularly for women in blue-collar jobs where they may need some reasonable alterations to their job to continue working,” Sarah Crawford, director of workplace fairness at the National Partnership for Women and Families. Her organization is working to expand those efforts nationally.

Pregnancy protection alone would not mean an end to other struggles for working mothers, Crawford said. Wage gaps and restrictions on family and medical leave offer other challenges.

A paid three-month maternity leave like the one Salsbury receives from her private law firm is rare in the U.S.

“We are really the only First World country that does not have a policy requiring paid leave for new parents,” Crawford said. “There are 178 countries that guarantee paid leave for new mothers.”

As in the experiences of Salsbury and Omosanya, challenges facing working women may be shaped by circumstance. Salsbury, for example, recognizes that implementation of the pregnant workers fairness bill in Maryland will have little effect on her work life as a lawyer.

Some challenges, however, may be universal for working women who are considering having a child.

“I do think, just generally, women think more about family planning aspects than men do,” Salsbury said. “I know my husband didn’t think about it the way I did. For a woman, it’s definitely something you sort of have to plan for and think about the consequences of your decision.”

“The college tuition mountain is certainly something we want to make sure we can handle, and retirement is getting closer and closer,” said Ivey, 52, who has two adult children, two children in high school and a middle-school-age child with his wife, Prince George’s County Delegate Jolene Ivey.

Ivey is enjoying a “six-figure increase in compensation,” compared to his state’s attorney pay, in his new position at Leftwich & Ludaway, a boutique, predominantly African-American firm, he said. The state’s attorney makes about $150,000.

Ivey’s path is a typical one for a lawyer-politician. Corporate law firms provide a safe, well-compensated landing pad for many outgoing Maryland politicians looking for a new gig.

Ivey has shifted between public service and private practice for most of his career. After working for the Justice Department, on Capitol Hill as counsel for the Senate Whitewater Committee and former Sen. Tom Daschle, and as chairman of the Maryland Public Service Commission for two years, Ivey joined what is now K&L Gates in 2000. He left the Washington law firm when elected state’s attorney in 2002. Ivey served for eight years, leaving office in 2010, and worked at another firm, Venable, before landing at Leftwich & Ludaway.

“This is the first time I’ve really kind of hit the point where I’m not going to go back into running for office or working full-time in a government position,” Ivey said in a conference room on Washington’s high-powered K Street corridor. “At this point, it makes more sense for me and my family to stay in the private sector.”

When former U.S. Sen. Joseph Tydings lost his bid for re-election in 1970, after serving just one term, he started practicing law again and hasn’t looked back.

“Being a lawyer, you knew that if you were defeated, you could go out and take care of your family,” said Tydings, 84, who served as a U.S. attorney in Maryland before running for Congress. “In my case, my first year in the practice of law after I left the Senate I made almost as twice as much as my Senate salary.”

Tydings, who comes from a long line of lawyers, has worked on counseling and government representation issues for Dickstein Shapiro, a downtown Washington firm, since 1996.

He has more time to do pro bono work and lobby for causes he cares about, like the Chesapeake Bay, as a senior counselor, he said.

Tydings isn’t the only former Maryland politician at Dickstein Shapiro. He’s joined by former Rep. Al Wynn, who signed on in 2008 after losing his bid for a ninth term representing the Fourth District. Wynn could not be reached for comment.

Public officials are extremely valuable assets to law firms, which prize them for their understanding of government processes and access to decision-makers.

That’s one of the reasons why King & Spalding, an Atlanta-based firm, hired former Maryland Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich after he lost his bid to retake the governor’s mansion in Annapolis in 2010.

“He knows a lot of people,” said Michael Cain, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “He can pick up the phone and someone will answer at the other end.”

Ehrlich, in his role as senior counsel in the firm’s government advocacy and public policy practice group, spends most of his time pitching to potential clients, giving speeches and explaining how Congress works.

The former governor knows what he’s talking about. Ehrlich served four terms in the House of Representatives before becoming governor in 2002. He also served in Maryland’s House of Delegates for eight years.

“Bob Ehrlich brings to King & Spalding incomparable insight and connections at the busy intersection of business and politics,” said Wick Sollers, the office’s managing partner in a March 2011 press release announcing the hiring.

Ehrlich spends one day writing each week — he’s penning his second book, a follow-up to “Turn This Car Around: The Roadmap to Restoring America,” in addition to a weekly column for The Baltimore Sun — and is also a familiar face on cable television, where he often rails against the Obama administration.

“I think there’s a real cultural battle going on with regard to American values,” Ehrlich, 55, said by phone, adding that Obama has the “wrong values, wrong policies.”

Asked whether his meshing of politics and legal work is problematic, Ehrlich said it’s just the opposite.

“The firm encourages it,” he said. “(It) has a deep, rich tradition of politicians. I love the firm. It’s been wonderful.”

Ehrlich has been able to create a “mini version” of his political team at King & Spalding, bringing along his former communications director, Greg Massoni.

While Ivey enjoys working at Leftwich & Ludaway, he misses the good will that comes with being a public servant.

“I loved that being my job — to get up in the morning and try to help folks out who were having trouble,” Ivey said. “Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot to make a really big difference in peoples’ lives.”

To that end, Ivey launched an abortive campaign to take on Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Fort Washington, in November 2011. He dropped out of the race after just two months, citing fundraising difficulties.

Ehrlich, on the other hand, seems resigned to the fact that the state he once ran no longer aligns with his political ideology, making a future run improbable.

“The direction of Maryland is really clear,” he said. “It’s not the direction I wanted. There is little I could do about it.”

“When you add that (commute) on to an eight-, nine-hour day, you’re 14 hours away from home,” Weaver said.

Because she needed her car for work, Weaver had no choice but to drive each day. She tried to change her schedule to avoid peak travel times, but eventually quit her job after about a year to work closer to home. Now Weaver helps link Frederick drivers with others who share similar commutes and helps residents plan routes that reduce the amount of time behind the wheel.

Interstate 270 is typical of the 65 percent of Maryland interstate highways that are congested, according to a study compiled by the Maryland chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Major improvements to ease traffic congestion on the highway are years from completion or have been put on hold.  Decreased revenue projections and the state’s use of transportation funds for other purposes have delayed the more expensive options and forced planners to devise cheaper alternatives.

“We’ve fallen way behind on our infrastructure plans,” said Richard Parsons, board member of the Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance.

The Maryland chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state’s roads and transitways a C- rating in its 2011 report on the state’s infrastructure that came out in March. A key factor in the rating was inadequate funding for planned projects.

“It is critical that funding for capital improvement projects be increased,” the study concluded. “Failure to do so will continue to result in costly roadway repairs and reconstruction and increase time delays for Maryland residents.”

Maryland is doing better than the country on average, which received Ds for roads and transit in the same ASCE report.

The Maryland State Highway Administration and the Maryland Transit Administration have been working since the mid-1990s on developing a combination of road and transit improvements to Interstate 270 to improve traffic flow. When the first public hearings were held in 1997, average daily traffic on the interstate south of Interstate 70 was 83,750 vehicles. In 2012, average daily traffic in the same area was 103,960 vehicles, a nearly 25 percent increase.

The Maryland Transit Administration and the Maryland State Highway Administration conducted a multi-modal study on the 30-mile highway that presented five different options to add lanes. Expanding the highway was put on hold in 2011 in favor of transit options after the study estimated the cost at up to $5 billion.

The Corridor Cities Transitway, a rapid-bus system, began as a branch of the multi-modal study and became an independent project when highway lane expansion was abandoned. The first phase of the project will stretch from the Shady Grove Metro Station to the MARC Metropolitan Grove Station with nine stations in between.

The rapid bus transit system could ease traffic congestion on the lower portion of I-270 since buses will have designated lanes and would only interact with traffic at intersections.

“Regardless of how congested the roads become, the transitway will be able to maintain its travel speeds,” said Rick J. Kiegel, project manager for the Corridor Cities Transitway.

Relief for travelers, however, is years away. The first phase of the project, which would link the MARC Metropolitan Grove Station with the Shady Grove Metro Station, is expected to be completed by 2020. The completed transitway will stretch to the COMSAT Laboratories in Germantown, but there is no set timeline for this second phase. The plan is to wait for that area to increase in density, Kiegal said.

But even a completed transitway will make little dent in the problem, Kiegel said. “The reality is that I-270 carries such a large volume of traffic that one transit system is not going to have a significant impact.”

The Maryland State Highway Administration has focused on improving segments of Interstate 270. A project to construct a new interchange at the Watkins Mill Road Extended would provide access from I-270 to the MARC Metropolitan Grove Road Station. Partial engineering is still underway, with the right-of-way construction to begin later this fiscal year.

With the passage of the Transportation Infrastructure Investment Act in Maryland, Parsons is more optimistic that some of the state’s stalled transportation projects will resume.

“I’m feeling optimistic for the first time in a long time,” Parsons said.

The bill passed by the General Assembly in March would increase the gas tax by up to 5 percent by 2016. The legislation would bring an estimated $4.4 billion to the Maryland Department of Transportation. The gas tax has not been increased since 1992.

A pilot program is underway for “bus-on-shoulder” lanes along Interstate 270. The Maryland State Highway Administration is studying how to create shoulder lanes that can withstand bus traffic. Buses would use the shoulder lanes when highway traffic slows to a particular speed. A similar project is underway in Virginia to improve shoulders for buses on Interstate 66 inside the Beltway that could be completed as soon as next year.

While Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance Chairman Doug Duncan said that “bus-on-shoulder” lanes are a good idea in the short term, the highway needs transit with a dedicated lane. “Long term I think you need to look towards separate bus lanes,” Duncan said.

Weaver had what she considers the best solution: move closer to work. Although she now lives 15 miles from her workplace, Weaver has put her house up for sale, and hopes to find a home even closer to work so that she can start commuting by bike. “I’m finding that it is just so much better of a lifestyle.”

ANNAPOLIS – Republican Sen. Richard Colburn of Dorchester voted against Maryland’s recently passed gas tax increase, but now hopes some of the new money will go to replacing the Dover Bridge in his district.

The new taxes, initially expected to raise prices at the pump by 4 cents a gallon this July, might help to expand funding for the rehabilitation and replacement of Maryland’s deteriorating bridges.

As of April, 87 of the 2,572 Maryland State Highway Administration maintained bridges were structurally deficient, which doesn’t mean they are unsafe, but that they have areas that need to be repaired or replaced, according to data from the State Highway Administration.

Another 373 bridges maintained by the State Highway Administration are functionally obsolete, which means they have lanes that are too narrow or are otherwise not built to current standards, according to the 2012 National Bridge Inventory Database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.

“It’s a major public safety concern,” Colburn said of the Dover Bridge, which is considered functionally obsolete because of its narrow lanes.

In 2011, 39 states had a higher percentage of deficient bridges than Maryland, according to a report by the Transportation for America Coalition, an organization dedicated to transportation reform. Pennsylvania had the highest percentage of deficient bridges.

Maintenance and replacement of the State Highway Administration’s bridges is mainly funded by the federal government, but Maryland’s Transportation Trust Fund takes on about 20 percent of the cost, said David Buck, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Transportation.

The Transportation Trust Fund is used to pay for transportation infrastructure projects and maintenance. About one-fifth of the fund’s revenue comes from the gas tax. The rest comes from sources such as vehicle titling and registration fees.

Before the new gas tax, known as the Transportation Infrastructure Investment Act of 2013, passed, the fund was projected to run out of money by 2018. The increased gas tax is expected to yield more than $116 million in additional revenue in its first year, which should help fund projects such as mass transit and road maintenance.

There are approximately 60 major bridge rehabilitation or replacement projects underway on state maintained roads, Buck said.

Bridges are considered structurally deficient once the superstructure, substructure or deck receives a rating below five on a scale of 0 to 10, Buck said.

The deck is the roadway. The superstructure supports the deck and the substructure reaches the ground, supporting the superstructure.

Of the 2,572 state-maintained bridges, 567 had a deck, superstructure or substructure value just one level above structurally deficient, according to the 2012 National Bridge Inventory Database. The State Highway Administration is not responsible for the other half of Maryland’s more than 5,000 bridges.

The Dover Bridge, an 80-year-old mechanical swing bridge over the Choptank River bordering Talbot and Caroline counties, received a rating of five for its deck, which means the primary structural elements are sound, but the bridge may have section loss, cracking, spalling or scour, according to the Recording and Coding Guide for the Structure Inventory and Appraisal of the Nation’s Bridges.

The superstructure received a satisfactory rating of six, as did the substructure, according to the database.

Buck said a rating of five may mean there are cracks or potholes, but because each bridge is different it’s hard to come up with a standard explanation for what goes wrong.

Colburn said it would cost about $45 million to replace the bridge, which swings horizontally into the channel to allow boats passage.

Buck said the State Highway Administration is fully aware Eastern Shore legislators would like to see the Dover Bridge replaced, but the money is not available now.

Although the bridge is functionally obsolete, “it isn’t a top priority from a structural perspective,” Buck said.

But Colburn and others worry that ambulances on the way to the hospital in Easton might be delayed in emergencies because the Dover Bridge’s antiquated drawspan sometimes gets stuck.

He’s also concerned because the lanes are only 11 feet wide and it is not uncommon for two trucks to pass each other and clip off each other’s mirrors.

Ken Decker, the Caroline County administrator, agrees the Dover Bridge is too narrow.

“If two tractor trailers pass on the bridge, you’re going to have to butter the fenders to get by,” Decker said.

Decker said engineering for a new bridge has been underway for about two years, but “there’s a big jump from engineering to construction funding.”

He thinks it’s too soon to tell whether the increased gas tax will help fund projects like the Dover Bridge, but ideally construction would begin soon after engineering is completed.

The 87 deficient bridges maintained by the State Highway Administration are all in the process of being replaced or repaired, Buck said. Thirty-two are under construction or soon to be under construction, and the rest are in design, Buck said.

Money from the gas tax funneled through the Transportation Trust Fund helps pay for projects like the Crosstown Bridge in Cumberland, which is currently under construction, Buck said.

The Crosstown Bridge in Cumberland, a long bridge elevated overtop neighborhoods and businesses, will cost $17.3 million to clean, repair and paint, in conjunction with another bridge project on Maryland 51 over the CSX Railroad and Canal Parkway.

The bridge needs a complete remodeling, said Sen. George Edwards, R-Allegany.

The bridge’s deck, superstructure and substructure all received satisfactory ratings of five, according to the 2012 National Bridge Inventory Database.

Although the majority of bridges worked on are structurally deficient, non-deficient bridges are also worked on for reasons such as widening to accommodate traffic, or to extend the bridge’s longevity, Buck said.

One example is a $3.2 million cleaning and painting project currently underway for two bridges on I-695 over the Patapsco River and over Hammonds Ferry Road in Anne Arundel County.

Buck said scraping the existing paint down to bare metal and putting on three coats of new paint helps to keep the beams in good health for 20 to 30 years.

“We clean and paint bridges all the time, not because they are structurally deficient, but because our engineers have determined that it increases the lifespan of the bridge,” Buck said.

Twenty bridges were fixed or replaced by the State Highway Administration last year. In that time, 10 more bridges became structurally deficient.

Since 2007, 121 state-owned bridges classified as structurally deficient have been rehabilitated, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation Consolidated Transportation Program.

Stephen Davis, deputy communications director for Transportation for America, said his coalition works to make sure there is a greater focus on fixing current infrastructure rather than working on new projects.

“That would certainly be the hope,” Davis said, of how the gas tax might help increase repairs of deteriorating bridges.

But everyone’s far too wasted, and those speakers of authority aren’t even loud enough to fill out the whole room. All he can think about on this February night is ditching this crowded frat house basement and returning to his home studio to work on crafting the perfect song.

The 22-year-old producer from Potomac already scored big online in 2010 with his Taylor Swift and Wiz Khalifa-sampling remix, “Mean Planes & Taylor Gangs.” He watched from his dorm room desk chair as the song boomeranged around the Web, shooting up Hype Machine charts and ricocheting through the blogosphere. The track established him as one of Maryland’s freshest young producers.

“Absolute fire,” wrote one blogger describing the remix, in which Duvall layered the vocal tracks over a propulsive, descending synth pattern. Another blogger proclaimed him a “mashup whiz kid,” a label he’s struggled to disown ever since.

“Mean Planes” now has more than two million combined YouTube views.  During the music industry’s heyday — when Duvall was in diapers — six-figure spins would have landed him a fat record deal and a slew of major tour dates.  And even when he was in high school, a million YouTube views would have notched at least some long-term recognition.

But in 2013, when Internet stars are crowned by day and forgotten by night, and when two million views is more easily achieved, Duvall has had to sacrifice and compromise to transform his online success into a durable career.

He schlepps hundreds of miles to play shows with crappy sound systems and drunken teenagers because live performances are one of the only way he makes money. He’s stuck playing songs he can’t stand because of the high demand for generic dance music. And he must compete for attention with thousands of amateurs, all propelled by the same cheap software that lets him create.

Internet hype got him eyeballs on computer screens but no dollars in his pocket. He doesn’t sell music and streams songs for free on YouTube and SoundCloud. Without any reliable source of income, weekend treks to Tuscaloosa, Athens and other distant college towns have become a necessity.

“I’m just fortunate enough that being a DJ in 2013 is a really, really good job,” he said. “I don’t think I deserve what I make. I don’t think anybody deserves what they make DJing. People will eventually realize you shouldn’t be giving a DJ that much money.”

Yet they are, because Brenton Duvall, the moderate viral sensation, is a small commodity as a DJ at bars and campuses. It’s too bad then that he’s never been a party kid and would much rather spin some Drake than David Guetta.

Mainstream pop and hip-hop was the soundtrack of Duvall’s formative years. When learning guitar, his teacher would flip on FM radio stations so he could jam along to the chord progressions. At St. Andrews Episcopal School in Potomac, he was always the stubborn defender of the Top 40 songs his friends berated. To this day, his iTunes library is littered with Billboard staples.

He’s been to two Taylor Swift concerts — “unironically,” he’ll quickly add. He’ll namedrop Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco, two prolific pop producers, as huge inspiration. And he’ll proclaim Kanye West as having the ultimate mind in music because “he can make an amazing song and he doesn’t have to touch an instrument.”

“Once I left school, there’s been like 20 albums on repeat,” he said. “I listen to the last albums by Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Justin Timberlake like every day. I just don’t get tired of those songs because they’re perfect.”

The sensibility towards perfect pop informs much of his own production. Duvall’s songs weave together simple, addictive melodies and many have the blissful optimism of Clinton-era bubblegum pop. When choosing vocal samples for his arrangements, he’ll often opt for recognizable hooks from megastars like Lil’ Wayne, Jay-Z and Aaliyah and Passion Pit.

“He’s experimental,” said Beau Young Prince, a Washington, D.C., rapper who collaborates regularly with Duvall. “I can’t label him. I don’t want to label him. It could be rap, pop or anything else. It’s melodic, it’s groovy. He can take any sample and take it into any genre.”

He works strange hours. He’ll sometimes lock himself up recording and producing until 5 a.m., tinkering with snares or synth melodies. He might take a break by sending a flurry of tweets riffing on pop culture or he’ll hit up local friends and musicians.

“I expect to be woken up in the middle of the night for him to say, ‘Yo, get up!’” said Matt Sparks, Duvall’s close friend and collaborator. “He’ll say ‘Lets go on a cruise. We have to listen to this song.’”

Though he makes highly energetic and danceable music, he doesn’t seem like the creator of such work. Duvall wears oversized button-down shirts and khakis, and lounges around Indigo Studios in Bethesda, talking to friends and posting Instagram photos of celebrities.

He won’t run you over with conversation, but his eyes and demeanor open widely whenever he talks about the stuff he loves: music, sports, and his hometown.

“I love D.C. I love Maryland. When we were growing up, I was thinking, ‘What is there to represent?’ But it’s just the little stuff. Like Juan Dixon being the best basketball player of all time. D.C. got a baseball team. Wale was coming up…When certain people started putting D.C. on the map, I was really happy.”

He’s a DMV denizen who reps the city and collaborates with local artists whenever he can, but his success as a producer finally bubbled up once he moved away from the nation’s capital.

Though he wrote and recorded music throughout high school, he started devoting much more time to the craft once he got to the University of Colorado, where he’d isolate himself inside recording while everyone else on campus was out partying.

In the comfort of his own dorm room, he could download vocal samples, cut and paste them into the software, combine them with drum and synth patterns, and upload the finished product online.

In April 2010, he sent one of his creations, a Lil’ Wayne and Passion Pit remix, to the prominent blog Pigeons & Planes, which featured the track and started posting all the songs he sent over.

His tracks started bouncing to the top of Hype Machine and bloggers were anointing him a rising star as a mashup artist. He released “Mean Planes” to smashing success and his fate as an essential mashup whiz kid was cemented. Splendid, right?

Not quite. He argues that the “mashup artist ” tag bloggers stuck to him fundamentally mischaracterized his music. It implied that Duvall simply blends two tracks together without adding any of his own sounds. It’s incorrect and the label put him in a box, he said, and he’s struggled to quash the misconceptions throughout his young career.

“I used to correct people. There’s this whole beat they’re missing. Nowadays, I don’t put a capellas on the tracks because I don’t want people calling them mashups. I think I’m at a point where if I did something and someone called it a mashup, I might flip.”

Either way, people were listening. Lots were. After he got enough exposure online, concert promoters, assuming he was a seasoned performer, were offering him money to play live sets.

“People were emailing me, ‘How much for a DJ set,’” Duvall said. “I’d be like, ‘I’ve never DJed. I don’t know what a DJ set is.’

He met Eric Miller, a Boston College student at the time who would become his manager, who set him up with gigs on the East Coast.  Before long, he was flying almost every weekend to perform thousands of miles away.

“I had some homework or some paper to do. I finally called my mom and told her, ‘I just can’t go to school anymore,’” he said.

He returned to Potomac and started to study music creation full-time. He needed to learn not only how to expand his style but how to actually make money with something he always considered a hobby.

To do that, he’s often forced to playing music he loathes because that’s what’s hot these days. EDM, which started as a largely European thread of electronic music, has erupted in the U.S. in recent years as superstar DJs like Avicii, David Guetta and Tiesto carried the torch across the Atlantic.

The genre has climbed in venue-flooded Baltimore and in Washington, where young people flood into the city’s new 4,000-capacity Echostage and its U St. Music Hall to hear the loudest, trendiest party music.

Duvall considers EDM “disco for the 21st century” and hates how artificial and calculated the music sounds. He’s tired of hearing the same type of beats by the same artists night after night and thinks the music lacks a crucial sense of humanity and spontaneity.

“You can tell when everything is perfectly lined up, and at that point you’re just using a computer. It would be such a travesty if in 30 years, all music is all aligned on some grid… Jimi Hendrix wasn’t using ProTools,” he said.

Though he now has the chance to shape a unique style, he has to keep performing to make money. Miller, his manager, realizes performing EDM-centric shows is a necessity at this point in his career, even when Duvall feels apart from the culture.

“I think he’s doing a good job trying not to get pigeonholed,” Miller said. “But yeah, the kids want to hear that kind of music. Wherever he plays, the demand is always for him to play electronic and bass music.”

The future does looks brighter for Brenton Duvall. Last week, he moved out of the parent’s basement and up to an apartment in Brooklyn, where he hopes he can perform nightly at bars around the city.

He’s currently working on his biggest project yet: producing four songs for Brooklyn rapper OnCue’s newest mixtape, due out this summer. The record is executively produced by Just Blaze, a hip-hop production legend who’s worked with Jay-Z, Eminem, T.I. and Kendrick Lamar.

Having production credits on a big mixtape like that could send a lot more work his way. He’s been networking in New York, trying to market himself and his work. And he said he hopes to release a full batch of original music by the end of the year.

But for the near future at least, he’ll continue to perform in stuffy venues, playing repetitive music to drunken kids. He’ll make music utilizing technology he worries will strain his creative impulse, and make money performing music he said he can’t stand.

All of it is just part of the necessary grind to build himself lasting place in the music world.

“EDM is going to go away,” he said. “People are going to stop saying EDM. Those DJs who run EDM are going to go away too, because that’s what they know how to play. When you want a DJ to start playing something else, will David Guetta be able to spin that?”

“Autonomous flight!” Christopher Vo shouted, smiling as he looked skyward at a spider-like helicopter about the size of a large pizza box hovering 50 feet above his head.

The drone — built by Vo with parts purchased online — sped off nearly silently toward a preprogrammed waypoint without Vo so much as touching the joystick on the controller in his hand.

Computer, camera and aviation technologies have become smaller and more affordable, making it possible for everyday people like Vo to purchase, build and operate drones for fun. And while current regulations forbid commercial drone flights, private companies are lobbying to change that so they can enter what they think will be a lucrative market for drones that can be used to map terrain or even help real estate agents develop virtual tours.

“We just want to fly and have some fun,” said Vo, who was joined at a recent “fly-in” in Leesburg, Va., by several dozen other drones enthusiasts.

But critics point to drones’ potential dark side, warning they could be used to invade citizens’ privacy, fire a gun or even take down a plane. That leaves the Federal Aviation Administration struggling to strike a balance between promoting innovation and maintaining privacy and safety.

Current law allows for drone use by various law enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration and many local police departments. Civilians are permitted by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones in unrestricted airspace as long as the drones fly no higher than 400 feet.

Technically speaking, any craft capable of pilotless flight can be considered an unmanned aerial vehicle, including remote control planes, blimps and toy helicopters.

But modern unmanned aerial vehicles, the formal name for drones (other names include unmanned aircraft, unmanned aerial system, remotely piloted vehicle and remotely operated aircraft), aren’t your grandfather’s model planes. Nor are they deadly, military-grade Predators that fly over the skies of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The distinction is one of functionality, size and sophistication.

“To compare what I have in my office to a Predator drone is laughably absurd,” said Professor Matt Waite, a drone expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who has started a lab to build drones for journalistic purposes. “We have a serious language problem, the definition of drone has become so twisted it’s almost meaningless.”

The drones in Waite’s office, which can be built for less than $1000, are equipped with cameras and GPS systems. The military’s Predator drones can cost upwards of $5 million each and while they also have cameras and GPS systems, they often have an important differentiating feature: Hellfire missiles, which are laser and radar-guided air-to-surface missiles designed in the 1970s by the U.S. Army to serve as “tank-busters.”

Modern civilian drones — many of which are spider-like, multi-propellor miniature helicopters rather than fixed-wing planes — can be affixed with a variety of high-tech attachments, making them more akin to flying robots than model airplanes.

Drones can be purchased online or in hobby stores for less than $200. Highly sophisticated models can cost tens of thousands of dollars, or more.

Drones for commercial use occupy a legal gray area. While for-profit drone use is banned by the FAA, the specific rules and regulations are unclear and the FAA has occasionally looked the other way, particularly in agricultural drone applications, experts say.

Last year, Congress passed the 2012 FAA Reauthorization Act, which mandates the agency develop a legal framework that would clear the way for commercial drone use by 2015.

“We intend to meet all congressional guidelines,” said FAA spokesman Les Dorr.

Given the complexity of the issue and the bureaucratic red tape in Washington, Waite said almost no one in the field believes the government will have drone laws written and implemented by 2015.

A report by the drone industry group Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International found that “every year that integration (of drones into the private sector of the economy) is delayed, the United States loses more than $10 billion in potential economic impact.”

Other developed countries, like Australia, allow companies that receive permission from the government to use drones for commercial purposes.

FAA regulations heavily restrict American drone manufacturers, who want the opportunity to export their products to countries that currently allow commercial drone use, from testing their products in American airspace.

“I think the FAA is one of the finest organizations on the planet,” said Paul Applewhite, owner of the drone manufacturer Applewhite Aero. “The are taking a very measured approach to unmanned aircraft.”

But Applewhite would like “a little flexibility” from the FAA in terms of allowing companies to safely and responsibly test their products in order to fill orders from companies, aid organizations and governments overseas.

“We could probably be exporting today,” Applewhite said. “But I don’t have a tested vehicle to sell them.”

By restricting American firms from testing drones, the FAA is putting domestic manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage with their foreign counterparts, Applewhite said.

“It’s very frustrating,” Applewhite said.

The FAA isn’t the only governmental body struggling to keep up with the legal ramifications of the recent increase in drone use. Lawmakers across the country have introduced drone-related legislation.

In Maryland, Delegate Ronald A. George, R-Anne Arundel, sponsored a bill that would limit the circumstances under which law enforcement agencies can use drone technology.

“We need to protect people’s civil rights from warrantless searches using drones,” George said. “There are people on both sides of the aisle that believe we have to define limits for the use of drones.”

Civil liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have been actively pushing for laws to limit government and law enforcement drone use.

“Drones are coming to America,” said Sara Love, public policy director for the ACLU of Maryland, who testified in support of George’s bill. “It’s a good thing to get out in front of this issue.”

George’s bill, the only drone legislation offered in Maryland this year, failed to make it out of committee.

The bill was “stuck in a drawer” largely because committee members didn’t understand the issue or its importance, George said.

Hobbyists worry that increased drone regulations won’t only target law enforcement agencies.

“I would love to see the hobby aspect remain unregulated,” said Cyrus Phillips of Franconia, a drone enthusiast who attended the recent drone “fly-in” in Northern Virginia. “But that’s unlikely.”

“We’re going to have to accept some kind of regulation,” Phillips predicted.

Delegate George said that while he plans to reintroduce his drone bill next year, he won’t expand its scope beyond law enforcement.

“Drones are allowed for private recreational use,” George said. “And that will not change.”

Waite said he typically gets one of two reactions when he talks to someone about his work with drones.

“People either say, ‘This is so cool!’ or ‘We need to ban every one of them!’,” Waite said.

Drone technology is very cool, however, it does create a host of new ethical concerns, Waite said.

“If you only think (widespread use of drone technology) is cool and not a little bit creepy, you’re being naive,” Waite said.

Many civilian drone models are small and quiet enough to hover undetected outside of a bedroom window or trail a car through city streets from hundreds of feet in the air, which creates a litany of privacy concerns.

The dangers of personal drones made headlines briefly in March when an unmanned aircraft was spotted above the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

An Alitalia Airlines pilot told authorities a craft, described by the FBI as “as black in color and no more than three feet wide with four propellers,” was hovering within a few hundred feet of the plane’s flight path.

It is possible that the drone, either intentionally or accidentally, could have distracted the pilots or disrupted the mechanical function of the jet engines.

In a press release following the incident, FBI Special Agent John Giacalone expressed concern for the “safety of aircraft passengers and crew.”

A YouTube video posted late last year depicting a drone equipped with a paintball gun accurately hitting targets while in flight increased fears over the possible deadly use of drones.

But while “there is a long overdue conversation about privacy, safety and drones that needs to happen,” Waite said a lot of the recent drone-paranoia is overblown.

Some in the national security field have expressed concerns over the possible use of drones in terror plots, but most of the recorded misuses of drones have been more mischievous — scaring pizza delivery drivers or neighbors into thinking they’ve just seen a UFO — than nefarious.

Ten to 15 years down the line “we’re going to wonder what the fuss was all about,” Waite said. “We’re going be to completely bored with drones.”

While a quick Internet search of “Maryland religious history” may turn up claims that the colony’s founding heralded an era of religious tolerance, the truth is that the revolutionary idea was short lived. The right was not reestablished until the U.S. Constitution protected religious liberty for all citizens.

Several landmarks throughout Maryland, beginning in St. Mary’s City, tell the story of the colony’s trial and struggle with religious tolerance.

“Religious toleration is one of those things that didn’t take right away,” said Susan Wilkinson, director of marketing and communications for Historic St. Mary’s City. “It lasted here about 60 years and then it was revoked and went away, and it wasn’t until the U.S. Constitution reset it that it stayed.”

In 1632, King James I chartered the land that is now Maryland to George Calvert, a Catholic who was interested in the economic potential of the New World. Calvert died before settling the colony, so his son Cecilius Calvert carried out the settlement.

In 1633, approximately 140 colonists left Anglican England to settle the new colony. Seventeen colonists were Roman Catholic gentlemen, and the rest were poor Protestants who came to make a better living as indentured servants. In 1634, the colonists arrived at St. Clements Island near St. Mary’s County.

While the Calverts established the colony to make a profit, they also sought refuge from the religious discrimination they experienced as Catholics in England, where the established church was Protestant. To avoid conflict between majority Protestants and minority Catholics in the colony, Calvert instituted a progressive religious policy called The Maryland Toleration Act that allowed all Christians, regardless of sect, to freely worship in Maryland.

He also chose not to establish an official religion for the colony.

After settling in what is now St.Mary’s City, the colonists erected a small wooden chapel that burned down in 1645. Then, in 1667, a brick Roman Catholic chapel was constructed at the same location.

“The chapel is believed to be the founding place of the Roman Catholic faith in British North America,” Wilkinson said. “It was built at a time when a Catholic chapel couldn’t be erected at any other place in the English speaking world.”

In spite of the Calverts’ push for tolerance, there was tension between the colony’s Protestant settlers and Catholic elite. In 1652, Protestants seized the government, and in 1692, the Anglican Church became the official religion of the colony, and public worship by all other sects was outlawed.

According to Historic St. Mary’s City’s website, in 1704, the royal governor ordered the Catholic chapel be locked and never used again for religious purposes. The building was dismantled and its pieces used to build other structures.

After the chapel was dismantled, the land once again became farmland, and the chapel’s foundation was buried beneath corn crops.

“The story of the chapel existed only in oral histories,” Wilkinson said.

In 1938, architect, historian and archaeologist H. Chandlee Forman uncovered the chapel’s foundation, and in the 1980s, the town began excavating the land around the chapel and raising money to build the reconstruction that currently stands on the site.

Catholics were not the only religious group to find at least some level of tolerance in Maryland.

In the mid-17th century, the colony’s Toleration Act brought Quakers to Maryland’s Eastern Shore from the Virginia colony where they faced discrimination. Several meeting houses were established in the Eastern Shore, and the Third Haven House in Easton is still used for meetings.

Following the Protestant Revolution in Maryland, the General Assembly in 1695 moved Maryland’s capital from St. Mary’s City to Annapolis.

When Gov. Francis Nicholson designed Annapolis’ city plan in 1695, he set aside one of the highest spots in the city for the establishment of a Protestant church, St. Anne’s. The current St. Anne’s Parish is the third church built in the same location in Church Circle.

When the capital moved to Annapolis, Catholics were not allowed to worship publicly, but the Carroll family of Annapolis had a private chapel in their home, which they opened to the small community of Catholics in Annapolis.

A 14-mile reservoir behind the Conowingo hydroelectric generating dam in northern Maryland stops 2 million pounds of sediment every year from flowing into the Chesapeake Bay. But another one million pounds get through, burying underwater grasses that support sea life and adding to the bay’s myriad pollution problems.

The reservoir that stores the sediment, essentially dirt and other material carried by the water, is expected to reach capacity within 20 years, after which all of the sediment will get through the dam, putting the bay’s health further at risk.

Exelon Power, which owns the Conowingo Dam, is negotiating a new license with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that would last for 46 years. State officials and others say the time is now to resolve the sediment buildup.

“This is the moment in time when these issues will be addressed,” said Ann Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, a tri-state legislative assembly representing Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

State and federal agencies are studying possible solutions, with the three-year Lower Susquehanna River Watershed Assessment to be completed by September 2014.

But the solutions will not be simple, and the question remains: Who will pay for them?

“There’s no silver bullet in this,” said Bruce Michael, resource assessment service director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, who is working on the study. “We’re not going to come up with one magical thing that’s going to be cheap that we’ll be able to implement quickly.”

Exelon Power is waiting to see what the study finds before making any conclusions on who will fund it.

“Exelon believes it should be a shared approach,” said Robert Judge, Mid-Atlantic regional manager of Exelon Power’s communications. “Exelon thinks this needs to be a regional discussion, to look at the models and see what the next steps would be.”

Swanson said the cost would be prohibitive and far exceed what Exelon makes from power generation.

“It’s widely recognized that no one entity could pay for this,” she said.

And after all, it is not Exelon’s sediment. If the Conowingo Dam was not there, all of the sediment flowing through New York and Pennsylvania down the Susquehanna River would pass freely into the bay.

Sediment comes from the land, said Harry Campbell, Pennsylvania executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

It is dirt. It is clay. It is little pieces of earth, matter that settles at the bottom of a liquid.

It comes from construction sites, agricultural fields, poorly maintained logging operations, roadside ditches — any place that doesn’t have adequate vegetation to hold soil in place.

Environmentalists call these vegetation buffer zones, areas of grass and trees that hold dirt in place during rainstorms.

Parking lots, roads and large areas of flat cement do not have buffer zones, and the oils, pollutants and sediment from the roads find their way into waterways when it rains, a process called stormwater runoff.

When it reaches the bay, it settles on top of underwater plants, burying them and preventing future root growth. The plants might have been food or home to other marine life, and shelter for fish and crabs.

While nutrients like sediment, nitrogen and phosphorous are necessary in very small amounts, in large quantities, they disturb the balance of the ecosystem.

“Nature is seeking equilibrium,” Campbell said.

The small soil particles block out sunlight, which interferes with photosynthesis in underwater plants and grasses, decreasing oxygen that is important for sustaining aquatic life.

“As that cumulatively takes effect in large areas of the bay, it has a deleterious impact on the healthy condition of the bay,” Campbell said.

Environmentalists have been working to limit stormwater runoff as a solution to the sediment buildup behind the dam, but that effort relies on a cooperative effort among New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

The Susquehanna River begins in Cooperstown, N.Y., and the sediment load increases substantially south of Harrisburg, Penn. The river ultimately contributes 25 percent of the Chesapeake Bay’s total sediment load.

The Conowingo Dam is about five miles from the Pennsylvania border and 10 miles from the bay, and there are three dams north of it in Pennsylvania.

But the reservoirs behind the other dams are full, and only the Conowingo has storage left to hold sediment.

Exelon Power is studying possible solutions as part of its negotiation process that began with a pre-application in 2009. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asked that Exelon file a sediment management plan with its final application next year.

Among the possibilities are dredging the Conowingo Pond, the 14-mile reservoir that still has storage capacity north of the dam, and using the sediment for a number of different projects — from parklands to quarries, maybe even brick-making, Swanson said.

Another option would be to allow sediment to pass through the dam at certain times of the year that might be less damaging for the bay, but that would interfere with the dam’s operation and would need Exelon’s support, Michael said.

“It’s going to be difficult environmentally and infrastructure-wise,” Campbell said, explaining that the sediment is like wet concrete and could be toxic and very difficult to move.

The Lower Susquehanna River Watershed Assessment will be releasing a list of possible solutions over the next six months. Michael hopes the public will get involved.

But even if the sediment storage issues at the dam are resolved, Campbell said they are a temporary fix to an ongoing problem.

There’s a myriad of technical and economic considerations to deal with what’s behind those dams, Campbell said. And they don’t solve the long-term problem of sediment entering the river to begin with.

“It’s sort of like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound,” he said. “If we don’t turn off the sources — the sources coming in from the land — if we don’t get a handle on that, they may buy us time but not a solution. You have to start at the source.”

Even if we remove that sediment, it will accumulate again behind the dam, he said. It buys time, but also does not deal with the quantity of nitrogen or phosphorous entering the bay, which could be controlled by decreasing stormwater runoff.

Campbell said some argue Exelon Power should be responsible for dealing with the sediment since they own the dam. But others say it is not their sediment.

“That’s going to be a point of conversation,” he said. “If there is anything that can and should be done technologically and economically, who undertakes the lion’s share?”