Around Maryland

Maryland transportation officials are expecting in the coming weeks to solicit proposals for the last of three major contracts for rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge and to receive a large insurance payout for the disaster. Transportation officials have yet to determine which company will design and build the new bridge, though they’re hoping to award that contract by Labor Day.

An updated bay license plate is now available for Maryland drivers — and it’s expanded beyond the Chesapeake Bay. The new plate bears the same design, featuring the Bay Bridge and a blue crab, as the design that was introduced in 2018. But now, in addition to imploring people to “Protect the Chesapeake,” it calls for the Chesapeake and Maryland’s coastal bays to be protected.

The Baltimore Community Foundation partnered with national nonprofit Community Solutions and Thursday announced a $1 million investment in the Mayflower Apartments, helping provide more housing resources for individuals exiting homelessness or in need of affordable housing. The Mayflower Apartments, at 4004-4012 Biddison Lane in the Pen Lucy neighborhood of east Baltimore, is one several multifamily complexes nationwide under Community Solutions’ Large Cities Housing Fund, a social-impact private equity fund addressing the country’s housing gap challenge.

A coalition of groups demonstrated Thursday in downtown Baltimore over gas. The coalition, including members of CASA, the Climate Action Network and the Maryland PIRG Foundation, called on Maryland’s utilities to stop investing in gas infrastructure. A report from the Office of the People’s Counsel found gas utility spending increased the rates for Baltimore Gas and Electric and Columbia gas customers.

Amtrak and MARC officials told a community forum Wednesday that a proposed new tunnel planned to run under at least 10 majority-Black neighborhoods in West Baltimore will be deep enough to minimize harm to area homes. Sandtown-Winchester resident Gary English has his doubts. “They said because it’s going to be approximately 96 feet under my house … it will not disturb my house,” he said during the presentation.

Central Maryland residents in growing numbers are vowing to stop a proposed upgrade to the region’s energy grid involving a 500,000-volt overhead transmission line that would cut across farms, parks, neighborhoods, wetlands and forests in three counties. The Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project would carve a 70-mile path through largely rural areas of Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties, in areas, opponents believe, where government land preservation programs have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over decades to purchase development rights placing land in perpetual easements.

Maryland officials will not have to fully evaluate how a planned replacement for the Francis Scott Key Bridge will affect the surrounding environment, including the Patapsco River, federal officials said this week. The move clears a hurdle that could have delayed an already lengthy rebuild process. The Federal Highway Administration issued the exemption from the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, because the state anticipates the future bridge will share key characteristics of its predecessor — four travel lanes and the same location.

Judging from local wastewater surveillance trends, President Joe Biden has plenty of company in Maryland as he continues to recover this week from his third bout of COVID-19. The state is seeing the biggest spike in COVID levels in its wastewater — or sewage — since early January, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.