More than 70% of U.S. dams will be 50 years old by 2020; thousands in need of repairs

U.S. dams are getting older and creating hazardous conditions like the near disaster in Oroville, Calif., that led to the evacuation of 180,000 people, Troy Griggs, Gregor Aisch and Sarah Almukhtar report for The New York Times. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials in 2015 listed nearly 2,000 state-regulated high-hazard dams in the U.S. as being in need of repair. The American Society of Civil Engineers says that by 2020, 70 percent of U.S. dams will be more than 50 years old. (Times map: Age of major U.S. dams)

In 2016, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials "estimated that it would cost $60 billion to rehabilitate all the dams that needed to be brought up to safe condition, with nearly $20 billion of that sum going toward repair of dams with a high potential for hazard," reports the Times.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says more than 8,000 of the 90,000 dams in its inventory are classified as major dams by height or storage capacity, according to guidelines established by the United States Geological Survey, reports the Times.

Hazard potential for Nevada dams

While the Oroville dam drew national attention, there was another disaster two weeks ago in Nevada when heavy rains caused the Twentyone Mile Dam to burst, "resulting in flooding, damaged property and closed roads throughout the region," reports the Times. The Corps says "The earthen dam, built in the early 1900s and less than 50 feet tall, is one of more than 60,000 'low hazard' dams. Typically, failure of a low hazard dam would cause property damage, but it would most likely not kill anyone."

Nutritionists want to ban use of food stamps for junk food

Nutrition educators want the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—formerly known as food stamps—to ban the purchase of junk food through the program, Jen Fifield reports for Stateline.

According to a 2016 report from the Department of Agriculture, the top items bought with food stamps are soft drinks, which are high in sugar and have been blamed on increasing childhood obesity, which is more prevalent among rural children. Studies have suggested a link between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and dental caries, weight gain, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in children.

The USDA report found that "23 cents of every food stamp dollar is used to buy candy, desserts, salty snacks, sugar and sweetened beverages," Fifield writes. "The report, along with the election of President Donald Trump, who may be more inclined to tighten welfare rules, has reignited a long-standing debate on whether the government should allow people to use food stamps to buy unhealthy food."

"Lawmakers in at least five states—Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico and Tennessee—introduced bills this year to ask the USDA for permission to ban the purchase of certain kinds of food or drinks, such as candy and soda, with food stamps," Fifield writes. "Since the USDA administers the program, states can’t create their own restrictions. But the department can give a state permission to conduct a pilot to test new ideas—something it has so far been unwilling to do."

"Many public health and medical officials have supported the idea of restrictions on junk food for years, saying the program was meant to supplement nutrition but is instead feeding into the country’s unhealthy habits and worsening the obesity epidemic," Fifield writes. "The idea sounds appealing to people who don’t know much about nutrition or how the program works, said Ellen Vollinger, legal director for the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit that aims to reduce hunger. The proposals often fail, she said, once lawmakers find out how costly and complicated they would be to implement, including how to determine which food items should be restricted and how to create a database and keep it updated as new products come out. FRAC and similar groups that fight to end hunger, along with organizations representing merchants, are fervently opposed to restrictions, saying that along with being burdensome to implement, they are also unlikely to change eating habits."

Rural forest canopy disappearing, says study of satellite images of forest maps

A study by researchers at the State University of New York at Syracuse "shows the rural forest canopy disappearing," Darryl Fears reports for The Washington Post. The study, which used satellite images of forest maps across the continental U.S. taken in the 1990s, then again from 2000-2012, found that "Forest space disappeared from the U.S. in such big chunks that the average distance from any point in the nation to a forest increased by 14 percent, about a third of a mile."

Researchers Sheng Yang and Giorgos Mountrakis "marked tree canopy that disappeared over a decade in red to highlight the change. In one illustration included in the study, the page appeared to bleed," Fears writes. Mountrakis said, “So if you are in the western U.S. or you are in a rural area or you are in land owned by a public entity, it could be federal, state or local, your distance to the forest is increasing much faster than the other areas. The forests are getting further away from you.”

The study, published in the online journal PLOS One, says the "disappearance isn’t happening in cities, where people often complain about the uprooting of trees for development," Fears writes. "It’s happening in rural America, where trees are falling and hardly anyone hears. That finding turns conventional wisdom about forest loss on its head, Mountrakis said." He told Fears, “The public perceives the urbanized and private lands as more vulnerable, but that’s not what our study showed. Rural areas are at a higher risk of losing these forested patches.” (SUNY at Syracuse graphic: Forest cover change and forest attrition distance change in level III ecoregions)

N.H. joins states allowing residents to carry concealed guns without permit; even at schools

New Hampshire gun owners can now carry concealed firearms without a permit, Dave Solomon reports for the New Hampshire Union-Leader. Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who took office last month, signed into law Wednesday a bill that allows anyone who legally owns a gun to "carry it in a concealed fashion without a permit from their local police chief." It was the first bill Sununu has signed into law as governor.

Sununu told reporters, "SB 12 ensures New Hampshire citizens are guaranteed the fundamental right to carry a firearm in defense of themselves and their families, as prescribed by our state constitution. This is about safety. This is about making sure that the laws on our books are keeping people safe while remaining true to the Live Free or Die spirit that makes New Hampshire the great state that it is.”

Katie Zezima reports for The Washington Post, "At least 11 states have passed laws allowing the concealed carry of guns without a permit, and 16 states have introduced legislation this year to do the same, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Rifle Association. Gun rights advocates see the laws as the next frontier in Second Amendment rights. But the legislation has been controversial in many places where it has been introduced, with law enforcement members, politicians and gun proponents arguing that the bills go too far."

New Hampshire lawmakers have been battling over concealed carry for nearly 30 years, Solomon writes. "Concealed carry was before the Legislature for the third time in three sessions. The past two attempts passed with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, but were vetoed by then-Gov. Maggie Hassan," a Democrat. This time around the bill passed the House "by a wide, bipartisan margin, 200-97. The 13-10 vote in the Senate was along party lines, with Democrat opposed."

Concealed guns can now be carried on school grounds in New Hampshire, but only by adults, Kevin Landrigan reports for the Union-Leader. "The federal Gun Free School Zones Act of 1996 made it against federal law for an adult who is not a member of law enforcement to carry a weapon within 1,000 feet of public, parochial or private schools." But New Hampshire does not have a state gun-free school zone law, so the law could not be enforced in the state.

Climate change could force growing Alaska coastal communities to relocate entire populations

Kivalina, Alaska, has about 382 residents

Despite increasing out-migration, high birth rates are increasing the population of coastal towns in Alaska, Kavya Balaraman reports for Climatewire. With many of these communities being the most vulnerable to climate change, they are one major storm away from "climigration," a term coined by Robin Bronen, executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice, to describe "communitywide relocation as a direct consequence of shifting weather patterns."

Bronen told Balaraman, "Climate-change factors that cause climigration are decreased Arctic sea ice, which is no longer providing a buffer to storms that come in, coupled with permafrost thaw as a result of radically increased temperatures, The permafrost thawing is causing accelerated rates of erosion. That's happening right now."

Lawrence Hamilton, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, said "erosion can threaten the region's housing and infrastructure. It puts people at a higher risk of damage under extreme weather events, and some of the villages in the region will probably be abandoned within a decade," Balaraman writes. He said in an email, "Relocation or abandonment, whether planned or done in haste, will eventually be necessary."

Experts say as "populations continue to grow, two problems are likely to crop up in the next few decades," Balaraman writes. "First, more people are vulnerable and future relocation for them will likely be more expensive. Second, the risk profile of those who remain is drastically altered."

Philip Loring, lead scientist of the Sustainable Futures North project, which focuses on the impact of climate change on Arctic and sub-Arctic communities, told Balaraman, "If some people are leaving because they can, and the ones who remain are ostensibly young mothers and young children—then five years from now, these communities are going to have a lot of young children and young mothers who don't have a number of options for employment or other resources."

Study: ER patients of docs more likely to prescribe opioids have 30% greater chance of long-term use

Harvard graphic: Prescribing rates and adjusted
odds ratios for long-term opioid use.

Emergency room patients of doctors who are the biggest prescribers of opioids are 30 percent more likely to become long-term opioid users, says a study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Long-term users are defined as receiving six months’ worth of pills in the 12 months following the initial encounter.

ER patients prescribed opioids also are "more likely to have an adverse outcome related to the drugs, such as a fall, a fracture, respiratory failure, or constipation," reports Harvard. "The study also showed that patients treated by low-frequency prescribers were no more likely to return to the hospital overall or with the same complaints—findings that suggest these people were not under-treated for their symptoms."

The study consisted of 215,678 patients who received treatment from low-intensity prescribers and 161,951 patients who received treatment from high-intensity prescribers from 2008-11, based on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.

Doctors labeled as high-intensity prescribed opioids during 24.1 percent of patient visits, on average, while low-intensity only 7.3 percent of the time, Lenny Bernstein reports for The Washington Post. "Overprescribing by physicians has been widely blamed for helping to start an epidemic of prescription opioid abuse, which since 2000 has killed about 180,000 people through overdoses. But it has been difficult to apportion doctors' responsibility for the crisis or for policymakers to agree on measures to rein in their habits."

EPA fighting order requiring agency to study impact of Clean Power Plan regulations on coal jobs

The Environmental Protection Agency has asked an appeals court to reverse a ruling last year by a West Virginia federal judge ordering the agency to study the impact of Clean Power Plan regulations on job losses, Amanda Reilly reports for Greenwire. In a filing on Tuesday U.S. Department of Justice attorneys argued that the study imposes "substantive obligations," has "no basis in the statute" and is "outside the bounds of the court's authority."

U.S. District Court Judge John Preston Bailey required EPA "to submit by July 1 an evaluation of how its Clean Air Act regulations affect coal jobs, mine closures and power plant shutdowns," Reilly writes. "Bailey agreed with Murray Energy Corp., which filed a lawsuit in 2014, that EPA failed to comply with a section of the law requiring continuing economic evaluations of its regulations. He issued the July 1 deadline after finding that EPA's initial plan to comply with the provision was insufficient."

"While most of the court action in the lawsuit took place during the Obama administration, the Trump DOJ moved to appeal the ruling earlier this month," Reilly writes. "The government, in its opening brief, raised both procedural and substantive arguments against's Murray's claims in the lawsuit. Murray CEO Robert Murray is a major Trump supporter. The district court, DOJ argued, did not have the jurisdiction to hear Murray's claims because the Clean Air Act did not impose an enforceable mandatory duty on EPA to evaluate job losses."

Medicaid expansion under Trump could increase, if states are given more discretion over programs

Analysis from The Washington Post found that under President Trump enrollment in Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could go up, especially if Tom Price, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, uses his administrative powers to grant states greater discretion in running their Medicaid programs, Timothy Callaghan and Lawrence R. Jacobs write for the Post. "Increased state discretion over Medicaid is likely to invite a new wave of Medicaid expansion in red states." (Post graphic: States with the most to gain from Medicaid expansion)

"The partisan obstacles to red states during the Obama presidency will likely ease as congressional Republicans put their fingerprints on reform," reports the Post. "Economic circumstances and administrative muscle will guide state decisions and enrollment." (Kaiser Family Foundation map: Medicaid expansion, as of Jan. 1)

"While the original ACA legislation pressured states to adopt the new expansion under the threat of losing their existing Medicaid funding, the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in NFIB v. Sebelius granted states the ability to decide whether to adopt the program without this threat," reports the Post. "Governors in 19 states—all Republican—refused to expand the program. But the 31 states that adopted the new benefits lowered the percentage of residents who were uninsured; decreased the costs that health care providers previously paid for treating the uninsured by reducing the size of the uninsured population; and reduced the burden on state budgets with increased federal funding."

"Sixteen Republican governors accepted the Medicaid expansion, and eight are facing reelection in 2018—and they’re pressuring Congress to leave Medicaid as is," reports the Post. "That’s because the added Medicaid funding has helped state budgets while enabling those states to insure an additional 12 million people, thereby reducing the amount of unpaid medical services those states have to underwrite. However, the Trump administration will probably loosen the rules under which states administer Medicaid —giving them greater discretion than they had under Obama. We can expect Republican-run states to introduce conservative proposals, such as requiring recipients to work or to pay a fee for coverage."

Rural Kansas town with national museum makes sure orphan train riders are not forgotten

(Best Places map)

Concordia, Kan. was one of the stops on the orphan trains that from 1854 to 1929 took an estimated 250,000 New York orphans from the big city to small towns, largely in the Midwest, C.J. Janovy reports for KCUR, an NPR station in Kansas City, Mo. At each stop, people awaited to adopt the children. Those that weren't adopted went on to the next stop. Children left over at the end of the line were placed in an orphanage, where "the hope was that at least they would age out of the orphanage into a wholesome community that was not New York," said Shaley George, curator of the National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia.

Janovy writes, "Inside the three-room Union Pacific Depot built in 1917, one waiting room is filled with big black and white photographs showing children in New York slums in the 1800s. A social reformer named Charles Loring Brace figured the children, and society, would be better off if they found new homes with families far away from New York City's crime and poverty." So he shipped them to the Midwest. In the beginning each train carried up to 100 children, with about 10 being adopted in each town, George said.

The grandfather of Concordia resident Jim Garwood arrived in town on one of the trains in 1911 at the age of nine, Janovy writes. "He says his grandfather never really talked about the fact that he'd been on an orphan train, other than that they went back to New York one summer to try to find his sister. He finally found her and they always kept in touch with each other."

The museum, which attracts about 4,000 visitors per year, along with a PBS American Experience documentary on orphan trains and Christina Baker Kline's bestselling novel "Orphan Train," have brought renewed interest to the story. Concordia Mayor Charles Lambertz last month declared the City of Concordia as Orphan Train Town, reports Brad Lowell for the Concordia Blade-Empire, which requires a subscription. (St. Paul Pioneer Press photo)

Social media creates echo chambers that hurt democracy, journalism, says author/law professor

Social media limits exposure to different viewpoints and hurts democracy and journalism, Harvard University law professor and author Cass Sunstein told NPR's Kelly McEvers on "All Things Considered." Sunstein's latest book, "#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media," looks at how social media creates echo chambers, leading to news filters where people only look at news that reflects their ideals.

"You're listening to people who just agree with you or reading news sources that fit with your own preconceptions, it's not as if you just stay where you are," Sunstein said. "You tend to end up more extreme, which makes us get kind of blocked as a society, which isn't good for democracy and which makes it possible for people to see people who disagree with them not as fellow citizens, but as enemies who are crazy people or dupes. And that can make problem solving very, very challenging."

"Well, we're early days, really, still for Facebook and social media," he said. "And so my expectation is that Facebook and Twitter will do some experimenting on this count. It is true that kind of a quick reaction is provide people with content that they will look at. And that might be the information cocoon effect. But lots of Americans have not just a desire to see, you know, what they already think, but a desire to see some stuff that'll be challenging or eye-opening."

Sunstein suggests following people with different viewpoints. He said, "if you're left of center, have a little plan in the next two weeks to follow some smart people who are right of center. And if you're right of center, and you tend to ridicule or contempt for people on the left, follow some liberals. Find some who have at least a little bit of credibility for you. Or make a determined judgment whether you're left or right. See what you can get from the other side. And this is, you know, individual lives, but as the framers of the constitution knew, a republic is built up of innumerable individual decisions. And whether we get a well-functioning system or not depends on, you know, countless individual acts." (Read more)

Rural Texas landowners on route of proposed bullet train say it mostly only benefits urban areas

Dallas Morning News graphic: Population
growth along proposed bullet train route.
For an interactive version click here.

A proposed 240-mile bullet train between Dallas and Houston is sparking a rural/urban divide, Brandon Formby and Jill Cowan report for The Dallas Morning News. Cattle farmer John Stoneham's ranch, which consists of 1,000 acres of land in Grimes County in the southeast part of the state, "is among thousands of parcels of Texas land that could one day be home to America’s first high-speed rail line. It’s also the site of a likely collision between two of the state’s most dearly held principles: Texans’ right to do what they want with their property and the free market’s ability to solve thorny problems with little government interference."

Privately-owned Texas Central Partners says the bullet train project between downtown Dallas and northwest Houston could travel at 205 miles per hour and reduce the trip to 90 minutes, reports the Morning News. "Company executives and elected officials in the state say connecting two of the nation’s largest business hubs with a landmark transportation project will further grow Texas’ already bustling economy. Many leaders in Dallas and Houston are on board." The two cities have 13 million residents, nearly half of the state's population.

"Texas Central promises to get the $12 billion project done without taking public dollars other than through loans—and vows it will help increase tax revenue for scores of cities, counties and school districts along the route," reports the Morning News. "But landowners along the way oppose the rail project for a litany of reasons. Some doubt Texas Central’s claims about how many riders it’ll attract and the train’s broad economic benefits."

"Others don’t think a company using Japanese technology and equipment for a privately-owned transportation project should have the ability to use eminent domain to buy up their land," reports the Morning News. "Texas Central says it will only use eminent domain as a last-case scenario. But its claims that it has the power to do so have already spurred state legislation that aims to stop the project in its tracks. The company is expected to fight those bills."

"Opponents also don’t see why they should get behind a project that will change the characteristics of their land on its way to benefiting the state’s urban hubs," reports the Morning News.

Stoneham, who said Texas Central's offer of roughly $900,000 for 50 acres of his land was "way too low," told the Morning News, "It’s not going to be an easement, they’re just going to cut and run a path through. So the place is basically going to be cut in half.”

Editors report on PBS about nation's mood and immigration after one month of Trump as president

David Bradley

The PBS NewsHour chose three newspaper editors, including one from a 25,000-circulation daily, to give perspective from "the heartland" on the first month of President Trump's administration Wednesday night.

"He's made a few misstatements," said David Bradley, publisher-editor of the St. Joseph News-Press in northwest Missouri, but he began by saying "I think people are fairly well satisfied with what Donald Trump is doing now." He added later, "He has made a mistake, I think, on his order on immigration from those seven countries. He's correcting that right now and doing everything he can to try to keep the country safe."

Noting that many immigrants work in Missouri meatpacking, Bradley added, "I don't think people are against immigration in our part of the world. They'd like to see it done legally. . . . The main concern of people in our area, they want more and better jobs and a pro-business environment . . . a better form of taxation that's more pro-growth . . . less regulations that bog down businesses from growing . . . and they would like to see a better sense of community among all sides so they can get together and work together. . . . People are getting turned off by all the protests and all the antagonism going on," and would like to see Americans "sit back and let him run the country."

Bradley is also chairman and CEO of the News-Press & Gazette Co., which owns 13 dailies and weeklies in Missouri and Kansas, and even more TV stations in seven states. He was joined on the NewsHour by Lee Ann Colacioppo of The Denver Post, who said "People say the nastiness of the national debate has worked itself into legislative bodies here that are usually more civil," and David Haynes of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who said his readers say "the media needs to let his administration get organized" but also say "I wish he'd stop tweeting at 3 o'clock in the morning . . . One of the hopes right now is that the White House become more professional and less chaotic."

Haynes said opinion in Wisconsin is divided on immigration: "When you get out in the state, out in the rural areas . . . that's also where dairy farming is," and 40 percent of workers in the industry are immigrants, many of them undocumented. To watch the segment, click here.

More than 55,000 U.S. bridges are structurally deficient; county-level data and maps available

Nearly 56,000 U.S. bridges are structurally deficient, says the annual state level bridge report released from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. That includes 25 percent of Rhode Island bridges, 21 percent in Iowa, 20 percent in Pennsylvania and South Dakota, 17 percent in West Virginia and 15 percent in North Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Overall, in 25 states at least nine percent of bridges are considered deficient.

A 2016 poll by the Association of Equipment Managers found that 46 percent of voters—53 percent Republicans, 41 percent Democrats—believe U.S. infrastructure has gotten worse off in the last five years. The poll found that 80 to 90 percent of respondents believe roads, bridges and energy grids are in some or extreme need of repair.

Here's a Washington Post county-level map of structurally deficient bridges and a detailed example of McKean County, Pennsylvania; For an interactive version click here; for a larger versions of either map below, click on it)

This item, originally published Monday, Feb. 20, has been updated.

Could medical marijuana be a cure for the nation's opioid epidemic?

Could medical marijuana be the answer to the nation's opioid epidemic, which is a major concern in rural areas, especially in Appalachia? Christine Vestal reports for Stateline, "Some medical practitioners and researchers believe that greater use of marijuana for pain relief could result in fewer people using the highly addictive prescription painkillers that led to the epidemic."

About 1.4 million Americans legally use medical marijuana, Vestal writes. "A 2016 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that states with medical-marijuana laws had 25 percent fewer opioid overdose deaths than states that do not have medical-marijuana laws. Another study published in Health Affairs last year found that prescriptions for opioid painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet paid for by Medicare dropped substantially in states that adopted medical-marijuana laws."

"Advocates for greater use of medical marijuana argue that including chronic pain as an allowable condition could result in even further reductions in dangerous opioid use," Vestal writes. Some physicians remain cautious about recommending it. Dr. Jane Ballantyne, a pain specialist at the University of Washington and president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, which promotes the use of alternatives to opioids for chronic pain, told Vestal, “There is no doubt marijuana is much safer than opiates. So we don’t discourage its use.” But she said, “non-drug treatments are far more helpful than any drug treatment, and marijuana is a drug.” (Pew Research Center map: State medical-marijuana laws)

Study on fracking-well spills highlights lax reporting requirements in some major oil and gas states

Hydraulic-fracturing wells caused 6,648 spills of oil, chemicals and wastewater from 2005-2014 in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania, says a study published in Environmental Science and Technology. The study, by researchers from Duke University, Harvard University, Florida State University, Yale University, the University of Texas, the University of Central Arkansas, the University of Cincinnati, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Geological Survey, looked at 31,482 wells and found that 75 to 94 percent of spills occurred within the first three years of a well's life or when it was drilled.

"North Dakota had the highest rate of spills while Colorado companies reported just 11 spills per 1,000 wells annually," Nicholas Kusnetz reports for InsideClimate News. "But some or all of that difference may be due to the huge differences in what the states ask oil companies to report. North Dakota requires operators to report any spill of 42 gallons or more, while Colorado and New Mexico generally don't ask for anything smaller than 210 gallons. Texas, the nation's top oil-and-gas-producing state, wasn't even included in the study because detailed data was not easily accessible. The authors did not examine data from Oklahoma because the state had not digitized all of its information."

Researchers "found that more than half of the spills occurred while companies were storing fluids in tanks or pits or transporting them through flowlines," Kusnetz writes. "Many were repeat spills from the same wells." Kate Konschnik, a co-author of the study and director of the Harvard Environmental Policy Initiative, told Kusnetz, "It's quite scattershot the amount of information being collected, the form in which it's being collected and the way in which it's being shared with the public." (Colorado spills from tanks)

U.S.-Mexico wall would cut through tribe's land, which lies on both sides of the border

President Trump's plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border would cut through the heart of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose land extends along 62 miles of the border and lies in both countries, Fernanda Santos reports for The New York Times. The tribe has about 34,000 members, 2,000 of which live in Mexico. "After the Mexican-American War and then the Gadsden Purchase in 1854 delineated the border for good, most of the tribe’s land was left in present-day Arizona, where it still controls 2.8 million acres—a territory about the size of Connecticut—while a smaller piece became part of what is now the Mexican state of Sonora."

"The Tohono O’odham reservation has been a popular crossing point for unauthorized migrants and one of the busiest drug-smuggling corridors along the southern border, in part because the federal government strengthened the security at other spots," Santos writes. "While a 20-foot-tall steel fence lines the border in San Luis, Ariz., to the west, and Nogales, Ariz., to the east, here the border is a lot more permeable, guarded by bollards and Normandy barriers measuring eight feet, maybe, and, in some areas, sinking in the eroding ground." (Times map: Tohono land on both sides of the border)

Tohono O’odham leaders have made a concerted effort to increase safety, Santos writes. The tribe "reluctantly complied when the federal government moved to replace an old barbed-wire fence with sturdier barriers that were designed to stop vehicles ferrying drugs from Mexico. It ceded five acres so the Border Patrol could build a base with dormitories for its agents and space to temporarily detain migrants. "

"The number of apprehensions on the reservation has also dropped—to 14,000 last year from 85,000 in 2003, according to the tribe’s public-safety department. Still, the vehicle barriers, installed in 2006, created new headaches. One rancher, Jacob Serapo, used to fetch water for his family and cattle from a well 100 yards from his home, but the barriers left the well on the other side, in Mexico. Now he must drive four miles a few times each week to the nearest water source on the U.S. side."

Monte Mills, co-director of the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the University of Montana, said "because of tribal rights, building a wall across the lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation would most likely require an act of Congress."

Despite high hopes in Appalachia that Trump will bring back coal, outside experts remain skeptical

A "Frontline" segment on the PBS NewsHour took a look at the prospects for President Trump fulfilling his campaign promise to "get those miners back to work" in Appalachia, which was home to 87 percent of the coal jobs that have been lost since 2011. Economists and energy experts remain skeptical, but those in the coal industry are hopeful.

Trump won every county in West Virginia and all but the two most populous in Kentucky, Elaine McMillion Sheldon and Priyanka Boghani note. Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, told Frontline, "Since November 8th, everybody’s attitude has been much more positive in West Virginia and around the industry, simply because someone’s recognized the significance of the coal miner."

But John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University, said "I absolutely have no idea how they could take steps to bring back coal to the levels that we saw in 2008." He noted "that a lot of the investments needed to comply with Obama-era regulations had already been made, and expenses had already been incurred," adding, “In a very, very simple sense from the perspective of coal demand, the damage has already been done.”

Chris Bollinger, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky, said he "doesn’t see the fate of coal miners in Appalachia improving under Trump, even with the easing of federal regulations," Frontline reports. "In all likelihood, he said, the benefits will go to places where the cheapest coal is still easily available—in states like Wyoming and Montana."

UPS tests drone deliveries in rural areas

United Parcel Service tested delivery via drones on rural routes this week, Elizabeth Weise reports for USA Today. UPS's senior vice president for global engineering and sustainability at UPS, Mark Wallace, told Weise, "While the drone is making its delivery, the driver would continue to the next stop, make another delivery by hand, and the drone would then rendezvous and recharge on top of the UPS package car."

If successful, drones could cut costs for UPS in rural areas, which are the company's most expensive routes, largely because of the extra miles driven and the added time to complete deliveries, Weise writes. The company estimates that reducing driving distance "by just one mile per driver per day over one year could save the company up to $50 million."

But don't expect to get a delivery by drone any time soon, Luciana Lopez reports for Reuters. John Dodero, vice president of industrial engineering at UPS, said the company "has no timeline for when drones might be put into wider use, partly because federal authorities are still developing regulations on how to use the technology." The USA Today story says drone deliveries are still "years away."

Trump plans executive orders to curtail Obama's power-plant and 'waters of the U.S.' regulations

President Trump is planning executive orders to unravel Obama-administration policies on climate-changing greenhouse gases from power plants and the extent of federal jurisdiction over water pollution. "While both directives will take time to implement, they will send an unmistakable signal that the new administration is determined to promote fossil-fuel production and economic activity even when those activities collide with some environmental safeguards," Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson report for The Washington Post.

Trump signs an order (Bloomberg News photo)

According to individuals briefed on the measures, "One executive order will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to begin rewriting the 2015 regulation that limits greenhouse-gas emissions from existing electric utilities," Eliperin and Mufson write. For the Trump administration, the move will be seen "as reducing U.S. dependence on other countries for energy," while instructing the Bureau of Land Management to "lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing."

The moratorium could be lifted immediately. The freeze on federal coal leasing has been in effect since December 2015, "and and last month the Interior Department proposed major changes to a program that guides coal exploration and production across 570 million publicly owned acres."

A second order will tell the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to rewrite a 2015 rule defining the term "waters of the United States" in the 1972 Clean Water Act, which "applies to 60 percent of the water bodies in the country," Eliperin and Mufson write. "That regulation . . . gives the federal government authority over not only major water bodies but also the wetlands, rivers and streams that feed into them. It affects development as well as some farming operations on the grounds that these activities could pollute the smaller or intermittent bodies of water that flow into major ones."

Trump has joined many industry groups who criticize these Obama-administration policies as the federal government "exceeding its authority and curbing economic growth," Eliperin and Mufson write. "While any move to undo these policies will spark new legal battles and entail work within the agencies that could take as long as a year and a half to finalize, the orders could affect investment decisions within the utility, mining, agriculture and real estate sectors, as well as activities on the ground."

Republicans steer Iowa to the right, reflecting a rural-urban divide more like rest of the nation

Senate GOP Leader Bill Dix

Known for political temperance, Iowa has suddenly joined in with its Midwestern neighbors in veering rightward on the political spectrum, longtime Des Moines correspondent Thomas Beaumont reports for The Associated Press: "It was one of four states – along with Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire – that flipped to complete GOP control in the November election, but Iowa's rush of new legislation has been the most intense." Last week, Iowa lawmakers approved a bill, similar to one proposed in Wisconsin six years ago, "that strips most public sector unions of long-held collective bargaining rights, including health insurance."

Despite an $110 million budget shortfall, Republicans are talking about a tax cut, Beaumont notes. Among other items, they are also "pressing to eliminate state money for all Planned Parenthood services, outlaw the use of fetal tissue for medical research, subject doctors who perform abortions to lawsuits by women at any time in the future, scrap minimum-wage increases in Iowa's largest counties and block municipalities from enacting sexual orientation discrimination protections." All this in a state that voted repeatedly for Barack Obama.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix dismissed the notion "that Iowa has shifted in a lasting way beyond its half-century tradition for political balance. Instead, he says Republicans are seizing upon voter sentiment, which coincides with 20 years of pent-up Republican policy changes," Beaumont reports. "To act cautiously in light of November's heavy Republican legislative victories could hurt the GOP's chances of holding its majority, so it's all or nothing, Dix said."

In contrast, "Republican Ron Corbett, House speaker the last time his party controlled the Iowa Capitol, said Republicans showed more willingness to work with Democrats back then. That's also in part because rural Democrats were more powerful, he said. Today, the rural-urban divide in the Iowa Legislature more closely resembles that nationwide, with Republicans dominating rural areas and Democrats the urban districts."

Some Iowa residents aren't fond of risk-taking. "Thousands protested at the Capitol in Des Moines last week. And Senate Democrats held an all-night debate Wednesday night, after every member of the minority spoke to oppose it, while only two Republicans stood to promote it," Beaumont reports. "Republicans stymied each of Democrats' dozens of attempts to amend the bill."