A meandering environmental disaster in Maryland was finally brought under control two years ago. It seemed that way on paper, anyway. That’s when the state attorney general and environment secretary announced the settlement of a lawsuit against Baltimore City over unauthorized discharges of pollution from its wastewater treatment plant into the Back River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.

The plant, operating since 1911, reached a low point in modern history in 2022 when the state took control of it. They sent in the Maryland Environmental Service, a quasi-government agency, which observed Baltimore City Department of Public Works employees sleeping on the job, talking on their personal cell phones and washing their cars. The MES report noted that some workers did virtually nothing

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