The days of dumping construction rubble beside Days Cove appear to be numbered. For many who live or fish on the lower Gunpowder River, the end can’t come soon enough.
Plans by an eastern Baltimore County rubble landfill to double its wastewater discharge into a tributary of the Gunpowder sparked a public outcry last fall, which now has Maryland officials under pressure to shut it down.
In seeking to renew its state-issued permit, the Days Cove Reclamation Co. proposed last year to discharge up to 25,000 gallons of wastewater daily into an old mining pit off the cove. That discharge consists of stormwater runoff and leachate, liquid that seeps out of the construction and demolition debris buried there, carrying with it a variety of pollutants.
Anglers, birders, environmental advocates and other area residents pushed back, calling the discharge an intolerable threat to water quality and aquatic life. They were joined by the governing councils of Baltimore and Harford counties, which share the Gunpowder watershed.
Originally issued a discharge permit in 2013, the landfill is in Gunpowder State Park, on 113 acres leased from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. For a decade after getting a discharge permit, it trucked its leachate and stormwater offsite, usually to the Back River wastewater treatment plant. But it began releasing it into Days Cove in 2023, and that year the company exceeded its discharge limits 20 times, according to state records. It paid a $15,000 penalty for those violations. In 2024, it also violated discharge limits on organic waste and trivalent arsenic, a known carcinogen, but was not fined.
Under fire, the company in November 2025 withdrew its request to double its wastewater discharge. That wasn’t enough for some residents, who have demanded that the discharge be stopped. The facility should go back to hauling its wastewater to Baltimore’s Back River treatment plant, they argue.
But Jay Apperson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said the state can’t simply prohibit the discharge.
“There is no evidence that the discharge is harming aquatic life or interfering with recreational use of the river,” Apperson said in December. The landfill is currently in compliance, he said, and the state can’t deny a facility permission to discharge without some legal or environmental justification.
Apperson said in December that when MDE issues the landfill a new permit, it will include additional monitoring and evaluation requirements. In late January, he said MDE was still reviewing public comments on the permit and expects to make a final determination by May 1.
But the uproar over the discharge has cast a harsh spotlight on the landfill’s incongruous existence in Gunpowder Falls State Park. The landfill was already there when the Maryland Department of Natural Resources acquired the Days Cove tract in the 1980s as part of the park. At that time the state allowed the operation to continue under a lease, which has been renewed repeatedly since then. Since 2005, DNR has received $12.5 million in lease payments, which it has used to buy and manage state parks, forests and other public lands. The latest 10-year lease expired in December 2025.
That’s when residents learned that the state was about to approve a new lease for the landfill that would allow it to keep taking construction rubble for another five years. It would then have three more years to cap and stabilize the mounds of waste at its own expense before ceasing operations there altogether.
Some residents considered that an acceptable compromise, but only if the landfill funds a study of its environmental impact and if discharges from the site are independently treated and monitored. But others insisted it be closed much sooner. In all, more than 200 online comments poured into the Maryland Board of Public Works, which was to decide the matter, with most objecting to the proposed lease terms.
Under that barrage of objections, the proposed five-year lease was withdrawn at the last minute. DNR officials said they intended to reopen negotiations with the landfill operator to “address identified community concerns.”
“DNR remains committed to closing and capping the rubble fill in 8 years or less, as the current proposed lease would do,” said DNR spokesman Gregg Bortz. He pointed out that the withdrawn lease contained language that would not allow any more renewals. “We want to make sure the lease provides a seamless transition of the property into public use,” he said.
In January, the Board of Public Works instead approved a five-month extension of the landfill’s lease while DNR continued negotiations. Meanwhile, the company is allowed to continue operating under the terms of the expired lease.
Gunpowder Riverkeeper Theaux Le Gardeur, who had alerted many area residents to the issue, said he was troubled by the delay and lack of communication from the state. He recalled that MDE Secretary Serena McIlwain had written to the Baltimore County Council in November that her staff would coordinate with DNR and reach a “unified state decision” by the end of 2025 on both the rubble landfill’s discharge permit and its lease.
Le Gardeur contends that MDE should make any new permit much stricter. He disputed the MDE spokesman’s stance that the facility is in compliance, noting that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s online database showed violations in almost every three-month period over the last three years. As recently as summer 2025, it exceeded its discharge limits for iron and total suspended solids, the EPA site shows.
With the landfill’s history of repeated pollution violations, Le Gardeur said concerned residents want MDE to prohibit further discharges of treated leachate and put the facility under a consent decree that would automatically levy new penalties for any more infractions. They want the rubble fill shut down in less than five years, and they want to know the status of an escrow fund set up years ago to restore the site after it closes.
“I don’t think [state officials] have a full understanding that we want this thing closed as quickly and safely as possible,” Le Gardeur said.
Vera Reiner, who has lived along the Gunpowder since the 1930s, recalled that when DNR acquired the Days Cove tract four decades ago, officials promised then that the landfill would close soon.
“It’s time, past time,” she said in an online comment, “to return this beautiful area of the Gunpowder State Park at Days Cove to DNR.”