Mr. Rice was trying to figure out whether the County Council should pass legislation allowing for the disposal of fly ash outside of landfills.

"Marsha turned to me and said, 'Bert, what's the problem?' " Mr. Rice said.

"I don't know if I've got a problem," he replied.

At the time the popular belief was that fly ash, a byproduct from burning coal, was an inert substance no more threatening than dirt, Mr. Rice said Wednesday night during a meeting of the Greater Odenton Improvement Association.

He would later support legislation that would allow fly ash to be dumped outside of landfills.

"Hell, we took it out of the ground, we were going to bring it back in," said Mr. Rice, an Odenton resident.

Since then, time and research has shown that fly ash isn't as safe as everyone once thought. Since 1995 through September, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., and later Constellation Energy, dumped about 2.4 million tons of fly ash at the BBSS surface mine.

Eventually, water would seep through the substance, contaminating groundwater and wells in Crofton and Gambrills with a hit list of heavy metals, some carcinogenic. In the fall Constellation was fined $1 million, and the county banned new fly-ash dump sites.

"I take full blame," Mr. Rice told the 20 people at the meeting.

He is the first and only person connected with the fly-ash contamination to admit culpability. Back then, he said he just didn't know any better.

"It was perceived as a safe material. It was used for everything, roadbeds," said Mr. Rice, who left politics before fly ash became an issue.

He said he believed putting it into surface mines was better than what energy companies had done before, he said.

"You used to dispose of it at the landfill," he said. "At hill 5, 6, 7."

Rob Scrivener, president of BBSS, said in the fall that when he decided to allow fly ash to be dumped at his mine years ago, he, too, had no reason to believe that it could do harm. The electric company said it was safe, as did the Maryland Department of the Environment.

"It was an inert product, and we treated it as such. But it didn't work out that way," he said shortly before thanking Mr. Rice for reminding the attendees of how fly ash used to be perceived.

While Mr. Scrivener and Mr. Rice may have thought fly ash was safe, a study by Constellation in 1981 and 1991 showed it contains trace amounts of arsenic, barium, manganese and lead, all substances later found in contaminated wells, a state report said.

Since Mr. Rice and other council members gave fly ash the green light, it has gone from "inert" to something more sinister.

Brad Heavner, state director of advocacy group Environment Maryland, called the substance "toxic" at the meeting. He has encouraged the creation of new laws that reclassify fly ash from a non-hazardous to a hazardous substance. If such a switch was made, it would have to be disposed of differently, he said.

Currently, Maryland Department of the Environment is considering new regulations that would require fly ash to be dumped in facilities built with a liner. The idea is to partition fly ash and the liquids that flow through it from groundwater.

Mr. Heavner said he is still concerned about how fly ash is used. Road crews often used it as a grading material, piling and shaping it to build ramps for highways. If this occurs without proper safeguards it won't prevent contamination, he said.

The situation with fly ash reminded Ray Hodgson, a retired county firefighter, of another substance once thought safe: transformer fuel.

In the 70s and 80s, BGE provided the county firefighter school in Millersville with transformer fuel to burn in training programs. However, the fuel contains polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a substance banned by federal government in 1997 because it had caused cancer in animals.

Mr. Hodgson said he "swam" in transformer oil during training exercises. At the time, he thought nothing of it, but now he is concerned about his own health.

"In 1972 we were told that this transformer oil was a clean product," he said. "Twenty years later we found out it isn't."

He has since struggled to make sure someone is caring for his medical worries. He said he doesn't want people who lived near fly ash, a substance once thought to be harmless, to be forgotten now that it is known to contain carcinogens.

"These young people who are growing up, they are going to have to live with it," he said.