Around Maryland

A Prince George’s County circuit judge is heading to Kenya, where he will become the first American to serve full time on a United Nations tribunal that handles employment issues for the intergovernmental organization. Judge Sean D. Wallace, who has served on the county’s circuit court since 2002, will move to Nairobi for his seven-year term on the United Nations Dispute Tribunal.

The pandemic changed the way the Greater Washington Community Foundation thought about its purpose. The 50-year-old nonprofit philanthropic organization has historically focused on meeting crises — it raised more than $10 million for a Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund and has deployed funds over the years for people in the region affected by such events as the 2008 economic crisis and federal government shutdowns.

AlphaStruxure, an Energy as a Service (EaaS) company, and Montgomery County Thursday announced an integrated microgrid infrastructure project featuring electric bus charging and on-site green hydrogen production powered by solar and battery energy storage for the county’s Equipment Maintenance and Transit Operation Center (EMTOC).

Baltimore County residents will begin paying more for their water this summer. The Baltimore City Board of Estimates on Wednesday approved a 4.9 % increase to water rates. For the average county family of four, the Baltimore County Department of Public Works and Transportation estimated the rate increase to be about $1.15 per 748 gallons of water used, which roughly amounts of an increase of about $42 quarterly or $168 annually.

The Frederick County Division of Aging and Independence, formerly known as the Senior Services Division, recently announced that the preparation of the “Blue Book” Resource Guide is underway. For the first time, the division is hiring a vendor to produce this guide through a Request for Quotes. The resource guide will be printed in English and Spanish.

Baltimore County Public School's Superintendent Myriam Yarbrough was clear about her priorities for the schools moving forward. "My hope is that we come together and service the students of BCPS, that we are taking care of staff members who take care of the students, and that we are back to top in the state, right back there again where we once were," she said.

Taking issue with delays at two Baltimore projects to install underground storage tanks for treated drinking water, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the city to complete them by the end of the year. The projects, at Druid Lake and Lake Ashburton, will replace the uncovered reservoirs with massive tanks to protect the water from contaminants, including bird droppings, runoff and trash.

The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI), in collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, has been awarded a research grant of $14.4 million by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a goal to transform our knowledge of how much genetic variation there is in cells and tissues throughout our bodies.