Maryland Fines Developer For More Gunpowder Tributary Pollution

By Bay Journal, Maryland Matters

October 9, 2026

Months after reaching a record settlement over mud pollution from a Harford County housing project, state environmental regulators have fined the developer another $24,000 for continuing to foul a Gunpowder River tributary.

The Maryland Department of the Environment levied penalties of $6,000 each for four occasions this past spring and summer when inspectors found that sediment from the Ridgely’s Reserve development had washed offsite into local streams.

On May 19, MDE announced that Texas-based homebuilder DR Horton, its development subsidiary Forestar USA Real Estate Group and a Pennsylvania building contractor agreed to pay $4.1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the state and the nonprofit Gunpowder Riverkeeper.

That deal came in answer to more than four years of complaints from area residents about chronic muddy runoff from the 121-acre housing development in Joppa. Almost whenever rain fell, Foster Branch and the tidal Gunpowder basin turned murky shades of orange and brown. The lower Gunpowder lost much of its underwater grasses, critical habitat for fish and crabs.

The $2 million civil penalty in the settlement was the largest ever in Maryland for runoff pollution from a construction site, according to MDE. The other $2.1 million paid by the developers is to be used for “community-driven” remediation projects to restore aquatic habitat in Foster Branch and the Gunpowder.

Under the terms of the court-approved consent decree, the companies agreed to pay penalties ranging from $1,000 to $6,000 for any future violations of their permits to build 388 homes at Ridgely’s Reserve.

In a Sept. 10 letter, MDE wrote that state and county inspectors found sediment and erosion control violations in late May, July and August. MDE assessed the latest penalties against Forestar alone, though, and just for illegal discharges of sediment into the streams feeding into Foster Branch.

Forestar did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

MDE’s inspection reports list other violations, including instances of eroding soil, exposed soil vulnerable to washing off in a rainstorm, and improperly installed “silt fences’’ meant to keep mud from running off the site.

Aimena Lipscomb, an MDE spokesperson, acknowledged that the inspection reports documented other permit violations. But she said the consent decree signed by the developers gave them seven days to correct those violations before penalties would apply.

“MDE has no evidence that those violations remained uncorrected for more than 7 days,” she said by email.

The decree specified that Forestar would have to pay $6,000, though, for each day of unlawful sediment discharges to Foster Branch or the Gunpowder. MDE did not conduct daily inspections, so that might explain why each discharge identified yielded only one $6,000 penalty.

But in at least one case, MDE had documentary evidence that mud from an illegal discharge was either continuing or not immediately cleaned up. Forestar wrote to MDE that it had “mucked out” the sediment-clogged stream bed two days after MDE’s inspection and again six days after the cited violation. The MDE spokesperson did not respond to a request to explain its reasoning in that case.

Theaux Le Gardeur, the Gunpowder Riverkeeper, said he and the group’s lawyer want to meet with MDE officials to understand their rationale for not imposing more penalties.

Meanwhile, he and some area residents suggested Harford County could and should do more to crack down on any continuing problems at the development. The county did levy a total of $45,000 in fines from 2023 until January 2026 and then got the developer to agree to even more stringent runoff controls than previously required.

Through the summer, county inspectors visited the construction site weekly and after heavy storms. They issued a series of stop-work orders and “correction notices” for multiple infractions, many of them similar to those cited by MDE. The county has since begun making daily inspections, according to a recent county report shared with residents. A county spokesman said in August that based on violations found then, officials were considering revoking permits.

Le Gardeur contended that the settlement does not preclude Harford from levying its own fines and penalties. While penalties assessed by the state go into a statewide clean water fund, he suggested that any fines the county collects could help pay for closer monitoring of the development and for restoring Foster Branch and the impacted habitat of the lower Gunpowder.

“I am concerned about the cumulative impacts on the environment and community of the site being out of compliance for over 4 1/2 years,” he said.

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: scrane@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and Twitter.