Baltimore County is a big place with over 700,000 people! It takes a lot of effort to make a county this big with that many people to run smoothly. A lot of the things you may take for granted, like plumbing or your roads actually have a lot of people hard at work behind them. Take a look at some of ways your County works for you every day!
Snow means a day off for kids, but not for Baltimore County. From the time snow is forecast until the final snowflake has hit the ground, Baltimore County is hard at work to make sure the roads and sidewalks are safe for your parents to get to work and for you to play outside.
Roads Need to be Plowed To do this, Baltimore County has to clear more than 2,360 miles of roads! They have over 317 trucks that plow and salt roads. Plowing the roads of Baltimore County is a big job and can take between 15 to 24 hours depending on the size of the storm.
Then Salted Salting helps melt ice and snow on the roadways before it can freeze or accumulate and cause accidents. Salting can take between three to six hours depending on the size of the storm. Baltimore County has over 47,000 tons of salt, equal to the weight of a humpback whale, to use in case of snowy weather. That’s a lot of salt!
And Kept Warm If the temperature drops below 25 degrees Baltimore County uses liquid magnesium with the salt to help keep the roads warm. The County has over 40,000 gallons of liquid magnesium ready just in case.
Baltimore County Public Schools do a great job helping kids across Baltimore County learn and grow. Baltimore County Public Schools serve over 107,386 students, making it the third largest school system in Maryland and the 25th biggest in the United States!
Places to Learn
To help all those students learn, there are over 163 schools in Baltimore County, with 103 elementary schools, 27 middle schools, 26 high schools, one combined middle and high school, and five special education schools. Buses, parents, and kids log in over 15 million miles every year in Baltimore County getting students to school.
Making it Happen
Getting the kids to school wouldn’t matter if there weren’t any teachers to help them learn, so Baltimore County employs 8,351 of the best teachers in America. The Schools also employ 6,667 other employees, like secretaries, cafeteria workers, and janitors who help make our schools run smoothly.
If someone in your neighborhood has a health problem or something has caught fire, Baltimore County’s Fire Department will be on the scene to help out! The Baltimore County Fire Department keeps us safe by employing more than 1,000 trained emergency response personnel who work out of 25 fire stations located across the County.
Volunteers
The Fire Department is also assisted by 33 Volunteer Fire Stations throughout the County staffed by regular people who volunteer their time to help keep you and your neighbors safe.
Ready to Roll
Baltimore County’s fire fighters, volunteer fire fighters, and emergency responders use 88 engines, 13 trucks, and three fire engines with really tall tower ladders. The Fire Department also has 46 medical life support units to provide assistance right away to medical emergencies around the County.
Call in an Emergency
If there is any emergency at your house or in your neighborhood, dial 9-1-1 on your phone and the Fire Department will be there in a hurry! Find your nearest fire station.
Baltimore County’s Police Department has been patrolling the streets of the County night and day since 1874 to make sure you and your family are as safe as possible. Baltimore County’s finest has over 2,454 members that perform tasks as different as making sure you can cross the street safely after school to detectives who catch crooks.
Calling All Cars
The Police Department uses over 806 vehicles to make sure the County is safe. The Police have a lot of different kinds of vehicles, ranging from prisoner transport vehicles to squad cars to hostage negotiation vans. The Police even have boats!
Help is Never Far Away
The Police Department operates out of nine stations located all over the County. You can see where the Police Station is in your neighborhood here, at the Police Department’s web site.
What makes your trips to school, your friends’ houses, and the store possible? Not cars, but roads! They may seem like they don’t need any care or attention, but Baltimore County works hard to take care of the more than 2,360 miles of roads year round.
Built to Last
Depending on the weather, streets can last up to 20 years or more without any serious repairs. The County’s Department of Public Works performs routine maintenance on roads ever five years though, just in case. Most streets in the County are blacktop streets, which is a combination of stone and asphalt spread over an 8 inch bed of stone. There are lots of things that can damage the roads, like lots of traffic for a long time, heavy trucks, sun, rain, ice, and snow.
Fixing the Roads
About 250 men and women work on keeping our roads in good shape. They work in 11 offices around the County so they can quickly get to anyplace in the County that needs their attention. Really big repairs to the roads require big paving machines that can take off the old blacktop surface and spread a new layer back onto the street.
Watch out for Potholes
The County also fixes the potholes around your neighborhoods to keep you from bouncing too high in your bus seats or family car. Last year alone, the County filled in over 60,000 potholes using 16,000 tons of hot mix patch. If you or your parents see any potholes or road problems in the County they can call Public Works on its pothole line at 410-887-3560.
If you’re in Baltimore County and want to read a good book, need a place to study, use a computer, want to rent a movie, or just want a quiet place to read, then your destination for all of those things is one of the branches of the Baltimore County Public Library.
A History of Reading
The first public library in Baltimore County was opened with private funds in 1915 in Reisterstown at Franklin High School. Baltimore County combined all its public libraries into the system it has today in 1948, opening with branches in Reisterstown, Towson, Arbutus-Halethorpe, Catonsville, Essex, Middle River, Pikesville, Relay, Sparrows Point, Dundalk, and Cockeysville. It has grown since then with 18 branches across the County.
A Lot to Read
The Baltimore County Public Library has 1,643,714 books that were circulated over 9,500,000 times last year! Don’t be left out.
If you want to play some football, shoot some hoops, play catch, ride your bike, or just spend some time outside, there’s no better place than Baltimore County’s beautiful parks. The Baltimore County Department of Recreation and Parks has maintained 6,600 acres of land on 190 park facilities since 1949.
Plenty to Do
You can do all sorts of things at the Department of Recreation and Parks’ parks and facilities around the County, whether it’s sports, a picnic, or even boating. Programs are also offered that are as diverse as little league baseball and environmental education.
Have Fun!
Find the park closest to you at the Recreation and Parks’ web site.
What happens when you flush the toilet or pour water down the drain? All that stuff has to go somewhere right? Well Baltimore County takes care of this too with its sewage system.
Down the Drain
Baltimore County uses over 3,000 miles of sewer pipes to carry away more than 105 million gallons of raw sewage from homes and businesses every day, making life cleaner, healthier, and smell A LOT better. This might sound pretty gross, but 97 percent of every day sewage is just water.
Sewage Gets Moved
Anything that you flush or pour down a drain goes to one of two treatment plants in southern Baltimore County. The County’s sewage system is called a gravity system, because it flows downhill to move it to the treatment plants. Every now and then the sewage needs a little help and gets pumped from low areas to higher areas. To do this Baltimore County has 114 pumping stations.
Then It's Treated
Once it is at the treatment plants, the sewage is cleaned. First they screen for solid materials, then its filtered through a process called sedimentation, which leaves a sludge that is further cleaned by treating it with microscopic bacteria. After the sewage is treated, it is returned to the environment as clean
Keeping It Clean
The Baltimore County Bureau of Utilities has 240 technicians and engineers that make sure there are no breaks or ruptures in the sewage line. A lot of those lines are either too small or too gross for people to go in though, so they inspect the lines with television cameras that are pulled through the pipes. These cameras are important tools in keeping Baltimore County clean and safe, but they also give the workers the kind of TV show where they’re hoping for a commercial.
How Did That Get There?
While inspecting sewers, County crews have found bicycles, water heaters, snakes, rats and even a wooden leg...but never an alligator.
Revised August 1, 2006
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