In 1928, Glenn L. Martin, an early pioneer in aircraft manufacturing and the founder of the Glenn L. Martin Company, a Lockheed Martin heritage company, purchased land in Middle River, Maryland, to build and test aircraft.

Today, Lockheed Martin assembles military launch electronic systems at one facility on site, and it leases another facility to a company that assembles aircraft parts there. Other parcels of the land were sold over the years to industrial companies and to the state for operation of the Glenn L. Martin State Airport, known locally as Martin State Airport.

In the late 1990s, two developments prompted Lockheed Martin to begin environmental studies on the land:

First, a possible link was uncovered between contamination on the airport property and the former Martin site when china, papers and other items connected to the former Glenn L. Martin Company were found in trenches on the airport site. Then, around the same time, Baltimore County expressed interest in revitalizing vacant waterfront property in the industrial complex.

Over the past several years, Lockheed Martin has collected thousands of samples from about 300 soil, 150 groundwater and 80 creek locations. Chemicals known to have been used during former industrial operations (including solvents, petroleum, metals and polychlorinated biphenyls) were detected, but the chemicals present in the environment at the site do not pose health risks to employees, visitors or residents in the community.

Committed to being a good corporate citizen, Lockheed Martin has entered into the Maryland Department of the Environment’s Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP), which will ensure the health and safety of future site users as well as protect the environment. The Corporation also is conducting environmental investigations on the Martin State Airport property under Maryland’s Superfund program.

VIEW THE FULL MIDDLE RIVER DOCUMENT ARCHIVE