Judge Charged with Illegal Dumping

Doug Gansler, Maryland's Attorney General, has joined Anne Arundel County in filing charges against Baltimore City District Judge Askew Gatewood, claiming that the Judge unlawfully dumped material into a wetland, undertook construction without a sediment control plan, and caused water pollution.

The charges stem from accusations that between Oct. 1, 2006, and Jan. 20, 2007 some 40 truckloads of construction debris, including, masonry rubble, asphalt, broken bathroom fixtures, electrical wiring, chunks of concrete and fine dust, were dumped along the Judge's 470 feet of shoreline.

To be fair, the Judge hasn't been convicted yet, but I'm quite skeptical that both the County and State would be so aggressive on this if they didn't think they had a strong case. If, however, he is convicted, the saddest thing about this whole incident is that a man who owns a $1.2+ million home (shown below), located essentially right on the Bay is so cheap, and so brazen, that he would take $10,000 worth of construction trash and dump it into the Patapsco River rather than dispose of the trash properly, and pay someone to repair the shoreline responsibly.


8401 Bay Road, Pasadena, MD