February 28,2006

The Office of Cemetery Oversight is vested with broad authority to mediate and adjudicate complaints involving cemeteries and burial goods businesses.

The Investigator for the Office of Cemetery Oversight, and I walked through your cemetery recently and took many photographs.

We were disappointed to see the current condition of your town’s cemetery.

Monuments are broken, headstones are lying on the ground, trees are growing over and around fallen tombstones.

While it is obvious the grass and newer graves are well maintained, it is sad to see the condition of the older memorials

In riding through Centreville, Patricia and I were impressed with the overall appearance of your town.

It is our hope that the obvious pride you have in Centreville will extend to your cemetery.

Sincerely,

George A. Piendak
Director
Office or Cemetery Oversight

The Centreville spray irrigation field for processed sewage, April of 2005

the five acre holding pond.

Runoff and soil from a small rain event flows across the east field and into this massive gully.

From the large gully it’s directed into a man made channel…

then into a small, frog filled ravine that ran about 200 feet down to Three Bridges Branch. It’s my understanding that this small ecosystem, full of frogs and a few turtles was destroyed and filled in last summer by contractors to get water off the field and into the stream much faster.

The other side of the east field 40 minutes after the rain stopped.

For about an hour after the small rain event, rain water and soil continued to flow into various parts of Three Bridges Branch off the spray field.

The large tires on the sprayers cut channels across the fields that funneled brown water off the field and into the woods.

watering the trees.

after the runoff problems were pointed out.

There are two major problems with runoff coming from the spray irrigation field.The first one is obvious, tons of soil being washed into the Corsica River. The second, the processed sewage that is sprayed onto the field washes off of the field and into the same tributary of the bay. What water falls on or is sprayed on to the field is suppose to remain on the field and be absorbed by the field. This is also one of the reasons the Bay always looks brown.

 circa 1881

             ( little grainy attempting to fix )

Not everything I photograph is ugly or an environmental disaster. Here are photos taken one summer day of some of the wildlife in my yard.

This is a private dump near Riggins Corner just north of Wallace Creek in Dorchester County.

This pile of composting crab shells is roughly 50 feet wide……

60 feet deep and was about 12 to 14 feet tall.

You can smell the rotting crab waste from as far away as almost a 3/4 of a mile, it can’t be pleasant for neighbors.

Across the road from the private dump is the Blackwater National Wildlife refuge.

On February 10, 2006 the public works department for Centreville Maryland pumped water and soil from a hole dug by a utility company after cutting through a water line. Water was pumped for roughly an hour into the gutter that runs to a storm drain and from the storm drain into the Mill Stream.

You can clearly see where dirty water mixes with the clear as it enters the Mill Stream.

600 feet down the stream from the mixing point.

The local paper the (Record Observer) reported that the soil that was sent into the storm drain was made up mostly of sand. This does not appear to be sand to me.

 Blackwater River