Sveinn Storm’s late father taught him when he was a boy to fight for what he believes in.
“My father taught me that sometimes righting a wrong is worth getting a black eye or a bloody nose,” he said.
It’s a principle the 50-year-old Queen Anne’s County businessman has followed – perhaps too enthusiastically, his critics say – as he has carved out a career as the Eastern Shore’s unofficial environmental sleuth – part Robin Hood, part James Bond, but always on the trail of those he thinks are polluting.
For instance, when he suspected that Centreville’s spray irrigation fields were in violation of a state permit, Storm decided he needed to do some on-site investigation, albeit without benefit of the town’s permission. In order to scope out the facility, he crawled along a tree-covered ridge, snuck across the fields to a nearby reservoir, and took snapshots of the alleged violations, all while on the lookout for security guards.
He has found himself in any number of tight spots when trying to get information to catch what he calls the “bad guys”: creeping through the forest to evade security guards, hopping into getaway cars, and doing airplane flyovers to find the best ways to infiltrate facilities. He compares his tactics to war, minus the violence.
As a result, Storm says he has received late-night death threats, his car’s taillights have been smashed, and he has been arrested for refusing to leave what he described as an “illegally closed” session of the Queen Anne’s County Commission.
“Have I broken the law? Absolutely. Have I ever done damage or stolen anything? Absolutely not,” Storm said. “In Centreville I had a whistleblower on the inside who I asked for documents and I made sure to use my own copy paper and my ink so they couldn’t say I stole anything from them.”
Some local officials agree that he has been effective, if unconventional.
“He’s the most diligent guy I know in this county,” said Mitchell A. Keiler, a member of the Queenstown town commission and a restoration projects manager at the Department of Natural Resources. “He’s got that little bit of abrasion about him sometimes…I’d like to see a kinder, gentler Storm sometime in the future but we probably won’t see that this lifetime.”
Others, however, find that Storm’s brashness and the methods he uses to get his message out are more than just quirks, and that they distract from his ability to make a difference.
Michael Whitehill, a one-time Centreville Town Council president whom Storm has attacked regarding alleged connections between the town government and his engineering firm, McCrone, Inc., is one such person.
Whitehill says he respects Storm and the work he does for Centreville, but takes issue with what he regards as Storm’s penchant for “sensationalism.” Storm, Whitehill says, often “chooses to put something in the local news versus bringing it forward first for a public hearing,” a tactic Whitehill called a “pre-emptive strike.”
Storm makes no apologies for ruffling feathers.
He says he revels in catching politicians, and then calling them out during public testimony.
“I like to be able to get up there and smack them in the face,” he said. “I try to affect politics as much as I can, getting the bad guys out and the good guys in.”
Storm’s father gave him more than