According to a news release from the police department, 43-year-old Katrina M. Prieur of Upper Marlboro died a day after the crash due to the injuries she sustained in the collision.
Police said that around 6:15 p.m., officers arrived at the intersection of Mount Zion Marlboro Road and Main Street in Lothian for a crash involving a motorcycle.
According to the news release, investigators determined a 2012 Honda Accord was turning left onto Mount Zion Marlboro Road from Main Street when it was struck by Prieur, who was driving a 2009 Yamaha Star motorcycle west on Mount Zion Marlboro Road.
Police said Prieur struck the Honda’s driver’s side rear quarter panel, causing Prieur to be ejected from the motorcycle and land in the road.
The Honda was driven by a 20-year-old man from Bowie who was not injured in the accident, according to the news release.
Prieur was flown to the University of Maryland R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore with life-threatening injuries. She died the following day, police said.
The department’s Crash Reconstruction Team is investigating the collision.
Have a news tip? Contact Maggie Trovato at mtrovato@baltsun.com, 443-890-0601 or on X @MaggieTrovato.
]]>Police responded to a reported shooting at 12:55 a.m. on June 30 in the 1100 block of East Preston Street. A 33-year-old man was found with gunshot wounds and taken to a hospital, police said.
The man was pronounced dead as a result of his gunshot wounds. Homicide detectives were notified on Saturday of the death and are asking anyone with information to contact them at 410-396-2100.
Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or on X at @bnords03.
]]>
Baltimore Police responded to the crash at 1:22 a.m. on the 800 block of North Carey Street. The passenger, a 26-year-old man, was trapped in a vehicle and extracted by the fire department. The passenger was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The driver of the vehicle left on foot, according to police. The car was not reported as stolen.
The Accident Investigation Unit responded to the scene and is investigating the crash.
Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or on X at @bnords03.
]]>“Baltimore is going through a reconstruction, or a revival,” Taho said. “There’s nothing like going down to Fed Hill, grabbing a beer with your buddies and being able to catch an Orioles game in the same day. I think that weekend getaway is perfect for any new grad, and they would love to work there for that reason.”
Baltimore has made a name for itself as a city for young graduates to become financially stable, enjoy a lively social scene and find housing within their budget, while holding a position in their field of study, whether it be tech, health care or cybersecurity.
Recent college graduates have an easier time finding jobs in Baltimore than in most other U.S. metropolitan cities, according to a new study from ADP ranking cities by three characteristics: annual wages, hiring rates and affordability based on anonymized payroll data of more than 140,000 people aged 20-29 at more than 27,000 U.S. employers from January 2019 to April 2025.
Baltimore, including Columbia and Towson, ranked No. 3 on a list of best U.S. cities for recent college graduates to find jobs. For recent college graduates looking for a job, Baltimore offers an annual wage estimate of $52,267 and a hiring rate of 3.5%. The top city, Raleigh, North Carolina, had an annual wage estimate of $55,580 and a hiring rate of 4.2%.
Kimberly Clark, executive vice president of Baltimore Development Corporation, attributes Baltimore’s higher-than-average hire rate to the area’s strong college town network, with the Johns Hopkins University, , University of Baltimore and Morgan State University being located in and around the city.
ADP credited Baltimore’s high hiring rate and annual wage estimate to Hopkins, both the university and hospital, and the University of Maryland Medical System for providing jobs in science, engineering, health care, technology and mathematics as well as research opportunities for recent graduates.
In ADP’s similar study on the college graduate job market from last year, analyzing the same data from January 2019 to April 2024, Baltimore ranked No. 2, with a higher annual wage estimate of $52,000 and a lower hiring rate of 3.4%.
Taho works for Capital One as a cyber technical associate near Towson. Originally from Prince George’s County, he previously worked for Textron Systems, a technology company specializing in defense and space near Towson, after he graduated. Textron offered him the job before he officially received his diploma from Maryland.
He cited big players in the aerospace, tech and defense industries in and around Baltimore, like Northrop Grumman in Linthicum Heights and Lockheed Martin in Bethesda, as a “no-brainer” choices for anyone looking to work in the tech industry. Baltimore is already building on its reputation as a tech hub, seeking $70 million in funding last year.
“There are core sectors in the industry that Baltimore is a hub for that make it very attractive for recent up-and-coming professionals,” he said. “I wanted to stay close to home and get the chance to work for at least a well-known organization while not having to relocate.”
The entertainment, restaurants and nightlife that Baltimore provides also play an important role in attracting college graduates from other states and encouraging local graduates to stay, Clark said.
“Young people love Baltimore because there is so much to do here,” Clark said. “The lifestyle is what Baltimore has to offer. There’s lots to do. They can see concerts every Thursday at the First Thursday festival and then go play kickball with a Volo group after work.”
Nicole Marano, vice president of student success for the University of Baltimore, said many of University of Baltimore’s graduates stay for the lifestyle Baltimore has to offer, such as the nightlife in Fells Point, the variety of restaurants across the city and numerous music festivals, and end up working for the university. Students also feel comfort living near Hopkins for its career opportunities and its medical pedigree in case they are injured or sick.
“Students like the city’s size and, that there are so many opportunities for higher education and the benefits of having access to world-class medical institutions,” Marano said.
Graduates are hired to work in student admissions and build their administrative skills while encouraging others to learn and work in Baltimore. Other University of Baltimore students segue from the undergraduate and graduate law programs into the School of Law, going on to practice in the area.
“Oftentimes [graduates] like the vibrancy of the city, particularly Midtown because of the different restaurants, nightlife and that neighborhood feel you get near Mount Vernon,” Marano said. “Graduates from our school tend to end up in particular programs scattered across the institution in admission and institutional advancement in particular.”
Erick Rivadeneria, a University of Maryland 2025 graduate, moved to Arlington, Virginia, to work at Privia Health as a growth strategy and analytics coordinator. Also from Prince George’s County, Rivadeneria chose to move to Virginia because the job with Privia appealed more to him than one offered to him in Maryland, partially because of its salary.
“It was less so of a want to move to Virginia and more so that those were how the options leveled out for me,” Rivadeneria said. “There are different elements that come into that, such as income and where I could see my career going with this position.”
Although he is confident in the route he chose as a first-generation college graduate working in health care, Rivadeneria said the cost of living in Arlington is much higher than what he was used to in Maryland. According to the ADP study, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC metroplex has a higher annual wage estimate than the Baltimore metroplex but less affordability and a lower hiring rate.
As someone who frequently visited Baltimore growing up, Taho said he didn’t let the city’s history of a high homicide rate, which has dropped within the last year, deter him.
“It’s true that in certain pockets, you can make a wrong turn and end up in a sketchy neighborhood,” Taho said. “That’s changing.”
After rattling off many of the entertaining reasons to stay in Baltimore like going to Ravens games, grabbing a beer with friends in Federal Hill before catching an Orioles game and visiting the Inner Harbor, Taho said he chose to stick to the Baltimore area when looking for a job due to its variety of fields related to his major, information science.
“The cost of living was a huge factor,” he said. “You can rent a decent house in Baltimore for under $2,000. If you find that in New York, LA or even D.C., there’s a catch. I can come out here, make $80,000 a year and live comfortably as a single new grad right out of school able to pay all of my loans and still have a little bit of fun.”
Another boon for recent graduates is the cost of living in Baltimore compared with when he looked at bigger cities like New York. The ADP study highlighted New York as having high wages with a low hiring rate and a low rate of affordability.
Have a news tip? Contact Chevall Pryce at cpryce@baltsun.com.
]]>One side says the move will put low-income people at risk of losing their housing in an already tough market. While another says capping the program will actually improve the rental market for everyone, incentivizing landlords to lower rent.
Carol Ott is the tenant advocacy director of the Economic Action Maryland Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates for economic and housing justice for lower-income communities. She predicted this policy would be “disastrous” for their clients, around 10% of whom receive some kind of housing assistance. In her opinion, cost-cutting measures weren’t the point of this new policy, she said.
“It’s not about saving money; it’s not about taxpayer dollars — none of that,” she said. “It’s about being cruel.”
But Norbert Michel, vice president and director for the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, which is part of the Libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said the proposed limit would help decrease the cost of rent overall.
“If the government says, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it, we’ll pay for all of your housing,’ and it always does that, then that’s taking a big chunk of market incentives out, and it becomes less affordable in the end,” he said.
More than 50,000 Maryland households utilize the federal housing voucher program, also known as Section 8. The program, funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, provides rental subsidies to people with disabilities or low incomes. Participants pay at least 30% of their adjusted monthly income, and the housing agency covers the difference.
The cap is part of President Donald Trump’s 2026 fiscal year budget, which has not been voted upon yet by Congress, and is still being worked on in committee. If passed, the cap, as part of the budget, will go into effect Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year.
Housing prices in Maryland, while less costly than in states like New York, California or Florida, hasn’t been static. In Maryland, the average rental price rose 20.5% between 2019 to 2024, according to a Sun analysis of the Apartment List rent estimates monthly report.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development responded to a request for comment by The Baltimore Sun by sending links to previous X posts from Sec. Scott Turner and a recent New York Times opinion essay.
“Compassionate common sense says those who are able to work, should work,” wrote Sec. Turner in a post. “Allowing generations of able-bodied Americans to remain on welfare is not compassionate to them, nor is it fair to the American taxpayer.”
“We can’t disincentivize work and allow able-bodied Americans to settle for welfare benefits,” read one post. “One Big Beautiful Bill work requirements that lift Americans out of dependency and toward a life of self-sustainability,” read another.
Pros and cons of housing vouchers
The majority of those eligible for these services are already unable to receive help because there isn’t enough funding on the federal level, said Daniel Teles, a principal research associate in the housing and communities division at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.,-based think tank that conducts social and economic policy research.
Only one in every four low-income households eligible for federal housing services actually gets benefits because the demand is larger than the supply, according to a 2021 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C. -based nonpartisan research and policy institute.
Yet a 2015 study published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that there wasn’t any significant effect on market rents after the last voucher expansion in the early 2000s.
Still, Teles said he saw some pros and cons to the proposed time limit. On one hand, it would allow housing agencies to cycle through their years-long waitlists more quickly and provide momentary relief in the short term for more individuals, he said.
However, those exiting the voucher program would still not be able to afford their current rental because their income would not be able to match the unsubsidized price, he said.
Landlords must meet the long list of eligibility criteria before they receive tenants, but the benefit they can receive is the guaranteed payments from the housing authority. With the time limits, they could experience higher turnover costs and missed payments from tenants that can discourage them from renting to voucher holders in the future, Teles said.
The time limit could help improve the nation’s rental market, said Cato Institute’s Michel, as landlords enjoying the subsidies will now have to compete with the rest of the market. These landlords would have to lower the prices to attract tenants, dropping rental prices overall, he said.
When the government steps in to cover the rent, it takes away the competitive pressure that landlords would feel to lower prices, Michel said, and as a result, these subsidies artificially inflate rental costs.
“If somebody had rental assistance and now they don’t have rental assistance, that is going to make it more difficult for them,” Michel said. “But the flip side is that the landlord can’t charge as much anymore, so you have to take your pick.”
Bottom line, he said: “If you want to make housing more affordable, you can’t keep subsidizing.”
Daraius Irani is the chief economist for the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University. While he agreed that the federal housing subsidies do lead to higher rents, he said that the housing supply shortage in Maryland plays a larger role within the state. Ultimately, he said, he believes that the vouchers do more good than harm.
“Many individuals who are in these programs are working adults, but the housing costs in some places mean that if they didn’t have Section 8, they’d have to pay fifty percent or more of their income towards housing,” Irani said.
More administrative burdens for housing agencies
In Maryland, the cap could have a significant impact on the population, some of the state’s housing experts said.
The Howard County Housing Commission reopened its waitlist for its federal voucher program after 12 years in 2023 for a month, said its Executive Director Peter Engel. But of the 16,000 applications received, only 3,500 randomly selected received vouchers, he said, before they had to close the waitlist.
“It makes me feel extremely sad for the thousands of people in our county, much less millions of people in the country, who will be hurt by this,” Engel said. “It makes me feel a little hopeless for the future of the country, because we know that that sort of instability hurts kids, makes them do worse in school, makes their prospects for the future worse, and therefore hurts us all as a country going forward.”
In Prince George’s and Howard counties, officials said the voucher time limits will create a burden on the administrative level for housing agencies around the state.
The Housing Authority of Prince George’s County would have increased costs and logistical challenges in enforcing rental time limits and identifying new eligible homes to rent on the program, said Alexis Revis-Yeoman, public information officer for the Prince George’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
The time limit also could force evictions for households that could still be financially struggling — which could have a major impact on the budget resources of all county services, Revis-Yeoman said.
Several of Maryland’s elected leaders spoke out against the two-year cap, urging the Trump administration to rethink its decision, citing rising rental costs and an uncertain economy.
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat, called the cap an example of the White House’s lack of connection with the middle class.
“It is clear this Administration does not care about working class Americans and is more focused on giving tax breaks to billionaires,” Alsobrooks said in a statement provided to The Sun.
“Now is not the time to impose arbitrary restrictions on critical resources that help families afford their homes,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, in a statement to The Sun. “Instead, we should work to increase access to affordable housing and good-paying jobs in order to help more Americans achieve financial stability.”
Have a news tip? Email Stella Canino-Quinones at scanino-quinones@baltsun.com
]]>Epping Forest, Inc., the organization that administers the Epping Forest special community benefit district, an added fee on top of taxes collected by Anne Arundel County for reasons agreed upon by the district, wants to take out a loan to pay for the upgrade.
Both sides presented their cases to the Anne Arundel County Council on July 21, and at that meeting, Epping Forest President Stacy Korbelak said a vote held in the neighborhood ended 115 for the marina and 64 against.
Later, resident Delia Deschaine said there are more than 400 properties in the neighborhood and the vote does not necessarily represent its will. Mitch Glazier, another resident, later said it was one of the highest voting turnouts the neighborhood has ever had. According to the Epping Forest website, there are “nearly 300” homes in the special community benefit district.
Korbelak, when contacted, declined to comment on the grounds of pending legal action against the neighborhood, though as of Friday afternoon no such case appears in the Maryland Judiciary Case Search.
To pay for the enhancement, the neighborhood corporation would have to take out a loan for $1.5 million and pay it off with equal amounts from each household over 10 years. Due to amortization, the neighborhood would be responsible for roughly $500,000 over that period, while the other $1 million is meant to be offset by marina boat slip fees.
Jeff Stockdale, who spoke at the meeting, said SCBD funding should be put toward fixing the neighborhood’s water supply — a wellwater system in disrepair operated by volunteers. Stockdale also said the new marina would extend nearly 140 feet into the river, potentially blocking the view of the private beach.
“The SCBD is meant to support shared community services. It’s not to subsidize luxury recreational infrastructure for a few, but if this bill passes, one-third of our annual SCBD budget will be tied up repaying this loan,” Stockdale said. “We are facing real infrastructure needs.”
Stockdale was one of a few people who spoke out against the project at the meeting.
“I appreciate all the concerns that were raised, but they were also raised within the community, within the process that was established. And at the end of the day, a vote was taken, and that vote ended up being two to one,” Glazier said at the meeting.
“The Boat Club has gone to large lengths to explain their program, their vision for the marina, and I think that there is a very small, few disgruntled people that don’t like the way the vote went, and they’re engaging in shenanigans and lawfare to try and delay, derail and kill this project, and I think it’s shameful,” said Denise Peterson, another resident.
District 6 councilmember Lisa Rodvien, who represents the neighborhood, called for the vote to be pushed to a meeting on Sept. 2 so she can review the situation. The postponement passed, with only District 2’s Allison Pickard dissenting and saying delaying the vote would harm the project.
Have a news tip? Contact Benjamin Rothstein at brothstein@baltsun.com, 443-928-1926.
]]>The 50,000-square-foot vehicle processing center will be built at Tradepoint Atlantic in the Port of Baltimore, and will be equipped to customize, inspect and prepare McLaren vehicles for distribution.
The first McLaren vehicle processing center in the U.S., the center will facilitate shipments to the 26 McLaren dealerships in the U.S. The project is a “more than $10.5 million” investment and will provide more than 20 new jobs for automotive technicians, logistics personnel, management personnel and automotive painters, according to a news release from Moore’s office.
“We are thrilled to welcome McLaren to the great state of Maryland,” Moore said in the release. “Today, we mark the latest chapter in our work to grow our state’s economy by building out high-tech manufacturing in every corner of the state. This new facility at Tradepoint Atlantic in the Port of Baltimore will turbocharge Maryland’s economic engine, and is a vivid example of how we can create new opportunities by uplifting international partnerships and attracting foreign investment.”
Nicolas Brown, the Americas president for McLaren, said the company is prepared to invest in the community as the center helps McLaren expand its brand. The automaker’s vehicles, known for their engineering, power and agility, retail starting around $225,000, according to Car and Driver.
“As a manufacturer of high tech, innovative vehicles we are proud to be creating well-paid and highly trained technical jobs to ensure that our customers in the U.S. get the highest quality service for their new McLaren supercar,” Brown said. “The new McLaren VPC will enable us to fully check and sign off every single car, install local accessory packs and bring full paint protection film installment directly on site with the additional bonus of helping to revitalize a brownfield site.”
Have a news tip? Contact Chevall Pryce at cpryce@baltsun.com
]]>The agency reported 107 youth-on-staff assaults for all of 2021, and 112 in in 2022. In 2023, that number rose to 142. Last year, DJS reported 183 incidents of youth-on-staff assault — a 29% increase from 2023.
The union that represents DJS employees points to a lack of adequate resources and understaffed facilities as the cause.
“Our members are frustrated. Our members are exhausted. Our members are concerned about their well-being — about their family’s well-being — in addition to the youths’ well-being,” Patrick Moran, the president of the Maryland chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) said in an interview Friday with The Baltimore Sun.
DJS leaders point to a number of factors.
Former DJS Secretary Vincent Schiraldi said during a Friday interview with The Baltimore Sun that it could be linked to new staff getting acquainted with their positions, as well as children who are frustrated with the court system during extended stays.
Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, appointed Betsy Fox Tolentino, a veteran of the agency, to succeed Schiraldi. She is likely to be confirmed to the position when the legislature reconvenes in 2026 and is now leading in an interim capacity. DJS did not respond to a request for comment by deadline Friday.
Data obtained from DJS by The Baltimore Sun found that, between June 3, 2020, and June 30, 2025, there were 712 assaults perpetrated by youth held at DJS facilities against staff members.
From Jan. 1 to June 30, 2025, the agency has recorded 100 assaults against its staff, demonstrating a 28% increase from the same time period in 2024 and a 72% rise from 2021.
Collateral damage
DJS has a staff injury severity scale from level zero to level three.
According to Michael Sharp, a spokesman for DJS, level zero assaults signify that staff members sustained no visible injury or reports of pain. Level one assaults indicate that staff require on-site medical care. Level two ratings require off-site medical care, and level three, deemed the “most serious,” requires overnight admission to a medical facility.
More than half of the assaults reported between June 2020 and 2025 — 498 — were recorded as level zero. Only four incidents required overnight admission.
The agency reported that there were 33 instances of youth-on-staff assault where the injury severity level was not recorded.
The data obtained by The Baltimore Sun did not account for youth-on-youth assaults within the agency’s facilities. Moran said that, when children held in DJS facilities fight each other, staff often become collateral damage.
“They’re told to break up a fight between the youth, but that often gets turned into a youth then attacking the staff, and they have no way of defending themselves if they are assaulted by a group of kids in the facilities,” he said. “They have no recourse, nothing. And, you know, that’s dangerous for them.”
‘They act out’
Youth can be held under the care of DJS until they are 21 years old.
The data provided to The Sun from DJS demonstrated that some children as young as 11 and young people as old as 20 were culpable for assaulting staff.
The most prevalent age group to perpetrate assaults was among 17-year-olds, which accounted for 31% of the 712 documented instances. There was a rapid decline in assaults against staff among 18-year-olds, which showed a 48% decrease in attacks in comparison.
There were just 10 instances of youth-on-staff assaults among those who were 19 at the time of the incident. The agency reported only one incident of a 20-year-old assaulting a staff member.
The embattled agency has changed hands several times over the past few years.
Former Secretary Sam Abed passed the agency on to Schiraldi in 2023 after Moore was inaugurated. Schiraldi, who was often under fire on behalf of Republicans and frustrated members of the public, resigned from the role in June.
Schiraldi noted that 2020 through 2025 encompassed the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought “real staffing challenges” across the country, he said.
“Working in either a juvenile or an adult facility is really challenging work, and so this is a national phenomenon that people are having a hard time staffing up,” said Schiraldi. “Once you do solve that problem, then you have new staff that adds all of those problems” with training and getting acquainted with the job.
An analysis for fiscal year 2026 from the nonpartisan Department of Legislative Services reported that DJS had an 11.1% vacancy rate for direct-care staff at the close of 2024.
Schiraldi also pointed to the longer stays that children facing charges as adults must undergo, which he said leaves them frustrated and demoralized.
According to the most recent DJS Data Resource Guide, the average length of stay for youth charged as adults in fiscal year 2024 was 123 days.
“When a kid is in limbo like that for months and months, they act out,” Schiraldi said.
‘Penny-wise and pound-foolish’
Moran said that the issues seen within the agency are not the fault of a single secretary or governor, noting that both Moore and former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said they wanted to help Maryland youth, who often face adverse circumstances, without providing the agency with proper resources.
“The facilities they have are inadequate or sometimes outdated. That’s capital investment,” said Moran. “The sad part about this is [if] they do invest in these kids early on properly … it’s just so clear that they are not going to have to invest in them later on in life when they become adults and they have a better chance of getting these kids on a more productive path.”
“It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish,” he said.
By the numbers
DJS operates 11 facilities.
The facility with the highest instances of youth-on-staff assaults is Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, a facility for boys and girls in Prince George’s County, which reported 138 incidents.
According to the Cheltenham Data Resource Guide, the facility has a capacity for 72 children.
Green Ridge Youth Center, a boys-only facility in Allegany County, recorded the second-highest number of assaults at 121. With a youth capacity of just 21, this facility is significantly smaller.
According to the DJS website, two facilities, Alfred D. Noyes Children’s Center and Garrett Children’s Center, are temporarily closed. Both saw the lowest recorded number of youth-on-staff assaults at 42 and 8, respectively.
The fiscal analysis from the Department of Legislative Services stated residential facilities run by DJS “do not provide adequate capacity to accommodate the number of youths requiring out-of-home placements … nor do they provide the full complement of programming required to address the variety of treatment needs for the committed population.”
Moran agrees that a lack of resources has exacerbated the problem.
“You know that’s the bottom line here,” he said. “Bad things happen when you don’t have adequate staff, and bad things happen when you don’t have the proper programs that they are supposed to be running through because you don’t have the staff to do them.”
Have a news tip? Contact Hannah Gaskill at hgaskill@baltsun.com.
]]>Magothy River Association member Bob Moyer said he went out to photograph a particularly large pistachio tide on Cattail Creek in October, and was so overwhelmed by the sulfur smell that he collapsed to his hands and knees and had to crawl off the pier.
Pistachio tides occur when bacteria in the river produce hydrogen sulfide, which depletes the oxygen in the water and creates a rotten smell. The bacteria produce a bright green color, which is where the name comes from.
Working with the river association, Johns Hopkins University is researching the bacterial booms in Cattail and Old Man creeks this summer to identify where and when they occur. Pistachio tides usually develop between August and October, and Hopkins started collecting water samples in early July to get ahead of the blooms.
Paul Spadaro, president of the Magothy River Association, is concerned about people breathing in the sulfur, especially on Cattail Creek, where recreational activity often takes place. Without any monitoring or warning system, kayakers may paddle into a pistachio tide.
“I do think people need to know that when you smell that sewer gas, it’s time to move away,” Spadaro said.
Part of Hopkins’ research this summer is to determine if there is a danger to wildlife or humans. Sulfur bacteria are naturally occurring, but stormwater and fertilizer runoff entering the creek can increase the pervasiveness of these bacteria by depleting oxygen.
In October, Spadaro said 380 fish in the Town Neck region of Cattail Creek were found dead during the pistachio tides. In September, a bloom in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor killed 24,000 fish. The Department of Natural Resources deploys continuous monitoring of these blooms in the Inner Harbor.
“It’s the sulfur bacteria’s appetite for oxygen that makes it dangerous to fish, crabs, eels, and other aquatic life that need dissolved oxygen to breathe,” said DNR program manager Cathy Wazniak.
However, Wazniak said that without long-term data on pistachio tides in the Chesapeake Bay, she could not say whether any trends exist.
“We’re in here for the pistachio tides, because they’re kind of falling under the radar,” said Sarah Preheim, an associate professor at Hopkins who is leading the research project.
Hopkins received a $312,000 grant in 2024 from the National Science Foundation to research microbial processes in the Chesapeake Bay. About $2,000 is going toward pistachio tide research on the Magothy River.
Preheim said rising overall temperatures and nutrient pollution contribute to pistachio tides because warmer water holds less oxygen, based on monitoring data from the Inner Harbor in the past decade.
Moyer, a Berrywood resident, hopes Preheim’s research will help educate residents about the blooms and encourage them to rethink where the rainwater on their property goes. In the Berrywood neighborhood, storm drains open right into the creek.
He says homeowners should fertilize their lawns late in the fall, if at all, when colder water holds more oxygen and is less susceptible to the damage caused by the fertilizer chemicals. He also wants more waterfront residents to consider putting native plants as a buffer between their lawn and the creek.
Preheim said she is focusing this summer on collecting water samples to help determine what environmental factors are causing the blooms, so that next year she can create a predictive model to help warn people when these pistachio tides might occur.
One possibility is to provide sulfur measuring strips to citizen scientists, such as those at the river association, so they can test the water themselves for sulfur levels.
“The people need to know if it’s really toxic,” Spadaro said.
Have a news tip? Contact Tori Newby at tnewby@baltsun.com.
]]>The fine dining, southern eatery won in the Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program category, and Wolf took to the stage with the restaurant’s wine director, Lindsay Willey, where the chef expressed gratitude for the recognition, Willey and the rest of her staff.
Wolf talked with The Baltimore Sun on Friday about her journey to the win, as well as the impact on Charleston in the weeks following.
Editor’s note: Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
What about Lowcountry food first hooked you?
Growing up in North Carolina when I was little — and my parents are both from York, Pennsylvania — my mother was still doing Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. The lady across the street was from an old North Carolina family, and when we were over at their place, Mrs. Thrower would make pound cake. I just remember the first time I ate Carolina pound cake, and, wow, it was just the best dessert I’d ever had in my life.
I think my exposure to southern cooking started when I was little, but as I ended up moving to our new home in Charleston, that was when I really started to learn about Lowcountry cooking — working in restaurants and also working with local people and eating at their house and having their mom’s cooking.
Truly, southern food is food of the home. At that time, no one was doing fancy with fine dining and southern cooking. If they were, it was really much more French than anything — but they weren’t doing down-home southern cooking.
What made you want to bring that style of cooking to Baltimore?
I started it at Georgia Brown’s [restaurant] as the executive chef in Washington, D.C. The people that owned that, I had been working for their company at one of their Italian concepts. I had actually quit because I wanted to go back into fine dining, but then the VP of the company said that they were going to open a fine dining southern restaurant. I thought, “Well, this was meant to be.”
I obviously stayed with the company, and I opened the restaurant for them. Tony Foreman was the opening general manager, and that’s where I met him. A year and a half later, we were married. Tony grew up in Baltimore, and I was familiar with the city. I didn’t know I was making a lifetime decision when I said, “Sure, let’s move to Baltimore and try and open a restaurant,” And 30 years later, here I am.
I was very interested in continuing that food because it is very old, and there’s so many different cultures that affect it, from Native American and West African, particularly the people from Sierra Leone, to Western European, particularly the French, Huguenots and the English. Those influences are so important, and it’s a lot of cultures to begin to understand, so that was one of the reasons why I love Lowcountry food.
How do you inject all that history and culture into the food at Charleston?
I try to walk in the pathways of all of those southern cooks. I really try to do things as authentically as possible. One of the things that helps with doing that is that when I first started working in Charleston [South Carolina] at 19, the general manager was Glenn Roberts, who was part of bringing back Carolina Gold rice and the old heirloom variety corn that was produced in the Charleston area.
We don’t have a lot of history from the time the country became the United States of America, but we have tremendous Native American history and Indigenous peoples’ history. Grits were not a part of that, but it’s that use of corn that is so indicative of the Indigenous peoples’ culture and cooking.
I do a lot of research — I have the Carolina housewife cookbook, I have the old housewife cookbooks that are from the 1800s, I have the first African American woman’s cookbook, and I have many other Geechee and Gullah cookbooks. I found every book and public document I could possibly read about it.
Why is that research important to you?
I think it’s one of the most important cuisines in our country. I believe that the African influence is extremely important to preserve, as well as the Native American influence. Anything I could do as a chef to be a part of that, that’s super important to me. It comes back to the fact that there are French influences because I just love French cooking, you know, I was taught the basics at the Culinary Institute of America. I just love the food, and it’s not really that dissimilar to what I was raised on.
What is it like to work with Willey?
She’s just really good at what she does. I love working with her. She’s also funny. She’s a very smart person, and I love, appreciate and respect her work ethic. She’s just a really good taster, and that’s not something that comes naturally for people.
I was lucky that I grew up eating in great restaurants from the time I was a child and that family was in the food business. I’m meant to do what I do, and I believe that while [Willey] was pursuing a marketing degree and all these things that she was pursuing, and then ended up working for us as a waiter, and then ended up becoming this wine person, that was what she was meant to do. She has a natural instinct, along with the fact that she’s worked hard.
How has it felt to receive all the James Beard nominations and now to finally be recognized with the award?
Honestly, the first time I was nominated, we didn’t even know because it was so long ago, and it came into some obscure email address. The first time I was a finalist, the awards ceremony was at the Essex Hotel ballroom, and that’s how far it’s come. We were just at the Lyric Opera House [for the most recent awards], and it’s a black-tie event, but we used to sit in rowed banquet chairs.
Honestly, after being so excited about it so many times and then not winning, I go there with a pit in my stomach, certain that I’m not going to win. I support the industry wholeheartedly, but I’ll just be honest — I’ve been so disappointed every time. I mean, you hope you’ll win, and then you hear someone else’s name.
But I looked at Lindsay three minutes before they were going to announce it, and I said, “We should just have a plan.”
[For the speech,] three things that were most important to me, and one of them I didn’t do, which was to thank the James Beard Foundation. But I also wanted to thank the people who work for me and thank the immigrants in our country because we would be nothing in the restaurant business without immigration and immigrants. What’s going on in our country is so unbelievably upsetting to me, and I wanted to use my voice. It was a very heartfelt moment for me, and it meant a lot. It meant everything to me to be up there and to be chosen by my peers.
Now that you’re back in Baltimore, what has the atmosphere at Charleston been like?
We’ve been very, very busy. I’m very, very thankful for the energy that’s extremely high in the dining room. Baltimore folks are so supportive and so happy, and it’s overwhelming. They feel good, I feel good, and it’s just a happy thing.
Will there be any changes to the wine program?
We have a huge cellar, and we will continue to improve it. Lindsay will probably make me buy even more top-tier wines. One of the hardest things for a restaurant is the depth of age, and that’s another goal of mine and a bit more of a challenge.
Have you noticed your customer base change at all?
I feel like it has. We’re getting a lot of wine people in; we’re getting more chefs in. I felt like there’s been a change, frankly, immediately. At tables, I’m talking a lot about wine, and I’m talking a lot about high-end food. There is very vibrant conversation about both at the table right now, which is very cool for me because there’s not much more I’d like to talk about.
Have a news tip? Contact Jane Godiner at jgodiner@baltsun.com or on Instagram as @JaneCraves.
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