Maryland: "Counties' Ambitious Stream Restoration Projects Stir Debate"

"Whitemarsh Run looks a mess, more a construction site than a stream. With its flow temporarily dammed and diverted, a track hoe is carving out a new, more sinuous channel for the badly degraded waterway running through a built-up patch of northeastern Baltimore County. New banks are being built, armored in places with granite boulders — all part of a $13 million makeover that's intended to help clean up the nearby Bird River and the Chesapeake Bay.

Bits of the 11/2- mile long project that have been completed look like a tranquil country stream, its water sliding across stones placed along and in its channel. But some scientists and environmentalists question whether such feats of ecological engineering, by themselves, can really revive a dead stream, or even reduce pollution much."

Timothy B. Wheeler reports for the Baltimore Sun November 16, 2014.