There was no odor, a Maryland Department of the Environment inspector said, speculating that the source may be a flocculant or coagulant used for treatment of sediment-laden water on construction sites.

“It’s not that the job has become harder. It is that it has become impossible,” the lawyer representing the watchdog agency tells Judge Pamela White.

The state allowed a North Baltimore facility to begin incineration operations without stack and opacity tests; the York Road facility had a second release after the first was reported.

The pipe break or leak, down the hill from Tudor Arms Avenue near the Wyman Park Apartments, is sending the substance into a tributary of the Jones Falls.