Update 3/31: The FDA Friday announced that it will continue to allow the use of BPAs in food and beverage containers according to the Huffington Post.   -- By March 31, 2012 the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to decide whether or not to continue allowing food packaging that contains BPA. You’ve probably heard a lot about BPA in regards to baby bottles, sippy cups and other products made for children.  But it’s in many, many products that we all use, and in too many instances BPA is used in food packaging and other consumer products. BPA, or Bisphenol A, is a “synthetic …

Last month in this column we talked a little bit about winterizing your home.  Experts recommend doing many things to prepare for the winter, including installing energy-efficient doors and windows, maintaining your furnace, adding insulation, and more.  But sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start. Here's a tip: BGE offers lots of useful information on its website.  And the company also offer customers the option to save on their energy costs and lessen their carbon footprint through participation in one or more of the BGE Smart Energy Savers Programs, which were established in …

Last month Governor Martin O’Malley and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar together noted that the federal government announced that wind energy projects off the Mid-Atlantic coast would cause “no significant environmental damage.”  According to The Washington Post this finding removes “one of several expected regulatory hurdles to wind farm construction sought by O’Malley and governors in other East Coast states.”O’Malley explained that the development would aid efforts in Maryland and elsewhere to make offshore wind a reality.This is a big deal for a number of reasons.  Currently, more …

Last week I had 15 lovely sapling trees delivered to my home by the Natural Resources Division of the Department of Recreation & Parks. This weekend will be spent planting them along the banks of the stream that runs along our property. We were lucky enough to qualify for Howard County’s Stream ReLeaf Program.  The program is designed to augment stream buffers, which are the protective coverings of trees, shrubs and other vegetation along the banks of a stream, by providing free native trees and shrubs to qualifying homeowners. In return, the homeowner commits to planting the trees and shrubs…

On October 4, 2011, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman announced that 490 Loblolly Pines will be planted in a number of our County parks as part of the County’s reforestation program. The pines are a result of a partnership between Howard County and the State of Maryland, in which inmates from the state-run Patuxent Institution, located in Jessup, planted and cared for hundreds of trees, which are now mature enough to be transplanted into the Howard County parks.  “When we announced this program three years ago, Governor O’Malley and I both stressed that this partnership was about protecting …