BGE bills are expected to decrease roughly $3.36 a month, thanks to some previously negotiated credits, but not until at least next June 1, an analysis by a state utility watchdog shows.

The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel on Thursday reviewed results of an annual “capacity market auction,” completed this week by PJM Interconnection, the operator of the wholesale electricity market and 13-state regional power grid. The auction, in which companies make competitive bids to offer power generation, sets the wholesale price for electricity and enables enough supply to meet the projected needs of more than 67 million people in 13 states and Washington, D.C., for a year starting June 2026.

Supply prices are separate from and in addition to the delivery fees that are paid to utilities and have rates regulated by the state’s Maryland Public Service Commission.

This year’s auction set a record high clearing price of $329 per megawatt-day, up from last year’s clearing price of $270 per megawatt day. Power generators and others offer a price per megawatt of power for each day. Each bidder is paid the clearing price times 365 days for each megawatt they bid at or below the clearing price.

Last year’s price, a nine-fold jump from the previous year, has helped send utility bills soaring this year. BGE customers are paying an average $16.49 per month more this year, as of last month, as a result of the last two auctions.

Maryland consumers are being forced to shoulder the cost of supporting the massive power needs of data centers, mostly located outside the state, Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said in the analysis. Data centers accounted for more than 5,400 megawatts of increased demand compared with last year’s level.

In several OPC filings before federal regulators, the office argues that Maryland customers must pay hundreds of millions of dollars for transmission projects driven by data center load growth occurring in Northern Virginia.

“Residential customers are not causing these excessive costs and should not be paying for them,” Lapp said in Thursday’s announcement. “Utility regulation is failing to protect residential customers, contributing to an energy affordability crisis.”

Despite the promise of slight relief by next summer, BGE customers have been squeezed by higher bills.

Annie Albert, a Fells Point resident, said she’s taken steps for several years to conserve energy and make her 235-year-old rowhome more energy efficient. She said she’s cut back on electricity usage but still finds herself paying $500 a month this year, about the same as last year. She’s cut back spending in other areas, such going out to eat less and taking fewer vacations.

“Our prices have gone up, for sure,” said Albert, who has lived in BGE territory for a decade.  “We’ve also seen an increase in the unreliability of the grid. This summer we’ve lost power more times than we have in the entire time I’ve lived here.

“But what are you going to do, it’s one of those necessities you just have to pay for,” she said.

PJM said wholesale capacity accounts for a relatively small portion of electricity bills and could translate into a year-over-year increase of 1.5% to 5% in some customers bills throughout the region.

Besides data center expansion, electricity demand is soaring because of electrification and economic growth, the grid operator said. Power generation included in the recent auction included 45% natural gas, 21% nuclear, 22% coal, 4% hydro, 3% wind and 1% solar.

PJM transmission costs per megawatt hour have more than tripled when adjusted for inflation from 2007 through last year, according to the 2024 State of the Market Report for PJM.

The People’s Counsel had advocated for changes to PMJ’s market auction rules that helped boost the amount of electric supply bidding into the market this year. In one change supported by Gov. Wes Moore and other PJM governors, a cap was set on the clearing price. But even increased electric supply could not offset higher demand, Lapp said.

Customers of Maryland utilities Pepco, Delmarva Power and Potomac Edison all can expect energy bill increases next summer, ranging from $2.50 to $5.24 per megawatt hour.

For the first time in several years, the price for the BGE zone cleared at the same price as the overall PJM regional price because the auction included two Anne Arundel County power plants that are shutting down but required by PJM to stay online until reliability measures are put in place.

Those plants were excluded from last year’s auction, driving the auction results up by as much as $5 billion, according to an Office of People’s Counsel report released last August.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com, (410) 332-6672.

Severe droughts in Brazil and Vietnam diminished coffee bean harvests, and recent trade tariffs have further pushed up the wholesale cost of coffee beans, leaving cafe owners struggling with when, how, and by how much they should pass the cost on to consumers.

“Prices have gone up incredibly,” said Tayson, manager of the now 32-year-old shop at Festival at Bel Air, bought in 2007 by Tayson’s mother, Betsy Depman. “With coffee beans, all of our roasters have had to increase wholesale prices.

“We have to decide how much of that we want to absorb or pass on,” Tayson said. “You don’t want to pass on all of that all at once. It’s a tricky balance.”

Consumers already have paid more for coffee in the past year. The average price of 100% ground roast coffee jumped to $8.13 per pound in June, from $6.25 per pound at the same in 2024, data from the labor department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. A cup of coffee at a U.S. restaurant cost $3.50 in June, on a median basis, a 3.6% annual increase, according to the Toast Menu Price Monitor, which tracks industry sales data.

Tayson said wholesale prices rose this year in a range of 5% to 40% for decaffeinated beans, which cost more to produce. The cafe, which serves breakfast and lunch, sources its coffee from three Baltimore-area roasters. The shop raised prices minimally on coffee beans earlier this year but has no plans to do so in the near future. The price of a cup of coffee went up this summer by about 10 cents, and they could rise further if President Donald Trump follows through on his threat earlier this month to boost import taxes by 50% on goods from Brazil, which supplies more than a third of the nation’s unroasted coffee, if no trade agreement is reached by Aug. 1.

Besides coffee, the business has grappled with the rising cost of eggs, paper plates and other items. To control expenses, it has made adjustments such as reducing the number of menu items and buying produce from local farmers.

Owners said they’re struggling to offer fair prices and still cover costs, a challenging task for small businesses operating on thin profit margins.

Large chains such as Starbucks, meanwhile, are better positioned to handle price hikes, said Hung-bin Ding, an associate dean and professor of management at Loyola University of Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business.

Ding believes that consumers who start their day at home with a cup of coffee would be unlikely to kick that habit and possibly willing to pay more, whereas people may treat going out for coffee as more of a luxury.

“Fifty percent is a very big shock for agricultural products,” Ding said. “The consumer will feel that fairly quickly. Consumers will at the end have to pay more to buy coffee.”

That doesn’t mean consumers must absorb the entire increase, which they would share with wholesalers and retailers, he said.

The proposed tariffs on Brazil are especially concerning, some in the industry say, because of Brazil’s role in supplying the U.S. with the higher quality Arabica variety of coffee. About 80% of U.S. unroasted coffee imports came from Latin America in 2023, valued at $4.8 billion,with Brazil supplying more than a third, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows.

A tariff, a form of tax, is a percentage of the sales price that importers pay to foreign sellers. Economists and many in industries that rely on imports argue that such trade policy will only send prices soaring on consumer goods. The Trump administration favors such policies as ways to boost U.S. manufacturing, hold nations accountable for an influx of illegal drugs and level the playing field with trading partners that have limited U.S. exports.

Consumers and businesses have been caught up in a cycle of uncertainty for much of the year as Trump has threatened, initiated or imposed broad-based levies on imports from most nations and on goods such as autos, lumber and agricultural products. The trade policies have set off legal challenges and appeals and sparked reciprocal taxes on U.S. goods exported to other countries.

After the Brazil tax was announced, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to reciprocate and last week called Trump’s policy “unacceptable blackmail.”

The administration’s move targets the Brazilian Supreme Court trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally charged for his alleged role in trying to overturn his 2022 election loss. Trump also targeted Brazil, he said, because of the court’s prosecution of U.S.-based social media companies failing to comply with local laws.

Bill Martin, owner of Mad City Coffee in Columbia, isn’t waiting to see whether or not the latest policy takes effect. Martin, who also runs a commercial roastery in Curtis Bay, buys coffee beans from Brazil twice a month and is already paying 15% more compared with last year.

In response, Mad City has adjusted pricing on its whole bean coffee, bumping it up about 7% to a range of about $14.95 to $17.95 per pound. Pricing for coffee drinks has not changed, however, Martin said.

Martin said he’s been looking into new sources for beans and tries to buy ahead as much as possible to reserve coffee at the current market price. But most other U.S.-based coffee roasters are taking similar steps, which could drive prices up in other regions, he said.

Meanwhile, he has increased orders for Colombian coffee and is buying more than usual from Guatemala and Honduras. To supply his roastery, Martin sources beans from coffee producers around the world.

Over the years, he’s had to make adjustments because of market and growing conditions, but, Martin said, “it’s a little more drastic this year due to the upcoming tariffs, if they go through with them.

“I’m hoping things will change before that,” he said.

Customers “either won’t be able to pay the price or won’t want to and will look for different alternatives,” Martin predicted.

Atwater’s, which started as a small bakery in 1999 and now offers soup, sandwiches, salad, coffee and other items in Baltimore city, Towson and Catonsville, has seen coffee supplier prices jump as well, by 10% to 15%. That’s occurred in the past six months, even before the most recent proposed levies, said owner Ned Atwater.

The cafes haven’t hiked prices in response yet but likely will do so in the next few weeks, he said, though “not across the board. It’s always hard to raise prices. We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Besides driving up prices, “the tariffs are definitely disrupting,” Atwater said. “It’s the constant change. Customers don’t like that, and for business owners, it’s hard to plan and budget.”

In the past when he’s needed to raise prices,  Atwater has asked employees to note whether customers scale down purchases or mention prices. But he doesn’t expect a big shift in habits.

“We as a culture are eating out more now than ever,” he said.

The number of snack and non-alcoholic beverage bars, a category including both independent and chain coffee shops, has been steadily growing in the greater Baltimore region for most of the last two decades, data from the Greater Baltimore Committee shows. The number declined for the first time amid the pandemic in 2021, by 5%, but began increasing again last year, to 547, the committee said. The trend was similar in Baltimore city and county.

It’s still unclear whether more people will choose to brew their coffee at home if prices keep going up, said Tayson, the Coffee Coffee manager. She hasn’t seen such a change yet.

“People are still coming out and getting coffee,” Tayson said. “People are always going to want to order food out and go out and get coffee. A lot of people appreciate shopping local, and we really pride ourselves on that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story. Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672 

City leaders still don’t know what’s causing the fires, nor the cost and scope of repairs.

The committee sought answers to the growing number of underground fires downtown, incidents often blamed on a hard-to-replace, city-owned clay conduit system built in the 19th century that houses electric lines and other cables.

A report due this fall by Stevensville-based RTI Consulting, which is investigating two recent fires, could offer insights on potential causes and ways for the city to respond, said Mark Conway, chair of the council’s public safety and government operations committee.

“What we want to do is understand what’s going on and then fix the conditions that lead to that problem,” Conway said after Tuesday’s hearing. “My expectation is that that’s going to mean some investment in our conduit in a different way, under a new way.

“Ultimately,” he said, “We want to be able to figure out what interventions we need to take in order to prevent fires in the future.”

The city’s conduit system covers a network of about 700 miles of utility line. Outside that system, steam pipes and water mains wend their way underground.

The latest fire occurred on the corner of East Baltimore Street and Guilford Avenue, where first responders found smoke pouring from manhole covers, leading to road closures and bus line detours downtown. Fire officials are still investigating the cause of that and other recent fires.

Last year, city officials called for an investigation after three fires occurred on North Charles Street.

Conway, who scheduled the hearing in response to June’s fire and as a follow up to a November hearing, said there have been 34 fires in the last 10 years. Data presented during the hearing showed a significant spike of 10 fires in 2018 and another 10 last year, with about two fires in each of the other years.

“It tells me that something is going on in those given years,” he said. “I’d also be very curious to see … if there are conditions within those years that make them more prone to fire.”

Rebecca McAfee, a 40-year-old city resident told council members her boyfriend is a city firefighter, and she’s “already nervous about him doing his job.”

“Something needs to be done,” McAfee said. “There should be a resolution as quickly as possible, because this is a crisis, and God forbid, one Baltimorean is killed the next time this happens.

“We can’t sit around pointing fingers at each other after we come together,” she said.

Others attending the hearing included representatives from Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., Vicinity Energy, Comcast, city agencies and the Baltimore City Fire Department.

During a press conference prior to the hearing, Tom Rafferty, BGE’s director of regional electric operations, emphasized that the city bears ultimate responsibility for the condition of the system it owns and maintains, including making capital improvements.

BGE, one of several tenants of the underground cable system, reached a controversial agreement with the city in 2023 that requires the utility to spend $120 million on capital improvements through 2029 and pay Baltimore an “occupancy fee” of $1.5 million annually.

But that agreement covers only a fraction of the city’s full network, many sections of which are believed to be in disrepair, BGE said.

Since the first year of the conduit agreement, BGE has installed 250,000 feet of new and upgraded conduit, just a portion of the 12 million feet of conduit containing BGE’s electric lines, BGE spokesperson Nick Alexopulos said in an email to The Baltimore Sun. The utility has rebuilt 12 manholes and installed 17 manholes, out of 12,000 total in the city.

Company officials on Tuesday stressed that they have no authority to manage or investigate the system. They said none of the preventative and maintenance work showed problems with BGE’s equipment or facilities before the recent manhole fires, and no fires broke out in areas where BGE has made upgrades.

“The conduit system itself has been degraded, and with this particular event, there’s a lot of heat coming out of the ground that appears to be from the steam area,” Rafferty said. “That could be steam from a leak or it could be steam from water or sewer hitting the steam pipe, but it looks like the extreme temperatures could have caused some damage.”

Besides BGE, he said, every entity with underground utilities, even those outside the conduit, must commit to properly inspecting and maintaining their equipment.

“The more that the infrastructure is being upgraded, and the more people are excavating in the city, they just have to be good stewards … and protect the other utilities they’re working around,” Rafferty said.

Each of last year’s fires involved smoke and flames emitting from manholes, with a blaze in September causing an alleged explosion that scattered fragments of a manhole cover along North Charles Street. The conflagration caused significant damage to local businesses along North Charles Street, including a beloved bookstore, and injured a firefighter.

An explosion also occurred after an underground fire in the same stretch of North Charles Street in January 2024, but no one was injured. Both fires caused power outages.

And last June, an underground “high-voltage” electric fire in the same area of North Charles Street prompted a nearby building to evacuate. All of last year’s fires damaged the city’s conduit system.

“We don’t know the causes behind the fires,” Conway said in an interview. “We don’t know how big the scope of improvements is that we’ll need to make to the conduit.  And I think that’s the big question mark for us. We don’t know yet what we’re gonna do. We don’t know yet how much it’s gonna cost, nor the scope.”

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com, (410) 332-6672 and Katharine Wilson at kwilson@baltsun.com

The company did not disclose the number of job cuts but confirmed the plan includes “targeted role eliminations.”

“We have a broad plan and a number of activities underway to best position us to return to organic growth and reduce our controllable expense base over time—including targeted role eliminations, operating model changes, and general reductions across our expense base in all categories,” Arminta Plater, a T. Rowe spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.

The company opened a new 2,000-employee headquarters in March in Harbor Point, after moving from its prominent downtown office tower of five decades. The firm began building the two seven-story waterfront buildings east of the Inner Harbor more than two years ago, designing the waterfront campus to help attract and retain top talent.

T. Rowe had been headquartered since 1975 at 100 E. Pratt St., where it occupied nearly half the 28-story building overlooking the Inner Harbor.

The company declined on Thursday to offer specifics about the job cuts. The downtown Baltimore workers are among 5,200 area employees, including those in Owings Mills.

During the first three months of the year, the firm’s assets under management decreased by $40.3 billion to $1.57 trillion.

Rob Sharps, T. Rowe’s CEO and president, said in a May 2 presentation that the company was making important progress, “despite policy-driven market volatility pressuring our assets under management and revenues.”

But T. Rowe’s investment platform “makes us uniquely well positioned to navigate periods of uncertainty and to help our clients to do the same,” Sharps said.

The company is scheduled to release second-quarter earnings Aug. 1.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672. 

The number of homes sold statewide dipped 1.3% to 6,479, compared with June 2024, Maryland Realtors said Wednesday. It’s taking longer for homes to sell, with the median number of days on the market increasing by three days to 11 days.

But prices in Maryland rose compared with June last year, with the average sales price jumping nearly 4% to $543,801, data from the Realtors group showed.

In the Baltimore region, including the city and five surrounding counties, average home prices increased everywhere but in Howard County, where they dipped slightly to an average $710,770. Average prices jumped the most in Baltimore County, climbing nearly 10% to $470,772, but that county saw the region’s only sales decrease, by 8.4%.

The city saw the region’s smallest price gain, with homes selling for an average of $283,333.

Most of the Baltimore region bucked the trend of slowing home sales.  Increases in the number of homes sold ranged from a high of 14.4% in Harford County to a low of 1.6% in Howard County.

Sellers in the market longer than expected must increasingly lower listing prices to get contracts, and in Maryland and other markets, such price reductions are on the rise, said Cheryl Abrams Davis, president of Maryland Realtors.

“If this continues, it could indicate a shift toward a buyer’s market,” Abrams Davis said in an announcement.

Such uncertainty is affecting new home construction, too. Builder confidence plunged to its lowest level in more than two years in June, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index.  Measures of current and future sales, along with buyer foot traffic, have all declined.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com and (410) 332-6672

The company once supplied uniforms for medical professionals and commercial kitchen staff at 25 stores in the mid-Atlantic under the banners Scrub Pro Uniforms, Gallo Clothing and Alko Clothing Outlet.

The retailer plans to liquidate more than 1 million pieces of medical scrubs and other clothing and equipment such industrial embroidery machines. Available inventory includes scrubs, lab coats and chef’s clothing that can be bought in bulk.

The items are being auctioned off at CapitalOnlineAuctions.com. Bidding opened Monday.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672

At 75, Stilp is still at it — now protesting Baltimore-based Constellation’s plans to restart a reactor at the Harrisburg-area power plant, one not involved in the accident, in a deal with Microsoft. Stilp, who has lived nearby for decades, started Stop TMI Restart last fall. The group has about 32 members.

“We are two generations away from the accident that happened at Three Mile Island,” said Stilp, who accused Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, officials in an April lawsuit of failing to safeguard residents’ health and safety. “People have forgotten that nuclear power stands for dedicated dead zones with nuclear waste…People who are environmentalists have forgotten about all these things that their parents and their grandparents used to know. The new generations are not up to speed on nuclear power.”

But as Bob Dylan once sang, “the times they are a-changin.'”

As Maryland and other states push for clean air amid rising power demand, advocates increasingly see nuclear energy as a key, cost-effective climate solution. Leading the push in Maryland is Democratic Governor Wes Moore, who is backing policies to support new technologies touted as safer, more efficient, and more versatile than traditional reactors.

Valerie Gardner, a California environmentalist, argued that anti-nuclear stalwarts are refusing to focus on the goals of reducing carbon emissions. She said that too many focus on renewables such as wind and solar while rejecting nuclear. The founder of the nearly 10-year-old Climate Coalition said she has come around, now taking on fights to keep nuclear plants open, including Diablo Canyon, California’s last nuclear power plant.

“It was just complete insanity and stupidity to try to close a large, reliable source of clean energy,” said Gardner, who called out anti-nuclear activists holding “30-year-old gripes” stemming from “fearmongering promulgated by groups to make the public afraid.”

“They lost the fight and the plants were built, but they continued to carry the flag all this time,” she said. “In its 68-year-old history, it’s the safest known energy we’ve ever had, with no pollution and fewer deaths” than those caused by fossil fuels.

Anti-nuclear movement evolved as officials look to lower costs, meet goals

The “No Nukes” movement that grew out of anti-war protests in the late 1960s has ebbed and flowed, expanding from weapons to energy and gaining followers after nuclear disasters such as Fukushima. Shortly after Stilp helped organizers of 1979’s Coalition Anti-Nuclear Rally in Washington, said to be the largest anti-nuclear protest at the time, Bruce Springsteen joined Musicians United for Safe Energy in the fall of 1979 for Madison Square Garden’s No Nukes concerts. By the mid-2000s, natural gas had gained favor as a cleaner, more plentiful energy source, causing investment in nuclear plants to decline.

In Maryland, bipartisan lawmakers have focused on rising energy costs and want to encourage new power generation in the state. Moore, who backs expanding nuclear, has said the state has not gone far enough to generate energy to hit its targets.

Moore said in mid-June some proposals that did not make it into energy bills would have “allowed more nuclear into the state, that would have allowed nuclear to be seen as a clean energy source, which it is,” adding “we need to be able to do more.”

Senator Mary Beth Carrozza, a Republican member of the Education, Energy and the Environment Committee, sees opportunities to address the climate crisis as “more and more people understand nuclear energy is reliable, clean, and safe. There’s a recognition by … the general public that with the challenges we’re facing in Maryland with the energy crisis, we have to take an all-of-the-above approach. We cannot rely on wind and solar to make our goals.”

Groups like the Clean Air Task Force—founded in the late 1990s to highlight the dangers of coal power—are now pushing for nuclear energy policies in both the public and private sectors. Their focus is on lowering costs, speeding up development, and addressing challenges faced by older nuclear plants. The organization is exploring how state and federal governments can expand nuclear energy in the most cost-effective ways, including upgrading or restarting retired facilities.

Beyond renewable energy, such as wind and solar, it will take advanced nuclear, advanced geothermal and other technologies to achieve a 100% carbon free grid, said John Carlson, a senior regional policy manager for CATF, particularly given the needs of industries such as transportation and utilities looking to control costs for rate payers while meeting decarbonization goals.

“We see nuclear energy as a proven technology that can help meet climate and decarbonization goals in the United States,” said Victor Ibarra, senior manager for CATF’s advanced nuclear energy program. He said it will take “a wide suite of technologies beyond nuclear energy to effectively and efficiently produce the next electricity grid of tomorrow.”

Upgrades at plants in Maryland, elsewhere

John Phillippi, a nuclear engineer at Constellation’s Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby, oversees the high-security plant as director of operations. The two-reactor facility, originally owned by Baltimore Gas & Electric, began operating in 1975 and 1977 and was rebranded Calvert Cliffs Clean Energy Center last year.

During a plant tour, Phillippi said Constellation is evaluating upgrading the plant to expand capacity — a highly costly and years-long process to plan for and rebuild the turbine and steam-producing side of the operation. Locking in long-term customers is one way Constellation and other nuclear operators have been able to do that.

Other types of modifications have altered Calvert Cliffs from its earliest days, making it more efficient, reliable and safer, he said. In the plant’s 24-hour control center, reactor operators monitor flat panel displays, touchscreens and automatic alarm functions. The right side of the room is dedicated to Unit 1, while a mirror image on the left side monitors Unit 2. Equipment in the center links to the switchyard, which controls power on its way to customers.

Thousands of data points filtered through computers and alarms “can detect changes in any of our systems that would alert the operators to an early indication of something they need to take action for,” Phillippi said.

Gardner, the founder of Climate Coalition, said it’s imperative to allow nuclear plants not only to stay open but expand like Calvert Cliffs. A technology entrepreneur, Gardner began to embrace nuclear after she’d spent tens of thousands of dollars in 2008 to install solar panels but her energy bills still weren’t covered.

“I began to realize, we can’t put this enormous [climate] crisis and its solutions on the backs of individual residents,” she said. When she found “two-thirds of all clean [power] came from nuclear, my jaw just dropped. I didn’t even imagine that nuclear was clean.”

Future of nuclear energy

Gardner said the “No Nuke” opposition to nuclear power may have shifted last year when Constellation signed a 20-year deal to supply electricity to Microsoft data centers in the mid-Atlantic by restarting Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, now known as the Crane Clean Energy Center.

“That news might have been the inflection point where people realized this anti-nuke thing is just wrong, and that arguments against nuclear are not based on fact, not based on data,” Gardner said.

Last month, Constellation signed a similar deal with Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to power artificial intelligence technology with nuclear energy for 20 years at its Clinton Clean Energy Center in Clinton, Illinois – about 170 miles southeast of Chicago.

Those deals come amid growing demand for artificial intelligence that has big technology companies and data center operators rushing to lock in long-term clean power sources. Data centers require a consistent and steady electricity supply and have increasingly turned to nuclear for dedicated power.

Such deals continue to be opposed by activists, who argue electricity goes to far-off data centers, not consumers near a plant. Such groups include Harrisburg-based Three Mile Island Alert, which was founded in 1977, two years before Unit 2 came online and experienced a partial meltdown.

The partial meltdown, the worst nuclear power plant accident in the U.S., started about 4 a.m. March 28, 1979, with a mechanical or electrical failure in the non-nuclear section of the plant that prevented pumps from sending water to the steam generators, leading to a reactor shutdown, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The NRC said small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on workers or the public, but opponents have challenged findings in court.

Coincidentally, the 1979 film “The China Syndrome, depicting a nuclear accident, had been released just weeks earlier. It provided additional fodder for the “No Nukes” movement, along with another film,1983’s Silkwood, based on the true story of a nuclear plant worker who was possibly murdered after raising concerns about radiation safety practices.

For its part, Three Mile Island Alert said its advocacy has brought about improvements in communication, security and evacuation plans. In its most recent battle, the group wants to stop Constellation’s plan to restart the plant’s Unit 1, which was restarted in 1985 and then shut down for economic reasons in 2019. TMI Alert advocates for the phasing out of both nuclear and fossil fuel power generation, arguing that enough renewable energy and storage projects are under consideration in the regional grid.

Eric Epstein, the group’s chair, said he has the same concerns now as 45 years ago.

“Nuclear power is an economic boondoggle,” Epstein said. “I thought then as I do now, there’s nowhere to store the waste. Nuclear has rebranded itself as renewable, which is crazy. The industry over time has subdued the public into believing that by putting green gift wrapping on toxic waste  makes it an attractive alternative.”

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672.

The retailer will close its store at 3300 Belair Road and transfer prescriptions to a CVS at 5407-17 Harford Road, though customers can select any pharmacy, a CVS spokeswoman said Thursday.

CVS began trimming its store count in November 2021 and closed 900 stores through last year, taking into account population shifts and local market conditions, said Amy Thibault, the spokeswoman, in an email.

The chain now plans an additional 270 closures in 2025, including the Belair Road store and a second Baltimore drugstore in Federal Hill that closed April 2. CVS has 18 remaining Baltimore drugstores.

Drugstores have been among a wave of retail closures amid intense competition, economic challenges and consumers’ growing reliance on online shopping. Analysts say chain drugstores over-expanded to keep up with competitors without investing enough in consumers.

Walgreens has been shuttering 1,200 locations as part of a three-year plan. And Rite Aid, saddled with high debt and liabilities from opioid crisis lawsuits, filed for its second bankruptcy in May, saying it plans to sell all assets. It has so far announced closures of 15 Maryland stores, most in the Baltimore area, as part of hundreds of closings.

After this year’s CVS closures, 85% of U.S. consumers will live within 10 miles of a CVS, and the chain is continuing to open stores in high-demand areas, Thibault said. The company plans to open nearly 30 stores this year, including some inside Target stores.

“Maintaining access to pharmacy services in the communities we serve is an important factor we consider when making store closure decisions,” Thibault said.

The chain is offering employees at the Belair Road store comparable roles within the company.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672. 

The university signed a 12,480-square-foot lease for space intended for the school’s Flex MBA program, which gives working professionals a choice of online and in-person courses at three different campuses. The new South Baltimore campus will also be used for executive education, alumni events and collaborations with local businesses.

The university will become the latest announced tenant at the 235-acre project south of Interstate 95. Developers of the formerly industrial waterfront site include Sagamore Ventures, an investment firm of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, MAG Partners, MacFarlane Partners and Goldman Sachs Asset Management Urban Investment Group.

The addition of a “top-tier academic institution” represents a milestone for Baltimore Peninsula’s mix of apartments, offices, hotels, shops and restaurants, and will help build the community, MaryAnne Gilmartin, MAG Partners CEO, said in an announcement. The community is near Under Armour’s new and separately built global headquarters, where employees began moving in last fall.

The business school’s dean, Prabhudev Konana, said in Wednesday’s announcement that the campus will allow the Smith School to “deepen our engagement with working professional MBA students, faculty and the many alumni who call the region home.”

Other recent office deals at the Rye Street Market building include a 23,000-square-foot lease with accounting firm PwC and a 4,500-square-foot lease with real estate consultants Newmark. The building’s ground floor houses or will welcome restaurants such as Jersey Mike’s, Pinky Cole’s Slutty Vegan and Bar Vegan, Live-K Karaoke and Urbano Tex-Mex.

Recent retail openings throughout the Baltimore Peninsula also include Molly’s Dog Care, Ben & Jerry’s, Rye Street Tavern by Clyde’s Restaurant Group and Vessel and Little Wing at ROOST Baltimore by Method Co.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672.

The $15 million fund, overseen by BGE and United Way of Central Maryland, is taking applications from income-qualified consumers who have fallen behind on BGE bills.

The assistance pool is funded by a one-time charitable donation to United Way by Exelon, BGE’s parent company.

BGE attributes bill increases to higher supply costs amid rising demand and inadequate supply, as well as to more frequent weather extremes. The central Maryland utility serves more than 1.3 million electric customers and 700,000 natural gas customers.

“The BGE Customer Relief Fund allows us to provide immediate relief for BGE customers while we continue to work with state and local officials on long-term solutions to Maryland’s energy supply challenges,” said Tamla Olivier, BGE’s president and CEO.

United Way of Central Maryland has seen an increase in calls to its 211 Helpline for energy and utility assistance, including from people seeking help for the first time, said Franklyn Baker, the organization’s president and CEO.

Consumers can check eligibility and apply at BGE.com/relief.

The application portal, accessible from Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., will stay open until Sept. 30 or until funds run out. Grants will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672.