The Baltimore County Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to spend $10 million in state open space money to purchase an 85-acre waterfront site where a coal-fired power plant operated for decades and turn it into a park with an eventual hiking and bike trail.
The Charles P. Crane Generating Station, a 400-megawatt power plant on Carroll Island Road in Bowleys Quarters, was a landmark for eastern Baltimore County, its two towers looming like candy canes above Seneca Creek where it meets the Gunpowder River. In 2018, the plant’s operator shuttered it. By that point, only about 50 people worked there, and it only ran in the winter and summer months when demand was highest.
Crews demolished the plant on Aug. 22, at which point the owners, Forsite Development, floated a plan to build 285 townhouses on the site. That would have required extending public water and sewer lines to the site, likely opening up the corridor along Seneca Creek and the Gunpowder River for more development. The Gunpowder is the main source of drinking water for much of the Baltimore area, and increased development threatened to send more sediment into the river through its tributary.
Neighbors objected, citing traffic and environmental concerns. County Councilman David Marks, who represents the area and has turned several unused properties into passive parks, began to build support for the county to purchase the site and preserve it. U.S. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr., and county parks officials endorsed the idea.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources provided $10 million in Program Open Space funds, which are earmarked to preserve open lands and, in particular, those that are along sensitive waterfront habitats. Baltimore County is also getting $1.25 million in state capital grant funding and $1.7 million in federal funds to support improvements to the park.
“Candidly, this was not an easy deal for a variety of reasons,” Marks said at a Tuesday work session where he presented the deal’s particulars. Because the county is using state and federal funds to acquire the land, community leaders who wanted to preserve the site needed to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops.
Complicating matters is that the former owners are not entirely vacating the property. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Forsite will retain 33 acres of the approximately 118-acre site. The company needs to clean up this parcel, according to the county, including a pier in “poor condition,” paved parking areas and a security fence, as well as trash and debris. Forsite must remove the warehouse and fencing, as well as cap all wells and septic or storage tanks prior to the sale closing. The company is planning on using the part it is retaining for battery storage and green energy production.
The seller, per the county, needs to mitigate “ongoing risks: from hazardous materials at the site,” which is underway.
That may be a tall order. The old utility station closed in 2018 as part of a settlement between its former operators and state regulators, who alleged the coal-fired plant exceeded emission caps for hydrogen chloride and carbon monoxide — toxic smog-forming gases that can irritate skin and eyes and cause fatigue, headaches, dizziness or nausea. State regulators said the operators didn’t adequately test for emissions.
Several years ago, a former owner spilled oil on the site. In 2022, a titanium fire burned through some buildings.
There is also the issue of coal ash.
When power plants burn coal, one of the main byproducts is an ash composed of fine particles. The lighter fly ash comes out of the top of the smokestack. The coarser, heavier combustion byproducts fall to the bottom. Plants like Crane flush the bottom ash from their boilers periodically, and hold the wash water in impoundments or storage tanks to let the ash settle. At Crane, that water is treated and discharged every other year into Seneca Creek.
In 2016, Crane reported discharging 170,000 gallons every two years, but the company could not say how much ash remained in the discharged water.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared that even after treatment, bottom-ash transport water contains “significant concentrations of metals, including arsenic and mercury.” The agency in 2015 established a zero-discharge standard, requiring coal plants to stop releasing bottom ash as soon as possible — beginning Nov. 1, 2018, but no later than Dec. 31, 2023.
Crane never had to comply, because it closed and was demolished a year before the deadline.
Now, instead of being a hazard for residents, the Crane site can be an asset, Marks says. He envisions connecting the park to other area trails.
“I think it will be a real value to county residents,” he said.
