Constellation Energy and the owner of a sand and gravel mine in Gambrills have known since 1999 that fly ash dumped at the site could threaten nearby groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals, according to documents obtained by The Capital.

Yet, the two companies did not tell the public or try to take steps to mitigate the risk until 2003, public state records and reports show.

And the Maryland Department of the Environment has been aware of the problem since the companies first identified it, but has continuously allowed fly ash to be dumped at the mine and approved plans to deposit the substance at more sites in Gambrills.

In the meantime, fly ash - a by-product of the combustion of coal - has seeped into the water supply beneath the site, contaminating wells in at least 23 nearby homes with dangerous amounts of heavy metals, sometimes more than 10 times above the federal Environmental Protection Agency's levels for safe water.

But the companies involved with the dumping have no plans to stop. As recently as February, the MDE was working with Constellation Energy and Reliable Contracting Co. to continue dumping at the mine, which is owned by BBSS Inc., an affiliate of Reliable.

Although the first hint of trouble surfaced in 1999, no effort to fully identify the extent of the contamination or to help those affected occurred until October 2006, records show.

At that time, the county intervened and completed a six-month investigation that revealed heavy metals in groundwater, a source of drinking water for nearby well-owners.

Testing for heavy metals, the county Health Department found that at least 23 privately owned wells contained unsafe levels of carcinogens like arsenic or beryllium. Others had lead, a metal that can cause brain damage, especially among children.

Officials concluded in April that the source of contamination was the 2.4 million tons of fly ash - enough to fill 171,000 10-wheel dump trucks - that Constellation Energy has dumped at the nearby BBSS mine.

The revelation sparked the first serious effort to stop fly ash pollution. It also triggered a state order requiring BBSS and Constellation to help those harmed. Currently, the owners of five contaminated wells are drinking free bottled water provided by Constellation.

But it was a revelation that critics think should have come years ago.

"They knew that this was not against the law. It may have been legal to do what they did, but it was unconscionable," said Joan Willey, chairman of the Sierra Club's Maryland Conservation Department.

County Executive John R. Leopold has labeled as "disingenuous" past statements made to the media by Reliable Contracting President Jay Baldwin that the mine wasn't contaminating groundwater.

And Del. James King, a Gambrills Republican who represents the area, has called the MDE negligent.

For their part, Constellation said they never knew there was a public risk until last year.

Rob Scrivener, a vice president at BBSS, said that he had no personal knowledge of the extent of the groundwater contamination and that his company never anticipated a problem. Fly ash is a safe substance, he said.

"Fly ash is an inert material. It is handled like dirt, it is treated like dirt," he said.

And he said his company has been open about what goes into the mine.

"I have worked here my whole life. I don't have any issues, I'm not hiding any issues," he said.

And when the MDE was questioned about their role in the mine's oversight, Steve Pattison, the department's assistant secretary, promised answers but never returned calls.

Out of the loop

The lack of public notification from the time high sulfate levels were first detected to the widespread contamination of nearby wells has sparked anger in Gambrills and Crofton.

Legislators, public officials, activists and victims are outraged that Constellation has continued to dump at the BBSS mine long after problems were detected.

They charge that the MDE, the watchdog for the fly-ash reclamation process, has been mum and that Constellation, BBSS and its affiliates have compounded the problem.

"It's troubling that this is going on. It's even more troubling that the agency knew about and didn't do anything about it," said County Councilman Jamie Benoit, a Crownsville Democrat whose district includes the mines and the contaminated wells.

State legislators echoed Mr. Benoit's criticism.

"It sounds like there's some negligence on part of MDE. Nobody there was picking up on the fact that the levels were high," said Mr. King, a first-term delegate whose district also includes the area.

"That's the function of that department, to keep the public safe in environmental matters," he said.

And the county could have intervened sooner, had it only known what was going on, county Health Officer Fran Phillips said.

"The county has never been party to any of that activity. We were literally out of the loop," she said. "An installation like that, we assume that it is being regulated."

The County Council is considering legislation that would prevent fly ash from being dumped in the county. Introduced by the council at the urging of Mr. Leopold, the bill would change county zoning law if enacted.

"We have a high cancer level in this county and state. Clearly, environmental factors, which mean industrial pollution to water and air, have played a factor," Mr. Leopold said.

A public hearing on the legislation is scheduled for Monday night.

But if the bill is approved, it could just send fly ash elsewhere, said Madonna Brennan, co-chairman of Crofton First, a community advocacy group that monitors development and environmental matters.

"If Constellation can't dump fly ash here, the company will find another place. Fly ash needs to be handled in a way that isn't a public health threat without destroying businesses," Ms. Brennan said.

Bonnie Johansen, a government and community affairs representative for Constellation, said the company's efforts were thorough, timely, effective and fostered a good relationship with the affected well-owners on Summerfield Road.

Constellation is working to hook them up to public water free of charge, she said.

"The swift action to get them on bottled water right away took away any problems at the time," she said. "The community has always been our focus."

But Irene Carr, a resident with a contaminated well on Summerfield Road, disagreed.

"They knew it, but they would kill us first," she said.

How it began

Since 1995, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. and later after deregulation, Constellation Energy, paid BBSS to dump fly ash into former surface mines.

Surface mines produce sand and gravel primarily for making asphalt for road building, leaving large craters that have to be filled before the land can be reused for development.

BGE first dumped fly ash - a fine-grain powder that is also used in cinder blocks - into the "Turner Pit," a 115-acre mine site between Brickhead and Evergreen roads.

In September 2000, Constellation started dumping in the "Waugh Chapel Pit," a 78-acre depression on the south side of Waugh Chapel Road, just north of Summerfield Road. Operations stopped at this pit in 2004 with only a part of the hole filled with fly ash, but dumping at the Turner Pit continued.

At any given time, only a small section, or "cell," of the two pits is open to new fly ash deposits. When one cell is filled, it is covered with soil and planted with vegetation before a new cell is opened and new loads of fly ash are dumped.

According to Constellation, this practice limits how much fly ash is exposed to the elements, preventing rain water from seeping through the layers and causing an environmental mess.

Monitoring wells are scattered around the two mines. Essentially long narrow holes that reach about 120 feet into the earth, these wells are a porthole into the quality of groundwater.

Routine testing of these monitoring wells would provide the first hint that a problem was underfoot.

Click here to see how heavy metals contaminated Gambrills wells.

Early warning signal?

In 1999, through routine tests at monitoring wells, Constellation noticed high concentrations of sulfate, a chemical that can cause diarrhea and also is an indicator of fly ash contamination.

"Sulfate concentration in (a) monitoring well ... first exceeded the permit sulfate limit ... in June 1999, approximately four years following the start of ash placement."

In another 18 months, sulfate levels would quadruple, according to a letter from Constellation to the MDE written in 2003 and copied to Reliable Contracting.

In November 1999, Mr. Scrivener, a vice president at BBSS, told the MDE that "sulfate is an indicator parameter for coal ash leachate," meaning it was an indication that the fly ash was seeping into groundwater, a claim also confirmed by a 2007 state Department of Natural Resources report.

Mr. Scrivener has criticized the DNR's work.

"There are some inaccuracies in that report," he said.

But in 1999, Mr. Scrivener told MDE that there was no need to worry. An EPA study from January 1999 showed that sulfate did not produce adverse health affects, he said.

While the EPA does not regulate sulfate levels, it does monitor and study the substance. In 1998, a joint study by the EPA and federal Center for Disease Control recommended a health advisory for areas with sulfate levels above 500 milligrams per liter - a threshold that groundwater near the mines had exceeded by the time Mr. Scrivener wrote that the water was safe to drink.

In response to the high sulfate levels, Constellation began testing monitoring wells monthly instead of quarterly. The company also reduced the size of the exposed part of the Turner Pit and thickened the topsoil cover over the fill site.

In 2001, the company also tested water from a well at a nearby home but didn't find any unusual substances, said Robert Thornton, a spokesman for the company.

That one test was the first and last time Constellation would examine off-site wells until October.

The details of the high sulfate levels surfaced before Reliable opened the Waugh Chapel Pit to fly ash. As Reliable worked to get a permit to open the second pit, the MDE asked the company to research the effects an additional fly ash site would have on groundwater.

While Reliable's computer model showed that sulfate levels would be below EPA standards when taken from groundwater at the edge of the mine, the health department study seven years later showed sulfate in 34 nearby wells.

In some cases, county testers found sulfate at concentrations five times over the EPA's standards and Reliable's computer predictions.

As water tests repeatedly revealed high sulfate levels, in August 2003 Reliable began work to install a groundwater pumping system to "prevent further off-site migration of sulfate."

The pumping system would collect groundwater, neutralize and filter it to remove metals and empty it into Towers Branch, a stream with headwaters close to the former Naval Academy Dairy Farm that flows into the Little Patuxent River near Conway Road.

"We thought we could fix it with a pumping filter," said Robert Ballinger, an MDE spokesman.

After the filter was installed, sulfate levels initially dropped, but later rose again, he said.

But the pumping system is not a panacea. It will "help mitigate but (is) unlikely to fully resolve impacts to the aquifer and potential groundwater receptors in the vicinity of the site," according to a DNR study.

First public notice

The application process for the pumping system in 2003 was the first time elected officials or the general public was notified that there were any problems related to the fly ash.

Constellation placed legal advertisements in local newspapers, sent formal notification to former County Executive Janet S. Owens and County Councilman Bill Burlison and met with the Greater Crofton Council.

But while the purpose of the groundwater collection system was explained, the potential threat to the nearby water supply was not.

"They have always told us it was not harmful and would not leach into the groundwater," said Torrey Jacobsen Jr., president of the Greater Crofton Council. "They haven't been honest to the community."

When Constellation first noticed high sulfate levels, it didn't notify nearby well owners because there was no way to be certain that they were at any risk.

Sometimes, one high metal reading is a fluke and isn't indicative of a larger problem. Because wells away from the mine are privately owned, there was no way to confirm that heavy metals were spreading, Ms. Johansen said.

"It's not something you act upon right away. You have to watch for a couple of months to make sure it is legitimate and real," she said.

However, well-monitoring data shows that several wells have been consistently over EPA's sulfate thresholds since July 1999.

Constellation seems to have no plans to stop dumping at the Gambrills site.

As recently as February, the MDE and Reliable discussed dumping fly ash on a different part of the Turner Pit. Before that could begin, the MDE asked Reliable to install a leachate collection and treatment system. However, the public does not have to participate in the process.

"The current thinking at the department is that this permit modification would not require a public participation component," according to an e-mail from Ed Larrimore, the MDE mining program manager, to Constellation and Reliable.