Postal officials quash practice of banning photos and recording at meetings on post-office closings

The U.S. Postal Service has adopted "an open door policy allowing attendees to conduct non-disruptive photography and audiovisual recording at community discontinuance meetings," reports Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office, a website providing information about post-office closings and consolidations. (Still from video of the DeWitt, Ky., meeting recorded by Eddie Arnold of the Barbourville Mountain Advocate)

The announcement comes following a formal inquiry by Ruth Goldway, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, to USPS. The service has confirmed at least 14 instances where restrictions against video, audio or photography were enforced during meetings on possible post-office discontinuances in Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, Hutkins reports.

At a community meeting in Success, Mo., USPS operatives "told those attending they could not record audio, video or take pictures or they would call the meeting to an end," Brad Gentry of The Houston Herald reported. "Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly a friendly way to greet patrons concerned about losing the community’s identity with the closing of their post office. . . . As the meeting closed, our Herald representative snapped a crowd shot and was later greeted by a plainclothes U.S. postal inspector who flashed his badge and asked for a meeting in a hallway." For a page PDF with Gentry's column, click here.

For a good story by Calen McKinney of the Central Kentucky News-Journal on a meeting about the post office in Mannsville, Ky., click here (free trial subscription may be required). One interesting angle to the story is the effort by Lebanon, Ky., lawyer Elmer George to save the post office, backed up by a detailed PowerPoint presentation, downloadable here.

The Postal Service's reply to the inquiry said postal regulations preclude taping of meetings by postal officials, but not by community members during community meetings, Hutkins reports. The new policy allows community members to make recordings, but charges local personnel with maintaining order and preventing disruptions. (Read more)

Interior Department plans to require disclosure of fracking chemicals used on federal lands

Natural-gas and oil drillers on federal lands may soon be required to reveal all chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing of deep, dense shales, Ayesha Rascoe of Reuters reports. The Interior Department plans to issue a proposal within a couple of months requiring disclosure of the chemicals, with finalized guidelines following within 12 months after the proposal.

The aim is to improve public confidence in fracking through complete disclosure of the chemicals being used, David Hayes, deputy interior secretary, told the Energy Department's shale gas panel. Interior is also planning to develop additional rules to ensure well integrity and manage waste water. Last year about 14 percent of U.S. natural gas production was on federal land and about 90 percent of those wells used hydraulic fracturing, Rascoe reports.

Journalists show inadequate enforcement of laws against toxic air pollution, pinpoint sites

A new report by National Public Radio and the Center for Public Integrity says state and federal regulators are still struggling to enforce a major part of the Clean Air Act, leaving many communities "exposed to risky concentrations of benzene, formaldehyde, mercury and many other hazardous chemicals."

The journalistic collaboration has produced an interactive map that allows users to look up Environmental Protection Agency data on approximately 17,000 facilities that have emitted hazardous chemicals into the air. (Click on map below for interactive version)

The "air toxics" issue has lingered for decades. The reporters found that more than 1,600 facilities are labeled "high priority," justifying urgent action, but nearly 300 of them have been in that category for more than a decade. About 400 of them "are on an internal EPA 'watch list,' which the agency has kept secret until now," they write. For the list, in an Excel spreadsheet, click here.

Enforcement has "been delayed by tension between the EPA and state environment programs, budget cuts and a system that allows companies to estimate their own toxic emissions," NPR and CPI report, noting shrinking state and EPA budgets as additional reasons for the lack of enforcement. (Read more)

This evening on "All Things Considered," NPR rural correspondent Howard Berkes reports on toxic pollution by a carbon-black plant in Ponca City, Okla. Thursday on "Morning Edition," he focuses on another rural community, Chanute, Kan., which has a cement kiln fired by hazardous waste. UPDATE: The Chanute story is here; a sidebar is here and a story about the cement-kiln rules is here.

Memoir of a remarkable life in rural journalism is inspiring and entertaining, reviewers say

Albert P. Smith Jr., who turned his life around as a rural journalist and co-founded the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, has published a long-awaited autobiography to highly favorable reviews.

"Al Smith and his contemporaries had to constantly balance muckraking reporter and crusading editor with a publisher’s mandates to grow his business and promote the community it served," former big-city editor Jim Squires writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Smith eagerly grasped the role of 'engaged journalist,' which to him entailed doing whatever it took to make good things happen." (H-L photo by Charles Bertram)

Squires is a member of the Institute's advisory board, but his high opinion of the book is shared by four others who have published reviews of it: David Hawpe, former editor of The Courier-Journal; Ronnie Ellis, Kentucky statehouse reporter for Community Newspaper Holdings; and CNHI and Huffington Post contributor Don McNay.

McNay sums up Smith: "His drinking caused him to lose a scholarship to Vanderbilt and many jobs in New Orleans. He stumbled into a small town, Russellville, Ky., as a reporter, found his way to an AA meeting and stopped drinking. He found a wonderful wife, created a blended family, bought a bunch of newspapers that he later sold for millions, was appointed by Jimmy Carter as head of the Appalachian Regional Commission and became one of our greatest Kentuckians." (Read more)

Ellis calls the book "a remarkable story of a remarkable life, lived on a stage larger than journalism or the set of his long-running show on KET, 'Comment on Kentucky,' or the mastheads of his weekly newspapers. It records a brutal struggle through inherited and early alcoholism, lost jobs, lost chances on the way to sobriety, success and stature. Along the way, he encounters an incredible cast of sometimes well-known and always unique people, the kind who, like Smith himself, make life worth living." (Read more)

"It is Smith's victory over alcoholism that provides the book's inspiration," Herald-Leader political reporter Jack Brammer writes in a story about Smith and the book. (Photo: Cover of 1974 Courier-Journal & Times Magazine that made Smith a statewide figure)

"Smith's unrelenting focus on fairness gained him a reputation," Paul Sanders, business book reviewer for Smiley Pete Publishing, a neighborhood-based publication distributed in Lexington, Ky., says. "Evenhanded coverage for friends and foes alike will win a newspaper respect for being unafraid to make enemies in the pursuit of truth," Smith writes. (Read more)

"This book comes at what must be an uncomfortable time for rural chauvinists. They cling to a point of view that is under siege," Hawpe writes for his old Louisville paper, citing the latest census figures that show only 16 percent of the U.S. population is rural. "Smith is an extraordinary man, with an exceptional devotion to the best of the rural values that helped form him." He writes about Smith's rural acolytes, including the undersigned, who will interview Smith on stage at the Grand Theatre in Frankfort Friday night. For details on that event, click here. To order the book, go here; to donate $10 of the cost to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, enter this coupon code: SmithIRJ.

Earlier this month, Smith was awarded the 2011 James Madison Award for service to the First Amendment by the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications. (Read more) To read KyForward's coverage of the event, click here.

Federal strip-mine chief defends effort to draft new 'stream buffer rule' as compliance with law

New regulations to protect Appalachian streams from strip mining would not kill coal jobs as Republicans claim, the head of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining said today at a hearing where he drew heat from GOP critics. (Photo by Paul Corbit Brown)

"This administration continues down this road of job-killing regulatory policies," Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, told OSMRE Director Joe Pizarchik. "It is mind-boggling to me that you can't, number one, admit that and, number two, stop that." Replied Pizarchik, a former top Pennsylvania environmental regulator, "It's not a job-killing rulemaking."

"He added that agency documents leaked earlier this year that showed the rule having a significant economic impact have 'no basis in fact'," Manuel Quinones reports for Environment & Energy News. Those documents "show state regulators' concerns about the preliminary documents prepared by a contractor hired by OSM to develop the rule's environmental impact statement."

Pizarchik said a new "stream buffer rule" is needed to follow the 1977 strip-mine law's ban on "material damage to the hydrological balance outside the permit area" because a rule enacted in the final days of the George W. Bush administration allows coal operators to bury streams. (Read more; subscription required)

As price of gold rises, so does threat to streams

The rising price of gold has revived recreational gold prospecting, but many experts fear prospectors' technology may hurt aquatic life. Some use machines called suction dredges, right, which vacuum gravel, dirt and other particles from riverbeds and streams, resulting in aquatic life being "killed by the machine or smothered in stirred-up sediment," Bruce Henderson of the Charlotte Observer reports. (Observer photo by Robert Lahser)

North Carolina, the nation's top gold producer in the early 1800's, has no commercial gold mines and requires no permits for recreational prospecting, Henderson reports. However, the popularity of suction dredging has many concerned. The Uwharrie National Forest, home to about a dozen old mining sites, banned suction dredging about five years ago and prohibits metal detectors to prevent damage to rare plants or historic sites. LandTrust for Central North Carolina, a group that owns 1,300 acres along the Uwharrie River, fenced its property last year to keep out prospectors. Of more concern to environmentalists is three firms' exploration of historic mining sites in the Slate Belt region, Henderson reports. If they disturb less than one acre no permit is required.

California placed a moratorium on suction dredging in 2009 to protect spawning salmon, Henderson reports.

Rural telecom providers fear shift of subsidies to broadband expansion will hurt their business

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission announced a major revision of the Universal Service Fund that will shift billions from telephone subsidies into a new "Connect America Fund" that will expand broadband services to millions of rural Americans. Large telephone and Internet providers are praising the decision, but many small, rural providers are more cautious. They fear the cut in subsidies they rely on will have have a dramatic impact on their operations.

Ross Boettcher of the Omaha World-Herald reports that the Great Disconnect, a lobby created by the Iowa Telecommunications Company Coalition, says "the changes will undercut their ability to afford investments in their infrastructure and cost their customers more in the long run." The CEO of Western Iowa Networks, a rural telecom provider, told Boettcher the company's revenue comes from three places: customer charges, compensation from other carriers and subsidies from the Universal Service Fund. Rep. Lee Terry, vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, who was key in early plans to change the Universal Service Fund, told Boettcher that changes in the subsidies would hurt rural providers: "We knew USF was going to be flattened, capped and reduced, but what the providers weren't counting on was another third of their revenue stream being phased out." Sheila Navis, executive director of the Rural Iowa Independent Telephone Association, said the burden to pay for broadband infrastructure expansion will fall on consumers.

The FCC hasn't yet released details of rules for the Connect America Fund, but an executive summary released last week reveals the phasing out of inter-carrier compensation fees over five years. Boettcher reports that rural broadband expansion will be opened up to a competitive bidding process, which will keep costs down for consumers and give more incentive to larger companies for expanding broadband services in rural areas. This was likely a result of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's pledge that consumers' bills would fall as hidden fees associated with subsidies evaporated. (Read more)

Grain used for ethanol is going into livestock feed in a bigger way than expected

Used grain from ethanol plants are replacing more corn and soybean meal for livestock and poultry than originally predicted, a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows. (Ethanol Producer Magazine photo)

Since ethanol production only uses the starch of the corn kernel, the remaining fat and fiber in distillers' grains increase by a factor of three compared to unprocessed corn, reports Kris Bevill of Ethanol Producer Magazine. On average one metric ton of distillers' grains can replace about 1.22 metric tons of animal feed. (Read more)

The prior assumption was that ethanol plants generated about one-third of the original corn bushel for every bushel processed, Southeast Farm Press reports. The new report says dry-mill ethanol plants generate on average 2.8 gallons of ethanol and about 17.5 pounds of animal feed for every 56-pound bushel of corn processed. (Read more)

Most states violate law requiring Indian foster kids to be placed within families or tribes

Thirty-two states have failed to abide by a 1978 law that requires Native American foster children to be placed with their relatives or tribes, according to a National Public Radio investigation. This makes the number of Native American children in foster care significantly disproportional to the number in the general population. Click here to see the disproportionality index for different states.

South Dakota Native Americans see nearly 700 children removed annually, many under subjective circumstances, and placed in non-native homes or group homes. The reason, Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters of NPR report, may be money. The state receives thousands of dollars for every child removed, with Native American children sometimes bringing more.

"Critics say foster care in South Dakota has become a powerhouse for private group home providers who bring in millions of dollars in state contracts to care for kids," Sullivan and Walters write. The state's largest foster care provider has close ties with top government officials gaining them millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts. (Read more)

Small farmers provide produce for Occupy movement to raise awareness of their issues

Some Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts farmers have joined in the Occupy Wall Street movement by donating fruits and vegetables to protestors in New York. Originally, farmers made individual deliveries and donations to protestors, but as the number of participating farmers has grown, so has their mission. Now, in addition to providing food to protestors, they are trying to raise awareness of issues affecting small farmers, Jennifer Hus of WNYC Radio reports.

"They all had this related thing: They're small organic farmers competing against big commercial and industrial farmers," Heather Squire, Occupy Wall Street's off-site kitchen coordinator (right) told Hus. "The kitchen became a place for farmers to come together. It represented that place to take their issues to." (Photo by Hus)

The farmers are donating their produce despite their own hardships, but through the creation of a website they are hoping to raise awareness of their efforts and generate financial and other support. (Read more) To view video, click here.

Prescription-drug overdoses twice as likely to be rural; now surpass heroin and cocaine deaths

Only two months after the announcement that drug overdose deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed this week in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that deaths from prescription-drug overdoses now outnumber the combined total of heroin and cocaine overdose deaths.

Eryn Brown of the Los Angeles Times reports that people living in rural areas are twice as likely as people living in cities to overdose on painkillers. In 2008, 20,044 out of 36,450 overdose deaths were caused by prescription drugs, mostly opioid pain relievers like oxycodone, methadone and hydrocodone. (Times photo by Lawrence Ho)

Brown reports that sales of the drugs increased with death rates. She writes: "In 2010, 4.8 percent of Americans 12 years or older used opioid pain relievers nonmedically - that is, without a prescription or purely for the feeling the drug causes. The report calculated that by 2010, 'enough opioid pain relievers were sold to medicate every American adult with a typical dose of 5 mg of hydrocodone every four hours one month.'"

The CDC recommended tracking prescription patterns, overdoses and limiting reimbursements to reduce inappropriate prescribing. It also cautioned that a balance between restricting access to prevent abuse and protecting legitimate use of the drugs must be maintained. (Read more)

UPDATE, Nov. 14: Some states track prescriptions of controlled substances by county, and the data can make for good stories and graphics, as the Lexington Herald-Leader showed with this story on Kentucky's prescription-pill epidemic.

Meth production expands as police forces shrink

"One pot" meth labs, in which the drug is cooked in a two-liter pop bottle, are increasing at the same time many police departments across the country are shrinking, reports Ana Campoy of The Wall Street Journal. The method has all but replaced kitchen-size labs because ingredients can easily be attained and mixed almost anywhere, and that makes perpetrators hard to find and stop.

Campoy reports that so much police time is spent trying to stop the manufacturing of meth, other larger illegal drug activity like global cartels, cocaine and heroin are ignored. Police in Tulsa have busted 15 percent more meth-lab busts this year than last year, while the department cut 70 officers. In Vanderburgh County and Evansville, Ind., the meth case load has grown so much, police designated three investigators out of their 20-member narcotics task force to deal with it full-time.

In Christiansburg, Va., This year, the police department is paying $6,000 to meth-lab informants. The DEA gave Christiansburg money to clean up one pot-labs, but it was gone before the end of last year. Nationally, incidents related to meth production rose above 11,000 last year, after falling sharply to around 6,000 in 2007, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. (Read more)

CO2-devouring algae may lessen the carbon footprint of coal-fired power plants

Coal-burning power plants may yet be the energy of the future, thanks to a carbon-dioxide-devouring algae. The University of Kentucky, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet and East Kentucky Power Cooperative are partnering to further investigate the use of algae to capture carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants and converting it to biomass, the university said in a release.

UK will place 135 interconnected tubes of algae (right) at the rural utility's Dale Station near Winchester to conduct a real-world test of the carbon dioxide reduction process. Officials hope to have 10 times as many tubes by early next year, Kelsey Sheridan of the Lexington Herald Leader reports. (H-L photo by Pablo Alcala)

The algae digest carbon dioxide and light in a process similar to photosynthesis in plants. (Read more) Once the algae has consumed the carbon dioxide, the by-product can be used to produce biodiesel, animal feed, fertilizer and chemicals. To view an explanatory video, click here.

The state agency committed nearly $1.3 million, the utility is contributing about $75,000 in in-kind and the university is providing $543,663. The research will be done by UK's Center for Applied Energy Research.

States, farmers say EPA model for cleaning up pollution in Chesapeake Bay may be flawed

The computer model used by the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor nutrient and sediment pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay may be flawed, say some farm groups and federal and state officials. Agri-Pulse reports that recent runs of the model show farmers in Maryland with high concentration of poultry production are meeting total maximum daily loads (TMDL) of pollutants allowed in the Bay and its tributaries, but farmers in neighboring counties with crop, forest and pasture land can't meet standards "even if they do every best management practice imaginable."

Officials from Pennsylvania and Virginia wrote letters to their EPA regional administrator, Shawn Garvin, and expressed concern with new TMDL standards. They said that in most cases, "the new model shows that best management plans, designed to reduce runoff of fertilizer, increase nitrogen and phosphorus pollution instead of reducing it." The Virginia secretary for natural resources wrote: "We have found the model, as currently constructed, is not appropriate for use in assigning loads in permits, developing local load targets, or measuring reduction progress. It is especially not appropriate for imposing consequences." They attempted to reveal discrepancies in the model during a modeling summit in September.

The American Farm Bureau Federation filed a federal lawsuit in January to halt the EPA's plan for cleaning up Chesapeake Bay alleging that "the TMDL rule unlawfully 'micromanages' state actions and the activities of farmers, homeowners and businesses within the six-state Chesapeake Bay watershed," Agri-Pulse reports. Said Don Parrish, Farm Bureau's senior director of regulatory relations: "The EPA has some real substantive, scientific problems on their hands and I don’t know how they are going to deal with them. There is nothing about their model that works. We think the courts will have to sort this out.” (Agri-Pulse is subscription-only, but a free trial is offered on its website.)

ACLU court victories mean teachers in two Tenn. counties can't pray during 'See You at the Pole'

In Middle Tennessee's Sumner and Wilson counties, where the American Civil Liberties Union won church-and-state separation lawsuits that ended parent prayer groups and Gideons International Bible distribution, thousands of students and parents gathered to pray this year during "See You at the Pole" events, which call for student-led prayer around school flag poles, are prevalent in rural areas. Matt Anderson and Jennifer Easton of The Tennessean report that teachers attended the events, but their participation could only extend so far before being in violation of the First Amendment.

Anderson and Easton report that in Wilson County, such events must be student-led, but teachers can participate in everything except prayer. In Sumner County, employees were told "that if they choose to pray on campus, it must be done out of sight and earshot of students." Hedy Weinberg, executive director of ACLU of Tennessee, said in a statement that See You at the Pole events are constitutional so long as they are student-initiated and student-led.

Some students participating in the events prayed for the ACLU and teachers who couldn't participate. Others said they understood the new rule because they wouldn't want teachers promoting any religion more than any other. Thaddeus Scwartz, president of Secular Life, a local group for non-Christians, told Anderson and Easton that he support teachers' rights to practice their beliefs, but added school is not an appropriate place in which to do so. (Read more)

Proposed Social Security changes would have a disproportionate impact on rural America

Republicans and Democrats agree that Social Security should change the way it calculates cost-of-living increases for beneficiaries, but any cuts would disproportionately affect rural America, Bill Bishop and Roberto Gallardo report for the Daily Yonder. The total personal income from Social Security payments in rural counties is 9.3 percent, almost twice urban counties' share of 5 percent. (Social Security Administration graphics)
"In many rural places, Social Security is a very critical element of the local economic base," Peter Nelson, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont, told the Yonder. In counties with cities under 50,000 population, Social Security accounted for 8.2 percent of total personal income, Bishop and Gallardo report.

In 2009, 16.7 percent of the national population received Social Security monthly payments either as old-age pension, survivor benefits or disability checks, Bishop and Gallardo report. The percentage for rural communities was 23.6 percent and 21.2 percent of small city residents received a check. To see data for individual states and counties, click here. (Read more)

Legality of referendum vote against Pebble Mine project in rural Alaska is under fire

Last month, voters in the remote hills of the Lake and Peninsula Borough in Alaska cast ballots to determine whether a proposed metals-mining project would proceed. By a vote of only 280-246, residents were able to "ban large-scale resource extraction," including mining for gold and copper, "that would destroy or degrade salmon habitat," The Associated Press reports. The legality of the vote is being questioned by the state of Alaska, which filed a lawsuit last Friday to invalidate the vote.

Superior Court Judge John Suddock initially cleared the vote, but is scheduled to address the legality of the vote again on Monday, Nov. 7, Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times reports. Lamar Cotten, manager of the Lake and Peninsula Borough, told Murphy that $600,000 to $700,000 was spent to try influence votes, and of even greater concern is whether cities and boroughs have the power to control such activities on state land. (Read more)

The state is suing the borough, claiming the state's authority to govern mineral resources management and development outweighs the vote. "It is about upholding the state's constitutional authority and responsibility to evaluate whether, on balance, development of Alaska's resources is beneficial to all Alaskans," Attorney General John Burns said in a statement. (Read more)

Weekly newspapers' lobby generates agreement on bill to at least delay end of Saturday mail delivery

Lobbying by weekly and small-daily newspapers and others is on the verge of pushing back the U.S. Postal Service's plan to end Saturday mail delivery.

"We have had a tremendous breakthrough on preserving Saturday mail delivery," Tonda Rush, chief executive and lobbyist for the National Newspaper Association, said in an email this afternoon. She said a bipartisan bill "will require USPS to carry out significant cost cutting steps and seek new review by both the Government Accountability Office and the Postal Regulatory Commission before it can again seek to move to 5 day" delivery, a step that seemed closer after President Obama and House Republicans largely agreed on it.

The bill would prohibit USPS from taking any steps to eliminate Saturday delivery for two years. "In that time, we hope the other cost-cutting measures are sufficient to avoid ever taking this step," Rush said. The bill is to be introduced today by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; Tom Carper, R-Del.; and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. "We have miles to go before this becomes law," Rush said, "but we are moving quickly now to help get this bill passed." The NNA website is here. For a summary of the bill, click here.

The undersigned, the director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, testified before the Postal Regulatory Commission last year on behalf of NNA, arguing that an end to Saturday delivery would have a disproportionate impact in rural America. The PRC essentially adopted that position, saying more study on rural impact was needed before Saturday delivery is eliminated.

Postal Service idea for post offices in stores isn't working, especially west of the Mississippi River

The U.S. Postal Service "has determined that its plan to replace money-losing offices with retailers contracted to offer basic services will not work in many rural communities," Reuters reports. "It is now looking at ways to operate some rural post offices more cheaply rather than closing them."

"When you get west of the Mississippi, it's more prevalent that you don't have stores in these communities, you have nothing in these communities. It's pretty much just the post office," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told the news service. USPS has abandoned its hope to have 2,000 "village post offices" within retail establishments; at this point it has only six, Reuters reports.

"They are discovering that in these rural areas they've identified there aren't necessarily other businesses that would take on the rural post office," said Ruth Goldway, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, which advises Congress about USPS. "Donahoe said USPS still plans to close post offices where residents can access another post office or where rural letter carriers -- who can sell stamps, pick up packages and offer other services -- could make up the service," Reuters reports.

EPA moving forward with new permit process for pesticides after foes fail to get help in Senate

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with plans to require new permits for application of agricultural pesticides near water, after opponents of the plan failed to win Senate approval of a two-year moratorium or repeal of the regulation that many call "costly and duplicative," reports Agri-Pulse, a Washington-based newsletter.

Pesticide use is already regulated by federal law and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, but the new permitting rules come after the 2009 6th Circuit Court of Appeal ruling in National Cotton Council vs. EPA that pesticide discharge is "a point source of pollution subject to additional regulation under the Clean Water Act, necessitating NPDES permits for each application near water bodies." EPA estimates that the ruling and its resulting plan will affect about 365,000 pesticide users each year.

Agri-Pulse reports that crop-protection trade group CropLife America says a general permitting process for pesticide applicators has long been used by the EPA under the Clean Water Act, but "Congress never intended non-point sources of contaminants to be similarly regulated, and exempted agricultural storm water runoff and irrigation return flows from the CWA’s permitting program." The House and the Senate agriculture committees approved bills clarify that, but the legislation stalled in the full Senate because of multiple holds by individual members and supporters' failure to attach it to other legislation.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., told Agri-Pulse, "Because pesticide applications are already regulated, this new requirement won’t provide any additional environmental benefits. All it will do is impose substantial new costs that slows down economic activity and hurts job growth at a time when we can ill afford to do so.” EPA announced that pesticide applicators covered under general permits won't have to submit a notice of intent for any discharges before Jan. 12, 2012. CropLife president Jay Vroom told Agri-Pulse that pesticide users remain vulnerable to lawsuits by citizens.

Agri-Pulse is subscription-only, but offers four-week free trials on its website.

Rural children face more health risks; most parents say their kids are healthy

Children in rural areas face more health challenges than those in urban parts of the country, and are more likely to be poor, more vulnerable to death from injuries, and more likely to use tobacco. Rural families also have more difficulty in gaining access to health care. But the majority of parents, regardless of whether they live in urban or rural communities, say their kids are healthy.

These findings are from a report entitled "The Health and Well-Being of Children in Rural Areas: A Portrait of the Nation 2007," compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Resources and Services Administration. The report's results are based on the National Survey of Children's Health, conducted in 2007.



The survey classified children as living in an urban area, a large or well-populated rural area or a small or isolated rural area. Large rural areas include large towns with populations of 10,000 to 49,999. Small rural areas include small towns with populations of 2,500 to 9,999. Survey results were not broken down by state.

The report found children's overall health status doesn't vary much by location. Four-fifths of parents said their children are in excellent or very good health, regardless of where they live.

But the analysis found rural children, as a whole, face more health risks than their urban counterparts. Only 67.6 percent of children in large rural areas and 69.8 percent in small rural areas are breast-fed, compared to 77 percent of urban children.

Rural children are also more likely to be overweight or obese — 34.6 percent of children in large rural areas and 35.2 percent in small rural areas compared to 30.9 percent of urban children. Rural children are also more likely to live with someone who smokes — one in three children in large rural areas and 35 percent in small rural areas do. Only one in five urban children do.

Though about 90 percent of children surveyed had health insurance, those in rural areas were more likely to have public coverage like Medicaid or CHIP. Urban children were more likely to have private insurance. Access to health care also remains a factor. Of the 2,052 non-metropolitan counties identified in 2010, 704 were designated as health professional shortage areas. Of those, 467 had shortages for dental care and 521 lacked adequate mental health services.

There are some advantages for rural children, however. They tend to be better protected and more connected to their families and communities. More than half of children in small rural areas shared a meal with their families every day in the past week. Children in small rural areas are also more likely to get physical activity every day (34.7 percent), though they are less likely to have access to community centers, parks or playgrounds. However, rural children are more likely to spend more than an hour each weekday watching television or videos — 60.9 percent of children in large rural areas did so, compared to 53 percent in small rural areas and 53.9 percent of urban children.

Potential for geothermal energy in the U.S. could greatly outshine energy from coal

In an effort to increase viability of geothermal energy as a reliable source of renewable and clean energy, Google is providing researchers at Southern Methodist University with funding to map the United States' geothermal potential. The maps, which are available on Google Earth, reveal that 3 million megawatts of energy, 10 times the amount from coal, could be produced through geothermal. Researcher David Blackwell told Energy and Environment News' Julia Pyper that the capabilities to grow geothermal energy sustainably will only improve as energy conservation and exploitation factors are further explored.

Geothermal relies on hot water found in reservoirs deep in the earth's crust along fault lines (mostly in the West) to produce steam that turns turbines and produces energy. After the water is used, it's returned into the earth and reused. The Department of Energy says this method emits little or no greenhouse gases. Pyper reports that geothermal is "one of the most underused sources of homegrown clean energy," saying the U.S. uses only about 2,800 megawatts to power 2.8 million homes.

However, with Google's help, the SMU researchers have mapped temperatures at greater depths than before and have found new areas of potential in the East. Research is now shifting toward enhanced systems that inject water into the ground to heat it. Sites that would support this method are larger than traditional geothermal sites and can support larger power plants, Piper reports. Existing oil and gas wells are being used to explore this method because research about the fluid properties of these wells has already been done and basins were oil and gas are extracted can have fluid reserves at many depths, increasing success of possible geothermal wells. (Read more)

Unemployed Alabama residents ready to work, but farmers are reluctant to hire them

More than 330 unemployed Americans have signed up for seasonal agricultural jobs in Alabama as a part of Gov. Robert Bentley's plan to connect job seekers to struggling farmers following implementation of Alabama's strict new immigration laws, Stephen Clark of Fox News reports. But many are still waiting for jobs, since only three agricultural employers are participating in the program and most of their openings don't start until January.

Many local farmers are hesitant to participate for fear most Americans cannot meet the physical demands of farming. Sweet-potato farmer Kevin Smith of Cullman, Ala., has not had a shortage of people interested in filling the positions, with 10 or more calls per day, but he says most quit after only a few hours because the labor is so intense, Kim Chandler of The Birmingham News reports.

Tom Surtees, director of the state Department of Industrial Relations, says farmers should give the jobs program a chance. "Americans can do the work and need the opportunity to try," he told Fox.

Marshall County saw its unemployment rate drop by 1 percentage point after many illegal workers left, Republican Sen. Scott Beason told Fox. "So what will happen over time is people will see opportunities open up and those opportunities will be filled by people willing to take a shot." (Read more)

Supreme Court will decide the fate of pigs that can't walk to slaughter

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments next week over the proper treatment of "non-ambulatory pigs," or those that can't walk or stand on their own, at slaughterhouses in California after the National Meat Association sued the state government on behalf of the pork industry. The three-year-old law requires pigs that can't walk when they arrive at slaughterhouses to be removed, inspected and humanely euthanized if necessary. Federal law already mandates inspection of pigs that are lying down, but they don't have to be removed from the slaughterhouse.

David Savage of the Los Angeles Times reports that the meat lobby's lawyers say federal law supersedes state law and is more humane because it requires "inspections of sick animals rather than automatically killing them." The inspections, they say, are crucial in finding pig diseases like foot-and-mouth. Steven Wells, one of the lawyers, told Savage that pigs are sometimes stubborn, "stressed or fatigued" after the trip to the slaughterhouse, but they usually recover and are fine. California Deputy Attorney General Susan K. Smith sees it differently. She told Savage: "We're not concerned about a pig who is taking a nap." She said removing "non-ambulatory pigs" will protect the food supply and prevent animal cruelty.

Wells said "severe financial impact" would be incurred by the pork industry if it has to kill 200 to 300 pigs a day because "they were lying down." He and the other lawyers for the meat lobby are asking the Supreme Court to strike down the state law on the grounds that the federal law trumps it. A federal judge in Fresno agreed, and barred the state from enforcing the law. However, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sided with the state in a 3-0 decision. "Hogwash," he wrote, saying states have always had authority to determine which animals should be slaughtered and which should not. (Read more)