By: John Garofolo, as told to the Maryland League of Conservation Voters Education Fund
The opinions shared in this piece are those of the speaker and/or the person being featured in the story. They do not necessarily reflect those of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.
Coal Power Plant Neighbors and Prolific Industrial Pollution
Stoney Beach is a lush tidal peninsula community of 458 homes in Anne Arundel County, surrounded by a large creek on one side, a smaller creek on the other, and the Patapsco River on another. When John Garofolo first moved there twenty years ago, enamored with his waterfront property and the beautiful views, he didn’t fully realize the impacts the two coal-fired plants on the creek near his home would have on his life. These two power plants, the H.A. Wagner Generating Station and Brandon Shores Power Plant, were within hundreds of feet of all of the homes in his community.
Cox Creek, Wagner, and Brandon Shores Power Plants, view from Stoney Beach. Image by John Garofolo. 2023
Over time, their impact became impossible to ignore. He began to notice a recurring layer of black and gray coal ash coating his home, car, and patio furniture, forcing him to clean constantly.
Then, in 2016, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the finding that the greater Baltimore area violated air pollution standards for sulfur dioxide, which designated it as a nonattainment zone, John decided to look more into the impact of the coal plants in his community. To his shock, he discovered that the two power plants adjacent to his home were the source of the EPA’s findings. If the entire greater Baltimore area was being exposed to toxic levels of sulfur dioxide, he wondered how high the levels were at ground zero in his community.
When he tried to find out, he discovered that a sulfur dioxide monitor had never been sited anywhere near his community. All the data on air pollution exposure came from monitors located miles away, nowhere near the coal-burning power plants that loomed in their own backyard. It didn’t take much for him to realize that using data from distant monitors would naturally underestimate the community’s exposure.
The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) did not install a sulfur dioxide monitor to measure local exposure. John’s concerns about the higher sulfur dioxide levels near the power plants led to his action raising awareness, organizing with the Sierra Club and local legislators to push for the installation of a sulfur dioxide monitor in the area. Legislation requiring the monitor to be installed eventually passed through the County Council, then the Maryland General Assembly, and was signed into law by the governor. In 2018, MDE finally installed a sulfur dioxide monitor in nearby Riviera Beach. The community felt hopeful—they would finally have a way to know exactly what they were being exposed to.
Stoney Beach Peninsula and the Wagner and Brandon Shores Power plants next door. Image by John Garofolo. 2023.
However, during 2022, in the midst of the pandemic’s quiet chaos and without the community’s knowledge, the then-MDE Secretary sent a letter to the EPA requesting the decommissioning of the monitor they had just installed. He argued that it was no longer needed because the coal plants complied with air quality standards. The EPA agreed to decommission it, stating they couldn’t get data from the monitor anyway because it was apparently an antiquated model and was generating buggy data that couldn’t be used. In effect, no useful data was ever obtained from the monitor, and the EPA continued to measure sulfur dioxide levels from distant monitors. The citizens in Stoney Beach and nearby communities never learned how much sulfur dioxide they had been exposed to.
The Wagner plant recently converted from coal to gas and diesel, but Brandon Shores continues to run solely on coal. While it added smokestack scrubbers in 2010 to reduce its pollution, it still emits toxins and some ash. The grounds of both plants are also highly contaminated.
Contaminated Dredge Material Dumping
The coal and fossil fuel power plants next door are just one part of a larger cluster of facilities nearby. Cox Creek, located next to the Stoney Beach peninsula, also houses a wastewater treatment plant that periodically overflows and frequently emits a horrible odor. Additionally, a medical waste incinerator, two Superfund sites, chemical and materials factories, oil refineries, and multiple dumps containing a range of contaminated and toxic materials are located just a handful of miles away.
One of those facilities is the Maryland Port Administration (MPA) Cox Creek Dredge Material Containment Facility, where dredge material from shipping channels, anchorages, and berths in Baltimore Harbor on the Patapsco River is permanently stored. Much of this material is contaminated from decades of legacy industrial runoff and chemical dumping and contains petroleum, heavy metals, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), and other toxic chemicals.
In his testimony at the 2026 CHERISH Our Communities Act hearing, John described how he approached MPA in 2021 to find out if they could provide sand for the living shoreline his community was planning. MPA invited John to join their Cox Creek Citizen Oversight Committee, where he learned about their work, plans, and the dredge contamination. MPA indicated that they had recently received a new pile of uncontaminated dredge material from just off Stoney Beach’s shoreline on Cox Creek and the Patapsco River.
“When it was tested as required by MDE, it was found to contain high levels of a carcinogenic chemical from coal-burning called benzo[a]pyrene. This means that we’ve been exposed to this chemical in the air and in our soil and in the waters around our community for decades. The pile of sand had to sit in the sun for a year so that the chemical would dissipate before we could use it. We do not know how much benzo[a]pyrene (or other toxins) we’re still being exposed to.”
Maryland Port Administration Cox Creek Dredge Material Containment Facility. Image by https://maryland-dmmp.com/placement-sites/cox-creek/
In late 2021, at John’s first Citizen Oversight Committee meeting, he learned that the state planned to dump contaminated dredge material in holes they intended to dig in the Patapsco River bottom just hundreds of yards from Stoney Beach and Riviera Beach residents’ homes. In fact, it planned to dig up to 90 feet deep in a 220-acre area to remove valuable sand and gravel and replace it with uncapped contaminated dredge material that the state would normally put in special containment facilities, like in Cox Creek. This practice is called Confined Aquatic Disposal (CAD). Without the proper protections and containment, John is concerned that this plan could destroy the fragile ecology of a large portion of the Patapsco River.
MPA considered the river near residential waterway communities as appropriate dumping grounds in its planning, quickly moving forward with a plan to create a 20-acre CAD “pilot” just off the shores of Stoney Beach and Riviera Beach. Residents of the greater Pasadena area who use that area for watersports, fishing, crabbing, waterfowl hunting, swimming, and all manner of boating were shocked and angry when they learned of MPA’s plans.
Organizing with the Anne Arundel Patapsco Environmental Coalition (AAPEC)
John organized a town hall to inform the community and local legislators of the issue and invited MPA to talk about its plans. The plan was met with outrage, and state legislators immediately began talks with MPA leadership about halting the CAD project. Shortly thereafter, John and his neighbors from around the Pasadena area formed the all-volunteer Anne Arundel Patapsco Environmental Coalition (AAPEC). A core group of volunteer scientists, conservationists, and community advocates formed within AAPEC to engage technically with the state in its plans and findings related to the environmental impacts of CAD on the environment and Patapsco waterway communities in Anne Arundel County and other environmental concerns.
Stoney Beach’s new living shoreline community planting event. Image by John Garofolo (June 28, 2025).
In 2023–24, AAPEC worked with legislators to draft a bill creating an independent task force to study CAD. The bill died in committee, but MPA created its own Bay Enhancement Working Group CAD subcommittee, composed of members they chose—many of whom were their own contractors—to conduct an external study of their CAD plans. While AAPEC and community members were given the opportunity to participate in the meetings and express their concerns—they cited over 85 unique, unaddressed risks—the study’s scope, design, and membership left major impartiality concerns.
In 2024–25, the AAPEC core group worked with District 31 legislators to draft a bill prohibiting the use of contaminated dredge near overburdened and underserved communities. MPA agreed to a voluntary four-year moratorium on CAD rather than a permanent environmental justice-based moratorium near Stoney Beach and Riviera Beach. The bill was modified by legislators to require only a four-year moratorium on CAD, and although it passed both chambers of the legislature, it was vetoed by the governor with the justification that MPA could be trusted without a law to live up to its voluntary moratorium. However, local legislators worked with the General Assembly to override the veto. MPA recently released its Bay Enhancement Working Group subcommittee findings report on its CAD plans, which called out the need for significant research on CAD before it could proceed. The moratorium will end in 2029, and the future of CAD remains unclear.
These aren’t just isolated injustices; they are ongoing threats to community health. In 2021, John was diagnosed with lymphoma and in 2025 with atrial fibrillation. He’s not alone; he knows many neighbors in his and nearby communities battling asthma, respiratory issues, neurological conditions, cardiac conditions, and cancer. Sadly, the community and area don’t have access to specific health statistics, even though they had requested the information from MDE in 2016. John says they were told such statistics were “too difficult to compile.”
“We’ve been fighting this battle uphill,” John says. “We just want to make the Patapsco river and communities around it safe and clean.”
Brandon Shores and Wagner Power Plants and new Stoney Beach living shoreline, a contrast in environmental action. Image from Stoney Beach archives. 2025.
Working with Environmental Justice and Conservation Stewardship Organizations and across communities
John Garofolo leading a WSA-sponsored community tree planting event in Stoney Beach in 2023, with the power plants looming in the background.
John has since joined forces with other frontline neighborhoods in South Baltimore and across the state, working to pass a cumulative impact environmental justice bill called “CHERISH Our Communities Act.” The bill would require regulators to consider the combined effects of multiple polluting industries on overburdened and historically underserved communities when evaluating permits, based on objective metrics about pollution sources and their impacts. There have been many versions of this legislation over more than a decade. The bill has faced intense opposition from industry, and the longer it sits, the longer communities like John’s suffer from multiple sources of pollution with no relief or systemic solution in sight.
“I feel a lot of cohesion with other overburdened communities,” John says. “We face very similar situations—people are being gaslighted and run over by industry and state agencies that are meant to protect them.”
Despite all this, John still finds joy and beauty in the place he calls home and the nature it supports. His and other community members’ connection to the land and water continues to fuel the fight to protect the environment and its people. As John says, “The waterways of the Patapsco are the lifeblood of our watershed communities.”
John is also an Anne Arundel Watershed Steward Academy Master Watershed Steward and part of the Anne Arundel Patapsco River Alliance. He has led the planning and creation of several conservation projects in his community, raising awareness about protecting our environment and ecosystems through reduced runoff and erosion, natural shorelines, native plants, and reducing pesticide and fertilizer use. John recently received a “Watershed Champion” award for his work from Blue Water Baltimore, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of the Patapsco and its watershed through science, conservation, community engagement, and advocacy. Working with Blue Water Baltimore and AAPEC, John participates in water monitoring around Stoney Beach and Patapsco Anne Arundel waterway communities.