Several times a day, a truck drives to and from Robert Mattey's Glenwood neighborhood to pump and haul away liquid waste from the community's faulty sewage treatment system.

The daily ritual, he said, is disruptive, noisy and smelly.

"This is not what I had envisioned for my retirement years," Mattey said June 16 as he related his story to members of the Howard County Council.

Mattey was among the roughly 50 county residents, mostly from the retirement community of the Villas at Cattail Creek in Glenwood, who attended the council hearing in an effort to spur local leaders to address what they characterized as a non-functioning sewage system and to prevent others like it from being constructed in the future.

Mattey's comments relate to a pair of bills under consideration by the council. One of the bills, sponsored by council member Greg Fox, a Fulton Republican, would prohibit the installation of certain types of residential multi-user sewage systems in the future, while the other, proposed by County Executive Kenneth Ulman, a Democrat, would grant the county greater oversight and regulation of those already in the construction pipeline. The latter measure would apply to all such systems built in the future if the prohibition bill fails.

The council is slated to vote on the bills July 7.

-- Jennifer Broadwater

Zoning plan promotes land preservation

When Michael Laureno and his wife, Mary, moved in 1986 to their house, situated on 3.3 acres of Ellicott City land, they came to consider the place a type of bank account.

With a large portion of their lot undeveloped, the real estate was quite a nest egg.

Now faced with paying his daughter's college tuition, the Laurenos hope to dip into that account.

But if Michael Laureno had his druthers, he'd avoid selling a portion of his land in order to keep the dozens of beech trees on the property and the favor of his neighbors.

That's why Laureno has praised a proposal before the Howard County Council that would allow him to preserve his land while still profiting off the excess acres.

Through a proposed bill, council chairwoman Courtney Watson, an Ellicott City Democrat, wants to create a new land zoning designation called a "neighborhood preservation parcel" that would consist of generally small pieces of residentially-zoned land within existing neighborhoods commonly known as "infill" lots.

The bill would allow landowners with qualifying parcels a choice between developing their land or selling the development rights and permanently preserving their land.

A similar program has been in place for many years in an effort to protect the rural character of the western county.

The council is scheduled to vote on Watson's proposal July 7.

-- Jennifer Broadwater

Drills held to test emergency response

In an effort to test the speed of an emergency response, the Howard County Health Department was slated to execute drills June 18 in North Laurel and Ellicott City.

The drills, in which health department employees distributed food to residents, were performed in conjunction with a state-wide pandemic flu exercise, said Lisa de Hernandez, public information officer for the county health department.

In the event of an actual emergency, officials could be faced with the task of rapidly distributing medicines to households.

In the drill, which was conducted in the Chateau Ridge Lake neighborhood in Ellicott City and the Hammond Elementary and Middle School area of North Laurel, officials tested two methods of distribution. In the first method, the "medicine" -- in this case the granola bars and fruit -- were distributed door-to-door. In the second method, residents were asked to visit a centralized distribution point in their neighborhood to collect the "medicine."

-- Sarah Daniels

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