Illinois farmers blocking completion of oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast

In the race to transport oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, some rural Illinois farmers have become major players. Partnering with Exxon Mobil, the Canadian firm Enbridge is working to finish a pipeline from Alberta to Texas before anyone else does, but those farmers are blocking the 175-mile missing piece, reports Kari Lydersen of The Washington Post (which produced the graphic). The U.S. gets most of its foreign oil from Canada, which shipped in 1,919,000 barrels of oil per day in November, compared to 1,530,000 barrels per day from Saudia Arabia. (For data from the Energy Information Administration, go here.)

"Farmers said they are concerned about a fire along an Enbridge pipeline in Minnesota that killed two welders in November and incidents on Enbridge pipelines in Wisconsin, including a 126,000-gallon spill in February that contaminated the water table," Lydersen writes. "They also worry that the pipeline would interfere with the underground tile drainage system needed to keep their once-swampy land farmable." Some also note that the pipeline is designed for exporting oil to other countries.

Enbridge has offered farmers fair market value — plus fees for crop loss and soil damage —to use a 120-foot wide strip of their land to make way for the 36-inch diameter pipeline. David Sykuta, executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council, told Lydersen the $350 million project was "absolutely vital" to the nation's oil economy. (Read more)

Decline of oysters means much of Chesapeake Bay could be off-limits for harvesters

The Chesapeake Bay is synonymous with seafood, but its waters are not as plentiful as in the past. In parts of Maryland, the oyster population is falling sharply, so a state advisory commission is recommending strict limits be placed on harvesting there, reports David A. Fahrenthold of The Washington Post.

Overfishing and disease have shrunk harvests from an average of 2.5 million bushels a year in the state in 1920 to 104,000 now, Fahrenthold writes. "To fix the problem, the commission proposed ending 'put-and-take' programs, where the government grows oysters and then puts them in the water for watermen to harvest," he writes. "Instead, it proposed making large portions of Maryland's underwater oyster beds off-limits for harvesting."

The remaining areas could be leased to private owners for oyster farms. The report from the Oyster Advisory Commission says more restrictive harvest measures are not enough to restore oysters and that other actions must be taken to minimize disease and address water quality issues. The Maryland Watermen's Association said the plan would hurt its members, who spend the winter harvesting oysters and the summer crabbing. (Read more)

Automakers put ethanol-ready cars on display at West Virginia auto show

Ethanol is still not available at many gas pumps, but there are cars ready to run on it. At the West Virginia International, automakers are showcasing their "Flexible Fuel Vehicles," which operate on ethanol and gasoline, reports The Charleston Gazette. The cars' exteriors do not look any different, but inside there are unique engine components and a computer to analyze the ethanol content of fuel.

"The cars don’t run on pure ethanol but rather E85, a blend of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol," according to the Gazette's staff report. "Among E85’s advantages over gas is that it burns far more cleanly and derives from U.S.-grown crops like corn. When gasoline prices skyrocket, E85 is typically cheaper, but under normal circumstances the prices for each are about the same."

Currently, there are only two E85 pumps in West Virginia: one in Morgantown and another in Bridgeport. The price of E85 at one of those was $2.999 per gallon compared to $3.28 for regular 87-octane gasoline. (Read more)

A list of flexible fuel vehicles:

• Chevrolet: Avalanche, Express, Impala, Silverado (1/2-ton pickup 2WD and 4WD), Suburban, Tahoe, Uplander
• Chrysler: Aspen, Sebring (convertible and sedan), Town & Country
• Dodge: Avenger, Dakota, Durango, Grand Caravan, Ram 1500
• Ford: Crown Victoria, F-150
• GMC: Savana, Sierra (1/2-ton pickup 2WD and 4WD), Yukon, Yukon XL
• Jeep: Commander, Grand Cherokee Mercedes: C300 Luxury & Sport
• Mercury: Grand Marquis Nissan: Armada, Titan
• Pontiac: Montana
  

Geographic article on North Dakota stirs uproar

The January issue of National Geographic magazine included a Charles Bowden feature on North Dakota called "The Emptied Prairie." North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven did not like it one bit, and he was not the only North Dakotan taking issue with the story. Hoeven wrote a letter to the magazine's editor-in-chief, Chris Johns, calling the feature "way off the mark," reports The Bismarck Tribune.

The feature paints a bleak picture of life on the plains (along with photos such as the one above by Eugene Richards). "That’s the rub in rural North Dakota, a sense of things ebbing, of churches being abandoned, schools shutting down, towns becoming ruins," Bowden writes. "And all this decline exists amid a seeming statistical prosperity: Oil is booming, wheat prices are at record highs, and, as the average farm size grows, the land is studded with paper millionaires living in the lonely sweep of the plains, with surrounding community gone to the wind."

Hoeven's letter accentuates the positive in his state, and he points to the success of ethanol and biodiesel facilities as well as rural businesses. "To give the magazine's readers a more accurate picture of our state, I've asked our Commerce Commissioner and Tourism Director to contact your editors and invite you back to cover what you left out -- the fact that North Dakota is a growing 21st century state with a bright future," he writes. (Read more)

Johns defended the article in an interview with The Associated Press this week. "Why did we focus on North Dakota? Because there are some trends there that spoke to us and I love North Dakota," Johns told the AP. Johns said the story was inspired by some of his drives through North Dakota while he was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. (Read more)

The Tribune has spent plenty of ink on the story, including a column by Editor John Irby, a column by Clay Jenkinson and plenty of letters to the editor agreeing and disagreeing with the magazine article. The (Fargo) Forum weighed in with a editorial called, "Geographic look at N.D. is old news." "Beautiful photographs and excellent descriptive writing make for a compelling, if woefully incomplete, image of rural North Dakota in 2008," the editorial board writes. (Read more)

Bo Derek fights slaughter of horses in Canada

Over the past few days, major newspapers have spotlighted the consequences of the end of horse slaughter for meat in the United States. At The Rural Blog, we've dubbed it the horse crisis, and now the animal-welfare side of the argument is getting a celebrity spokeswoman in actress Bo Derek. The star of the movie "10" has helped launch a campaign against horse slaughter in Canada, reports Agence France-Presse. (France is a leading consumer of horsemeat from North America.)

"Derek, who has been active in the U.S. campaign against horsemeat for six years, warned that the lack of US legislation against shipping horses for meat could lead to the slaughter of 100,000 the animals in Canada this year," AFP reports. (AFP photo)

Derek, who owns five horses, announced the campaign by the Canadian Horse Defense Coalition at a lunch in Vancouver. "It's very brutal," she said. "We've been breeding our livestock to be docile and manageable, and it's quite the opposite with horses. They're meant to be fast, and beautiful. They're simply not set up for the process of slaughter." (Read more)

Mitt Romney ran strongest in urban Michigan, but he still carried rural areas -- and evangelicals

Call it "Return of the Native," with apologies to Thomas Hardy. It appears that former Massachusetts Mitt Romney's roots in Michigan sprouted votes from him all over the state, crossing rural-urban and religious lines, as he won the state's Republican presidential primary yesterday.

Romney's margin over Arizona Sen. John McCain was larger in the state's metropolitan areas than outside them, but he still carried rural Michigan -- and even the evangelical voters who were the main target of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee but may have been less skeptical than those elsewhere of Romney's Mormon religion because he was raised in the state and his father was its governor.

"McCain made up some ground outside Detroit but failed to put together a majority in any part of the state except the Upper Peninsula," reports the Daily Yonder, which produced the pie chart. "In this region, the state’s most rural, McCain won 14 of 15 counties and beat Romney by 9 percentage points. McCain also performed well in the rural counties of Western Michigan, but Romney made up the difference in metropolitan Grand Rapids, Holland, and Grand Haven."

Huckabee got 18 percent of the rural vote, compared to 16 percent statewide. For the Yonder story, by Tim Marema, Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery, click here.

On eve of vote, Bush signals veto of mine-safety bill

President Bush yesterday threatened to veto the coal-mine safety bill that the U.S. House is scheduled to vote on today. In a policy statement, the White House said Bush's senior advisers "would recommend he veto" HR 2768 because it would jeopardize "meaningful achievements and efforts" being made as a result of a bill that Congress passed in 2006. "For example, it said, the bill would require new regulations on mine seals, even though the final rules under the 2006 law are about to be put in place," writes James R. Carroll of The Courier-Journal.

Supporters of the bill, sponsored by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., argue that the administration has taken too long to implement the 2006 law, passed in the wake of the Sago Mine disaster and other fatal accidents. Miller told Carroll that the White House was making "baseless excuses" and Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville said the Mine Safety and Health Administration "has been disastrously slow to implement the laws that are on the books, and people have died as a result." MSHA took nearly the maximum time available to propose new rescue rules, The Charleston Gazette reported last week.

National Mining Association President and CEO Kraig Naasz told Carroll that the new bill "would interfere with mine safety progress." (Read more)

Strip-mining foes and Tenn. agencies ask feds to apply Endangered Species Act to mining permits

Foes of strip mining for coal and some Tennessee regulators are invoking the federal Endangered Species Act in an effort to protect the Clinch River, which rises in the coal-laden hills of southwest Virginia and drains a wide swath of East Tennessee. Their petition also mentions the Powell River, a Clinch tributary at the edge of the Tennessee River watershed, and the northward-flowing Big South Fork of the Cumberland River in Tennessee and Kentucky. (Encarta map shows Clinch in yellow; Powell is blue line northwest of it)

Citing damage from mountaintop-removal strip mines, the environmentalists and the Tennessee officials are asking the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider the service's 1996 opinion that the act didn't stand in the way of strip-mine permits as long as mines obeyed laws.

"Current regulations, the petitioners say, are putting the most sensitive and biodiverse watersheds in two states -- some of the most biodiverse watersheds in the world -- at risk," The Roanoke Times reports. Virginia Tech wildlife professor Richard Neves told reporter Tim Thornton that the Clinch has "the highest concentration of endangered species of anywhere in the United States."

"There's evidence mounting to the harm to water quality and other resources from mountaintop removal," Cat McCue, communications manager for the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Thornton, who writes: "The SELC and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency are petitioning on behalf of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the World Wildlife Fund, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Parks Conservation Association." (Read more)

The groups want the service to "consider permit-by-permit studies of mining’s possible impacts on endangered species and their habitat," reports Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette. (Read more)

FDA says meat and milk from clones are safe, but packers say they're not buying, at least not yet

A new report from the Food and Drug Administration on the safety of food from cloned animals probably will not end the debate on clones anytime soon. Rick Weiss of The Washington Post reports that the FDA says meat and milk from cloned animals are as safe as that from conventionally-bred animals. Still, the FDA acknowledged that "Moral, religious and ethical concerns ... have been raised." (Read more)

In response to the FDA's 968-page final risk assessment, Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods announced they would not be producing meat from cloned animals (such as the cows at in a photo by PRNewsFoto), reports Tom Johnston of Meatingplace.com. "Tyson currently has no plans to purchase cloned livestock, especially since it will likely be a long time before such animals would even be available for market," Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson told Meatingplace. "Whatever measures we ultimately take will be guided by government regulations and the desires of our customers and consumers."

In 2001, producers created a voluntary moratorium on using meat or milk from clones or their offspring, and the FDA wants that to remain in place for the time being, Johnston reports. He writes that the FDA has said it will not require special labeling for food from cloned animals, but it will "on a case-by-case basis, consider producers' requests to voluntarily label their products." (Read more)

The Society of Environmental Journalists offers a great page of resources and links for covering the issue. The page includes recent coverage of about the FDA and cloned livestock as well as information on companies working on cloned foods (such as Trans Ova Genetics and ViaGen). In addition, there is a list of consumer groups watching the issue. (Hat tip to Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute)
The FDA assessed the more than 600 cloned farm animals in the United States and their offspring. Some had genes altered. "The FDA has said it will not approve gene-altered animals as food without additional tests for safety," Weiss writes. The FDA found no safety hazards for milk or meat from cloned cows or meat from cloned goats and pigs, and said it needed more information to decide on the safety of meat from cloned sheep.

The report helps clear the way for the marketing of food from cloned animals, but it will be years before that happens since those clones are still to valuable as breeders for to create what proponents call "a new generation of superior farm animals." There are other hurdles. Some consumer advocacy groups have pledged to fight against cloned animals, and U.S. trade agencies have had trouble getting foreign countries to accept gene-altered crops, a bad omen for cloned animals.

The Post also produced the graphic "From the Lab to Your Table" illustrating the life of a cloned animal, and it has excerpts from the report.

Shortcuts for narrowing searches on Google News

Google News, a search engine for media sources, has become a key tool for journalists, but sometimes has too much information to give — forcing reporters to sift through thousands of results for the perfect source. Special syntax can narrow those searches and save valuable time, reports WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C.

When searching on Google News, simply add location: followed by a postal code, city or state to narrow results to that area. For example, to search for news on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in South Carolina, type huckabee location:SC (no space between location, the colon and SC) into Google News. If searching for a first and last name, necessary for more common names, use quote marks, as in "john edwards" location:SC into the browser.

Adding in title: to a search narrows results to those with selected terms or names in the headline. For example, to search for news on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary, type intitle:romney primary location:michigan. (Read more)

Debate over Iowa power plant draws hundreds

The fight over the future of coal power is heating up in Iowa. Hundreds of people overflowed an Iowa Utilities Board meeting Monday night to speak out on Alliant Energy's proposed $1.5 billion coal-fired plant in Marshalltown, reports Perry Beeman of the Des Moines Register (which produced the map at left).

"Among the supporters were ethanol and utility co-op workers, bankers, local government leaders, state legislators, economic development workers, corporate executives, and construction workers who said the plant would create jobs and offset emissions from older plants," Beeman writes. "Opposing the plant were Meskwaki Tribe members from nearby Tama, environmentalists and health professionals concerned about the plant contributing to lung illnesses and to global warming."

Experts working on behalf of Alliant have said the new plant would support 3,600 jobs and $200 million in personal income for Iowans — mainly those in rural areas, Beeman writes. Earlier, Beeman reported NASA climate scientist James Hansen, the former first deputy comptroller of the state of New York, would speak against the plant as a private citizen. Hansen said the climate is nearing a "tipping point" that demands a reduction in carbon emissions. (Read more)

Boom in coal-fired power plant construction creates new fronts in global-warming debate

The past few years have seen a sharp increase in the construction of coal-fired power plants, as energy companies have worked to meet increased demand. Seems like The Rural Blog has an item on one about every week (click on links below to see some). Almost every plant faces a fight from environmental groups who are making each a referendum on coal and global warming, reports Matthew Brown of The Associated Press.

According to an AP tally, at least 48 plants are being contested in 29 states, with many of those contests ending up federal and state courtrooms. "Environmental groups cite 59 canceled, delayed or blocked plants as evidence they are turning back the 'coal rush,'" Brown writes. "That stacks up against 22 new plants now under construction in 14 states — the most in more than two decades."

Supporters of the plants say coal helps alleviate the need for foreign oil and argue that environmentalists put the country's power grid at risk by opposing new construction. To make their case for coal, energy and mining companies are pouring big money — $15 million in 2007 and probably $35 million in 2008 — into the industry group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices and its promotional campaign. Last year, the Sierra Club spent $1 million fighting coal plants.

Environmentalists have seized on a Supreme Court ruling from April in the case of Massachusetts v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which held that carbon dioxide is a pollutant open to regulation. Last week, however, a Montana state panel upheld its air-quality permit for a proposed plant in the Great Falls area despite claims that it would emit as much carbon dioxide as 500,000 vehicles. (Read more)

Proposal to close off-road trails in western Montana national forest sparks unruly public hearing

Debate over the environment often inspires emotional responses on both sides. In the case of Bitterroot National Forest in western Montana, the talk at a public hearing went too far. U.S. Forest Service officials held a meeting Jan. 10 in Darby, Mont., to allow public comment on proposals to change the forest's travel management plan, which included the closing of trails that allowed ATVs and other motorized recereation. A crowd 0f more than 200 turned out — with the majority in favor pro-motorized recreation — and things got out of hand, reports Perry Backus of The Missoulian.

"The Bitterroot National Forest abruptly canceled a public meeting in Stevensville on updating its travel management plan following a crowded and sometimes unruly meeting on the same topic the night before in Darby," Backus wrote. "People cursed during the Darby meeting, and the U.S. Forest Service is following up on reports that a man suggested someone 'put a bullet in her head' as a woman spoke."
People were "aggressive, belligerent and angry. ... The 'f-word' was used more than once in comments," Friends of Bitterroot President Jim Miller told Backus. Miller also said it was the "ugliest meeting" he had attended. While Dan Thompson of the Ravalli County Off-Road Users Association agreed some comments were inappropriate, he said it was important for motorized recreationists to "break up that cozy little club." The next meeting on the subject is tomorrow at the Bitterroot River Inn in Hamilton. (Read more)

Teen brings a grocery store back to Truman, Minn.

In 2006, Main Street in Truman, Minn., was struggling, and its best hope did not even have a diploma. After the town of 1,259 in the southern part of the state lost its only grocery store, 17-year-old Nick Graham (in photo by Ken Klotzbach) brought a spark to Main Street by buying and reopening the store, writes Marti Attoun for American Profile magazine, a supplement to many rural newspapers.

A senior at Truman High School at the time, Graham recently had moved back to his hometown to live with his grandmother. Since the nearest supermarket was 14 miles away in Fairmont, Graham thought reopening the store was a no-brainer. “I thought it could be a community service and a profitable enterprise,” he told Attoun. “It was a buyer’s market and I pretty much got to name my price.”

Graham applied for a $22,000 loan from the Truman Development Corp. to buy the store and fixtures and after one meeting, the group's 25 members voted unanimously to give it to him. He then spent $10,000 — earned from shingling roofs and working on his uncle's turkey farm — to buy the inventory. When the Main Street Market reopened in November 2006, 400 residents came. Since then, Graham has paid off his loan, and he has bought a second store, Armstrong Foods in Armstrong, Iowa, 35 miles south of Truman.

“I enjoy what I do,” Graham says. “Rural America is an underserved market. The challenges are harder, but you’re overlooked by the competition, too.” (Read more)

Entrepreneur behind in-flight catalogs sets sights on making energy from wood waste in rural Ariz.

Robert Worsley had a multi-million dollar idea when he created SkyMall magazine to sell gifts to bored airline passengers. The Arizona entrepreneur thinks he might have an even bigger idea now. Worsley wants to turn "green waste" and the byproducts of a newsprint factory into electricity, reports Ryan Randazzo of The Arizona Republic.

Along with Tempe-based Renegy Holdings Inc., Worsley plans to open a a $53 million, 24-megawatt biomass power plant this spring near Snowflake, about 130 miles northeast of Phoenix. (Encarta map)

"The company has amassed acres of wood chips, about 300,000 tons, and the state's two largest utilities have agreed to buy electricity from the projec," Randazzo writes. "Renegy collects "green waste" from landfill drop-offs across northern Arizona, including Payson, Pinetop-Lakeside and Strawberry. The company also has deals for forest-thinning projects that are designed to prevent massive fires." (Read more)

The plant will be built at Abitibi Consolidated's paper mill in Snowflake, and the mill is welcoming the arrival, reports the Silver Creek Herald, the 3,000-circulation weekly in Navajo County. “Overall, things are looking good here at the mill,” manager John McKee told reporter Linda Kor. (Read more)

Iowa town's future may depend on keeping prison

Since 1839, Fort Madison, Iowa, has benefited from being home to a major prison. If a new state prison is built elsewhere, the southeast Iowa town could be in trouble. Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, pledged to bring the new $121 million maximum security to Fort Madison, where the penitentiary was founded as a territorial prison, but Republicans want to consider other sites, reports William Petroski of the Des Moines Register.

Fort Madison's location on the Mississippi River made it the perfect spot for a prison in the 1800s, but critics say its rural, isolated location is too far from hospitals, inmates' families or pools of professional workers. Built in 1870, the current prison (at left in a Register photo by Harry Baumert) is showing its age and in 2005 two prisoners made an escape by scaling a 30-foot wall.

"The possibility that Fort Madison could lose the Iowa State Penitentiary sends chills through the town's 11,476 residents, who have already witnessed the loss of several major employers," Petroski writes. "This includes Fruehauf Trailers; Sheaffer Pen, which will be fully closed in March; and the Catfish Bend Casino riverboat, which shut down in November after 13 years docked in Fort Madison. The unemployment rate in Lee County in November was 5.6 percent, fourth-highest among Iowa's 99 counties." A bipartisan legislative committee voted 7-2 in November to recommend Fort Madison for the new 800-bed prison, but the deal is not done. (Read more)

According to The Daily Democrat, the 5,000-circulation newspaper in Fort Madison, the new prison is not going anywhere else. State Sen. Gene Fraise, D-Fort Madison, told the Democrat's Joe Benedict that the prison has the governor's backing and will be built after work on a prison in Mitchellville is finished. (Read more)

Some farmers say animal IDs too invasive, costly

American farmers value their space, literally and figuratively, and now many are afraid a new animal-identification program will bring the eyes of the federal government a little too close too home, reports Nicole Gaouette of the Los Angeles Times. The system is voluntary, at least for now, but can keep out of contests animals and owners like Brandi Calderwood, above, who couldn't enter her steer in the Colorado State Fair because he wasn't registered. (Times photo by Nathan W. Ames)

The Bush administration has touted the National Animal Identification System as an important tool for monitoring the safety of U.S. meat, but American farmers see the tagging project as an invasion of privacy, or worse. Controlled by the Department of Agriculture, the NAIS aims to register almost every farm animal in the country — even exotic ones — and create a database that will allow the government to track a disease outbreak back to its source in less than 48 hours. Despite the system's goals, many farmers don't want to join.

"Family farmers see it as an assault on their way of life by a federal bureaucracy with close ties to industrial agriculture," Gaouette writes. "Privacy advocates say the database would create an invasive, detailed electronic record of farmers' activities. Religious farming communities, such as the Amish and Mennonites, fear the system is a manifestation of the Mark of the Beast foretold in the Book of Revelation," required to buy or sell.

The system has three parts: premises registration (to designate each property), the Animal Identification Number (assigned by group for big operations and by individual animal on small farms) and animal tracing (movements of animals must be reported within 24 hours). Owners of small farms complain the costs of tagging each animal — the microchip ID costs $1.50 — and then tracking them are too high for their operations.

Though the system is still voluntary — President Bush has not registered his Texas ranch or his eight head of cattle there — some states and farm groups have given farmers little choice. The USDA has tied certain funds to the numbers of farms a state has registered, and its youth programs require children to register their family farms. (Read more)

Congress did not fully fund the NAIS in 2008, allocating $9.75 million of the $33.2 million requested by USDA, reports Peter Shinn of Brownfield Network. (Read more) For an example of one small farmer's take on the NAIS, read Sharon Zecchinelli's September article for the Daily Yonder.

GM in deal with cellulosic ethanol firm in Illinois

General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, left, said yesterday that GM is partnering with a new cellulosic ethanol company, Illinois-based Coskata Inc. The announcement was "a sign the race to produce fuel out of waste is intensifying," reports Lauren Etter of The Wall Street Journal. (Los Angeles Times photo)

"Coskata plans to build a pilot-scale plant this year in Warrenville, William Roe, the president and chief executive of Coskata, said in a briefing with reporters last week," reports Matthew Wald of The New York Times. "It has demonstrated all the phases of its technology but has not linked them together in an operating plant, he acknowledged." (Read more)

Coskata "is one of nine cellulosic ethanol companies backed by billionaire investor Vinod Khosla and is one of more than a dozen companies in the U.S. that are rushing to develop a way to efficiently produce cellulosic ethanol," Etter writes. "GM, which is taking an undisclosed financial stake in the company, is making a foray into the cellulosic ethanol field as part of a broader campaign to convince car buyers it is committed to fuel economy and capable of chasing Toyota Motor Corp. in terms of environmental leadership. ... Coskata hopes that allying with GM will give the company brand recognition and an immediate platform for its fuel once it hits the market, which isn't expected to be until 2011 at the earliest."

Cellulosic ethanol is still waiting for a chemical, biological or technological breakthrough to make it commercially viable, but "A protracted bout of high oil prices and significant government support is likely to give the fuel a boost and speed up commercialization," Etter predicts. The winner of that race "will propel fuel and autos to a new level that could achieve Henry Ford's dream of running cars not on petroleum but on a range of farm products like apples, sawdust and weeds. Widespread use of the fuel could dramatically reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gases significantly." (Read more)

"GM said it spent a year talking to more than a dozen ethanol producers before deciding to put what Wagoner said was a small amount of money" with Coskata, reports Ken Bensinger of the Los Angeles Times, whose story focuses more on the transportation side. (Read more)

Tiny Calif. community finally getting phone service

High-speed Internet access tops many rural residents' wish list, but in Iowa Hill, Calif., residents would settle for a telephone line. An hour northeast of Sacramento, and just nine miles from Interstate 80 -- but in the rugged Sierra Nevada -- the town of 150 will get that wish this summer, reports Todd Milbourn of McClatchy Newspapers.

"Phone companies long resisted laying the necessary copper lines, saying Iowa Hill was too remote, and too few people lived there," Milbourn writes. "But thanks to a $2.5 million state grant and the commitment of a local phone company, Iowa Hill residents will get hooked up as early as summer. When that happens, Iowa Hill will leave a surprisingly long list of far-flung California communities still lacking telephone service: Lost Hills in Fresno County, Pine Mountain in Kern County and Siskiyou County's Eddy Gulch, Godfrey Ranch and Swillup Creek, to name a few."

The town has relied on cell phones for the past decades, but service is spotty in the area's rough terrain. Most hike "Telephone Hill" on the east side of town to guarantee a signal. The difficult terrain had been one of main hurdles to the installation of a telephone line. This plan calls for the use of microwaves to help connect the more isolated households. (Read more)

FCC allows sale of Clear Channel Communications

The Federal Communications Commission has approved the sale of Clear Channel Communications, which is shedding itself of many rural radio stations. "It is continuing to divest itself of radio stations in small and mid-sized markets, with plans to eventually trim its portfolio by 450 to around 900, focusing on more valuable properties in larger markets," reports Erik Sass of MediaPost. (Read more)

Clear Channel is being bought by private equity investors, led by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners. Lee is also an investor in Cumulus Media, another major radio operator. Bain, also based in Boston, was founded by Mitt Romney, who later became governor of Massachusetts and is now seeking the Republican nomination for president.

Painkiller abuse continues in southwest Virginia; black market in legal methadone spurs overdoses

"Rising coal prices have meant jobs and money for southwestern Virginia's mining towns. But a cloud hangs over those communities too: prescription painkiller abuse," The Washington Post reports in a 3,400-word story today, with multimedia interviews with miners.

Staff Writer Nick Miroff reports from Tazewell County, Virginia's easternmost coal county: "Nearly a decade after OxyContin slammed into southwestern Virginia and much of Appalachia, the abuse of prescription painkillers in the region is worse than ever, police and public health officials say. ... A record 248 people died of overdoses in Virginia's western region in 2006, more than those who died from homicides, house fires and alcohol-related car accidents combined. ... The problem is most acute in Virginia's poorest rural areas."

"In what is perhaps the most troubling sign of the problem's intractability, the single deadliest drug in the region in 2006" was methadone, which is given to addicts and has spawned a big black market, Miroff reports. "Methadone was linked to 78 deaths in western Virginia in 2006, and experts say that whatever ground was gained against the illegal use of OxyContin is being lost, engulfed in a widening circle of abuse that extends to painkillers, antidepressants and other prescription drugs."

Here's part of the story's coal angle: "Drug use by miners who snort or shoot up underground has been a growing cause for concern among state regulators, and a law approved last year in the General Assembly imposed stringent drug-testing policies. All newly hired miners must be screened, and random testing requirements have increased. Those who fail risk losing their miner's license. The impact of the new policies was immediate." Mine operator Noah Vandyke told Miroff, "I can't find nobody to work. The younger generation, you can't hardly find one that will pass a drug test." (Read more)

L.A. Times latest big paper to spotlight horse crisis

The latest national story on troubles facing horses, by Jenny Jarvie of the Los Angeles Times, highlights the role of the Southeastern drought and recounts some harrowing experiences and heroic efforts, such as those of Buffy Muir (at left with a horse named Don Juan) and her husband, Christopher Takacs, who set up a horse shelter in Carlisle, Ky. (Photo by Jim Winn for the Times)

"In many parts of the United States, horse owners are struggling to feed their animals after a severe drought doubled -- even tripled -- the cost of hay," Jarvie writes. "The drought has exacerbated a glut in the low end of the horse market, brought on by years of over-breeding and the recent economic downturn. Horses that once cost $500 are selling for $50. On Equine.com, a website for horse classified ads, hundreds of horses -- some malnourished, but many well-fed -- are offered for free."

"It's heartbreaking," Kathy Grant, who runs a rescue center in droughty East Tennessee, told the Times. "The back roads are where you find them -- all skin and bone, just hanging their heads in the pastures, dying." She said she takes up to five calls a day from owners desperate to do something for, or with, their horses. The last three horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. closed in 2007, sending the trade to Mexico and Canada. "Exports have tripled to Mexico, where knives are repeatedly jabbed into the horses' spinal cords," Jarvie writes.

The horse community is conflicted over a measure being pushed by the Humane Society of the United States, which would "outlaw the transport, purchase, sale or donation of any horse to be slaughtered for human consumption," Jarvie reports. "Such a prospect worries Cynthia Bellis-Jones, a teacher who trains horses at her Paris, Ky., farm. She says she already sees more undernourished horses at her local stockyards." She told Jarvie, "I'm really on the fence on this. I don't like the idea of slaughter, but starvation sits even worse with me." (Read more)

UPDATE, 9:45 a.m. EST Jan. 14: Horses in trouble touch the heart, the mind and the keyboard. Recent blog items on this subject have started comment threads, and the Times story is the second most e-mailed from its site this morning.

Southern Kentucky paper reveals ripoff of retirees by builder, suggests need for stronger local code

One of the most controversial steps that an isolated, rural community can take is to impose restrictions on the use of property, such as zoning and building codes. While such measures are a fact of life for most Americans, they are not for many in rural areas, and sometimes those folks pay an unexpected price, as Sharon Burton of the Adair County Community Voice in Columbia, Ky., wrote this week:

"Wayne and Connie Feese visited Columbia numerous times spanning several decades to research their genealogy. When it came time to retire, they purchased a lot ... and [built] a house in Day Lily Meadows. Their dream retirement plan has since turned into a nightmare, and the Feeses would love nothing more than to be able to sell their home and leave town."(Encarta map)

The Feeses, who lived in Illinois, presumed the county had a building code for single-family homes and required a certificate of occupancy. It does not, despite pleas from the state and local building inspectors. Their home has major flaws that they are still spending to fix, though “We were told the inspector approved the house, the building inspector approved everything,” Wayne Feese told Burton.

Burton's analysis: "Forcing restrictions on citizens is never popular and shouldn’t be done lightly, but victims like Feese believe it’s also the county’s responsibility to protect its citizens. ... The lack of restrictions also costs the county. According to the Adair County Tourism Commission, every retiree who moves into Adair County is equal to 3.5 jobs." (Read more)

Looking in the mirror at its teeth, W.Va. putting more limits on sugary drinks, snacks in schools

West Virginia's school board approved a nutrition policy Thursday that would ban from schools drinks with caffeine, and those with more than 200 calories, 200 milligrams of sodium or35 percent sugar (excluding fruit).Earlier in the week, a legislative committee recommended "that the state ban all soft drinks and sugary snacks" from schools, reports Davin White of The Charleston Gazette.

"After learning recently how bad residents’ oral health has become, the legislators believe the ban also could decrease obesity rates in addition to improving dental health in the Mountain State," writes Shelley Hanson of The Intelligencer in Wheeling.

The school board's policy would also "nearly ban all trans fat [and] limit saturated fat to less than 10 percent of total calories," White reports. "The policy, which goes into effect July 1, would not keep students from bringing in soft drinks they bought at a convenience or grocery store."

The legislative proposal is expected to face opposition from lobbyists for the soft-drink industry, and even from some educators. "Some high-school principals also enjoy the revenue that soft drink sales bring their schools," White notes. "During the school day, middle and elementary school students already cannot buy caffeine and sugary soft drinks." (Read more)

The legislative committee pushing the bill also called for creation of a state Office of Oral Health. "The office would be charged with promoting better oral health throughout West Virginia, including supporting efforts to require dental inspection for students in elementary school," The Intelligencer reports. "According to the Centers for Disease Control, 61.4 percent of adults across West Virginia visited dentists in 2006, down from 62.5 percent in 2004. The state ranks 47th, with only three states reporting fewer visits: Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arkansas." (Read more)

Kentucky congressman keeps getting federal funds for rural interstate no other state wants to build

"U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers has funneled nearly $90 million in federal funds toward a proposed interstate highway in Kentucky that likely will never cross the state, much less stretch beyond its borders," R.G. Dunlop of The Courier-Journal reported in a two-day package of stories last month. They're still timely and worth reading.

"Despite the substantial expenditure of funds, not a single shovelful of dirt has been turned on Interstate 66, conceived nearly two decades ago as a coast-to-coast corridor that would run through Southern Kentucky," writes Dunlop, a former Eastern Kentucky reporter for the Louisville newspaper. "Since then, it has been abandoned by every other state as unnecessary or too expensive. Nevertheless, Kentucky continues to push forward, urged on by I-66 supporters, including local politicians and economic-development officials, and driven by Rogers' powerful influence as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee." (See next item.)

Dunlop notes that "Only two short, widely separated segments of I-66 have even reached the planning stages," one of them in Rogers' home Pulaski County and the other in Pike County, home of former Gov. Paul Patton, a Democrat who renamed the state's Daniel Boone Parkway for Rogers, a Republican. Environmentalists say the Pulaski route would threaten natural areas and caves, and the Pike segment "would roughly parallel a newly upgraded $400 million four-lane highway," The C-J reports. But Patton, reflecting Rogers' economic- development theory for the road, says being near a numbered interstate highway is "almost magical." (Read more) For the rest of the package, which includes plenty of maps, other graphics and videos, click here.

Congress cuts Eastern Kentucky anti-drug program

In addition to a two-thirds cut in the main federal grant program for anti-drug efforts by local police, reported most recently here, "a task force that has arrested more than 2,400 drug suspects in Eastern Kentucky the past five years and provided money for drug treatment and education" has seen its federal funding slashed by more than half, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Operation UNITE (Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, Treatment and Education) has laid off 10 police officers and two other workers, "and could face a cut in a counseling program if it doesn't come up with more money," write Bill Estep and Cassondra Kirby, the paper's bureau reporters in Southern and Eastern Kentucky, respectively.

The program was started by 5th District U.S. Rep. Harold "Hal" Rogers in 2003, when he and his fellow Republicans controlled the House and he was an appropriations subcommittee chairman. "Rogers ... got $8 million earmarked for UNITE each year of its first three years and then upped that to $9.1 million in 2006-07," the Herald-Leader reports. "However, UNITE got nothing for 2007 after Democrats took control of Congress and suspended earmarks while tinkering with the system. UNITE got through 2007 without major problems because it had some carryover money, but in the budget President Bush signed last month, UNITE received only about $4 million."

Because appropriators often engage in mutual back-scratching, it's often said that Congress has three parties -- Democrats, Republicans and Appropriators -- and Rogers spokesman Jim Pettit told the newspaper that the cuts were unrelated to the change in party control. "It's a different fiscal reality this year and part of it has to do with a budget deficit," he said, noting that UNITE is still one of the largest line items in the Justice Department budget. (Read more)

Uranium mine idea sparks debate in southern Va.

A deposit of uranium ore could mean millions for the owner of some southern Virginia farmland, but so far it has only served to make him a controversial figure in his community and create an issue for the state legislature.

Despite the opposition of many of his neighbors, Walter Coles, the owner of the farm and the chairman of Virginia Uranium Inc., wants the state to allow independent testing to see if mining can be done safely in Pittsylvania County, reports Duncan Adams of The Roanoke Times (which produced the map).

The controversy has made Coles and his efforts a common topic on the opinion pages of The Chatham Star-Tribune, an 8,300-circulation weekly that serves the county. One letter asked if Pittsyvlania County wanted to be a "National Sacrifice Area," referencing worries about radioactive material left behind by the mining. (Adams reports that one petition in the community reads, "Heck no! We won't glow!") In a Jan. 2 letter to the Star-Tribune, Coles wrote that the deposit "is estimated to be the largest known untapped uranium deposit in the U.S." and could bring millions to the community.

The Danville Register & Bee, a 21,000-circulation daily, said in an editorial, "The uranium challenge facing this community is simple. People have to learn the facts about uranium mining so that they can better guide their local and state legislators. But they need to hurry."

This week, Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, introduced a bill to create a commission to explore mining uranium in Virginia. A 1983 ban on uranium mining in the state is still in effect, Adams reports. Earlier this week, the Pittsylvania County zoning board granted a permit allowing Virginia Uranium to construct storage buildings as part of its exploratory work.

While Coles touts the economic impact of the uranium, opponents cite safety concerns. "Many residents have concerns about short — and long-term control and monitoring of the sandy 'tailings' that remain after milling — byproducts containing radioactive materials and hazardous heavy metals," Adams writes. (Read more)

Supreme Court sides with Monsanto against farmer who used its leftover but patented seed

The U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, sided this week with Monsanto, the multinational agricultural company, in its patent dispute with a Mississippi farmer, reports the St. Louis Business Journal. Monsanto is based in St. Louis.

"Monsanto successfuly sued Homan McFarling, a Mississippi farmer, in 1999 for saving and replanting its patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds, Monsanto spokeswoman Geri Berdak said," the Business Journal writes. "McFarling used the seeds in 1998 and then re-used them in following years prompting the suit, {Monsanto spokeswoman Geri] Berdak said. A lengthy appeals process brought the case to the Supreme Court." The court upheld lower-court rulings that sided with the trial jury and awarded $375,000 in damages to Monsanto.

"The Supreme Court decision helps assure continued investment into the kind of research and development necessary to keep growers on the cutting edge of productivity," Berdak told the Business Journal in an e-mail. "We believe strong intellectual property protection will encourage the investment needed to maintain continued crop improvement." (Read more)

Friends, foes speak on coal-fired power plant in southwest Va.; county supervisors turn mute

Dominion Virginia Power's proposal to build a high-tech, coal-fired generating plant in southwestern Virginia brought about 150 opponents and supporters to Richmond to have their say before the State Corporation Commission.

The $1.6 billion, 585-megawatt facility would be built in Wise County, near St. Paul. Opponents argued the plant would pollute the air, while supporters claimed it would bring new jobs and economic development. Dominion has promised to use state-of-the-art measures to reduce carbon emissions for a cleaner burning of coal, reports The Associated Press. (Read more)

"It was a battle between conflicting ideas about what’s good for Wise County and the coalfields," reports Keith Strange of The Coalfield Progress, the county's main weekly newspaper. "While opponents of the plant greatly outnumbered the nearly 50 supporters, those in favor of the $1.86 billion plant included community leaders, politicos and economic development officials." (Read more, subscription required; for Strange's story about the opponents, click here)

But last night, the county Board of Supervisors failed to pass a measure reaffirming its support for the plant, reports Kathy Still of the Bristol Herald-Courier. "Not a single board member made a move to approve the document the board had seemed poised to adopt just last week in its work session," Still writes. Before the measure failed, about a dozen residents of Wise and Russell counties spoke against the plant, citing environmental concerns. Some scolded supervisors who had spoken in favor of the plant during the Corporation Commission meeting. The commission meets next month to consider the proposal. (Read more)

Study says some biofuels are worse for the environment than fossil fuels

Biofuels are touted as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, but not all live up to the claim, according to a new study. Commissioned by the Swiss government, researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) analyzed 26 biofuels in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions and other factors and found some biofuels have their own environmental problems, reports Science Daily.

The study said fuels made from U.S. corn, Brazilian soy and Malaysian palm may do more damage to the environment than fossil fuels. The most environmentally-friendly fuels include ethanol from plants or wood and fuel made from recycled cooking oil.

William Laurance, staff scientist at STRI, claimed in a letter published by Science magazine last month, that the ethanol boom and U.S. farm subsidies have to greater deforestation of rain forests in the Amazon. Since more American farmers have switched from soy to corn, Laurance argued, Brazilian farmers have added acreage to cash in on rising soy prices. (Read more)

Candy man Mars loses fight to stop drilling in Mont.

The wishes of a candy billionaire were not enough to overcome the rule of split estates or slow the race to tap coal-bed methane in Montana. Forrest E. Mars Jr., the owner and former CEO of candymaker Mars Inc., had fought companies seeking to drill for natural gas on his cattle ranch (in a Billings Gazette photo by Larry Meyer), but thanks to a court ruling, one company started drilling this week, reports Jim Robbins of The New York Times.

"The conflict is the latest skirmish in a long war between ranchers and energy companies over a natural gas known as coal-bed methane," Robbins writes. "Technology created in the 1990s allowed producers to cheaply tap natural gas that occurs near the surface in underground coal deposits. That prompted a boom in the West, especially in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming."

The legal battle hinged on the split estates created by the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 which gave ranchers the land, but the federal government the right to minerals below it. The government has leased those rights to companies, such as Fidelity Exploration and Production and Pinnacle Gas Resources, which have the rights to the resources under Mars' 82,000-acre Diamond Cross Ranch in the northern part of Montana.

Worth about $14 billion (according to Forbes magazine), Mars had fought the drilling quietly, until his ownership of the property and his role in lawsuits against the energy companies were revealed when The Associated Press reviewed a December court affidavit. (Read more)

Federal judge blocks Gideon Bible handouts in rural Missouri school district

For more than three decades members of Gideons International have come to the tiny South Iron [County] School District on Missouri's rugged Ozark Plateau to hand out Bibles to fifth-graders. This week, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Perry ruled that the practice was unconstitutional, reports Jim Salter of The Associated Press. The district is based in Annapolis, Mo., about 120 miles south-southwest of St. Louis.

Three years ago, some parents raised concerns, but the school board upheld the policy on a 4-3 vote. The following year, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit. As a result, the school stopped letting Gideons enter the classrooms, but still welcomed the group or others to come to the school and distribute information before or after school or during lunch. Perry granted a permanent injunction against both the original policy and the modified one. "The policy has the principle or primary effect of advancing religion by conveying a message of endorsement to elementary school children," she wrote. An attorney for the school district said it would appeal. (Read more)

End of slaughterhouses in U.S. sends horses to abbatoirs in Canada and Mexico instead

The last horse slaughterhouses in the United States closed in 2007, when state laws and court decisions in Illinois and Texas closed the last three. Now, unwanted animals are auctioned off in the States, only to be sent over the border to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico — just one of the "unintended consequences" of the closings, writes Caitrin Einhorn of The New York Times.

"The slaughterhouse closings themselves may have added to the population of the unwanted," Einhorn writes, after describing the "kill pen" (above in a Times photo by Sally Ryan), the area of an Indiana auction site with horses destined for slaughter somewhere else. "In some parts of the country, auctioneers say, the closings have contributed to a drop in the price of horses at the low end of the market, and the added distance in the shipping of horses bound for slaughter, combined with higher fuel costs, means that some small or thin horses are no longer worth the fuel it takes to transport them."

A chief concern for animal rights activists is the treatment of horses at slaughterhouses in Mexico, where they say workers use inhumane methods to kill the horses. As a result, some groups are pressing Congress to ban the transportation of horses for human consumption and thus end the exporting. Still, the issue divides the horse industry, and the American Horse Council, the national lobbying group, calls itself neutral on horse slaughter. (Read more)

The number of U.S. horse exports to Mexico jumped 312 percent in 2007 from the 2006 level, report Tom Steever and Dave Russell of the Brownfield Network. As of Dec. 20, 2007, 44,375 horses had been shipped to Mexico for human consumption, compared to 10,783 over the same period in 2006. (Read more) For Monday's item on a similar story from The Wall Street Journal, click here.

Rural artist's 1938 silent film about a day in his household is added to National Film Registry

What does "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" have in common with a silent, 12-minute movie by rural Kentuckian about a day in his household? They're among the latest 25 movies selected for inclusion on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

"Our Day" was made in 1938 by Wallace Kelly of Lebanon, Ky., at the geographic center of the state. "He made the movie using a 16mm camera at 457 W. Walnut Street in Lebanon," reports Stephen Lega of The Lebanon Enterprise. "Kelly was a prolific artist who lived most of his life in Lebanon. He painted, took photographs and wrote a critically acclaimed novel, Days Are As Grass, in 1941."

The film gained national attention through Home Movie Day, an annual event held in New York and other cities. In the Big Apple, "Wallace Kelly's daughter, Martha, presented two of his films, 'Our Day' and 'The Enterprise Goes to Press.' Wallace Kelly's brother, Oliver, served as the editor of the paper," Lega writes. (Read more)

The movie was praised for its sophisticated staging, lighting, camera work and editing. Dave Kehr of The New York Times, a member of the National Film Preservation Board, which picked the movies, called Kelly's picture "extraordinary" and said in his personal blog that it "displays a more sophisticated sense of mise-en-scene [staging] than the great majority of current Hollywood features."

At 100, Nebraska newswoman keeps on reporting

Mildred Heath's journalism career began at Linotype machine in 1923, and she has been on the job ever since. Last Friday, she celebrated her 100th birthday at her office, the newsroom of the Beacon-Observer in Elm Creek, Neb., reports Paul Hammel of the Omaha World-Herald (who also took the photo). Heath is a former co-publisher of the Beacon- Observer, and is now the 1,400-circulation weekly's correspondent for the town of Overton.

"Today, Heath may well be the oldest working journalist in the country, said Allen Beermann, executive director of the Nebraska Press Association," Hammel writes. "A National Newspaper Association official offered no contrary evidence, and Internet search found one contender, Dina Sundby, who was a correspondent for the Hillsboro (N.D.) Banner until her death at age 97 in 2003."

Heath's career began when she worked the Linotype machine for the Curtis (Neb.) Enterprise, and she still carries the burns from the machine's hot lead. In 1938, she founded the Overton Observer with her husband, Blair. In 1948, they bought the Elm Creek Beacon and later merged the two papers. Today, Heath works five days a week at the Beacon-Observer answering phones, filing photographs and writing an "Overton News" column.

"People tell me to keep at it. I enjoy people and I enjoy life," Heath told Hammel. "I enjoy the work. And I'm needed." (Read more)

MinnPost explores ethanol's impact in Minnesota

In a four-part series that ended today, MinnPost, a non-profit source for Minnesota news online and in print, has explored ethanol and what impact the industry could have on the state's economy, especially in rural areas. (At left in a MinnPost photo by Jacob Valento, dried distiller's grain, the byproduct of corn used for ethanol, is ready to be shipped out for livestock feed.)

Over the four parts — including a video showing how corn becomes ethanol — Mark Neuzil and Ron Way trace the history of ethanol in the state, beginning with the nation's first commercially viable ethanol plant, located in Wanamingo, Minn. The four parts of the series are:

1. Minnesota's corn ethanol industry blends subsidies, politics and lobbying
2. Despite the hype, experts question corn ethanol's environmentally friendly image
3. Ethanol reduces need for imported oil, but its energy savings are costly
4. Beyond corn ethanol: Minnesota's rural economy positioned for enormous gains

In the fourth part, Way explains that the move toward cellulosic ethanol production would have twice as much value for the state's economy as corn ethanol. "Minnesota is poised to gain enormously from 'next generation' ethanol," Way writes. "The state has prairies where needed grasses can thrive, as they did before 30,000 square miles of sod was busted in the Great Plains to raise grain crops during pioneer settlement. Minnesota also has forests for wood biomass and a major urban center that generates copious organic wastes that now goes to landfills."

Administration gives up on national forest rules

The Bush administration has dropped its appeal of a court ruling that had overturned proposed changes to the management of national forests, reports H. Josef Herbert of The Associated Press. The rules had been opposed by environmental groups who argued the changes helped loggers at the expense of wildlife.

"Last March, a federal district court in California found that the U.S. Forest Service had bypassed required environmental reviews and provisions under the Endangered Species Act in its overhaul of the management rules, including changes in logging limits, for its national forests," Herbert writes. "District Judge Phyllis Hamilton, acting on a lawsuit filed by environmentalists, prohibited the further implementation of the revised rules which were issued in January, 2005."

In August, the Forest Service had said it was working on revised rules that would survive legal review. (Read more)

Kentucky journalists focus on diabetes at summit

"Thousands of Kentuckians are in danger of literally eating and lounging themselves to death," Ben Gish of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg reports from this week's Kentucky Diabetes Solutions Summit. In another weekly newspaper's story published about the event, Edmund Shelby of The Beattyville Enterprise wrote, "Lee County holds the second worst percentage of the prevalence of diabetes in Kentucky, according to the Kentucky Institute of Medicine."

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues made personal invitations to the newspapers serving Kentucky's 20 most diabetic counties to attend the summit, and six sent their editors or reporters. Also attending was a reporter from a county that has a low diabetes rate but lots of people living unhealthy lifestyles, the reporter told us.

The summit was designed to focus attention on the state's high incidence of diabetes and ways to address it -- including news-media attention that can help those in danger of developing diabetes life healthier lifestyles and avoid the disease. This is a big problem for America, where 21 million people (7 percent of the population) have been diagnosed with diabetes and 54 million are considered at risk for it -- and may already have it. In Kentucky, the rate is 10 percent, and in some counties it is around 15 percent.

For more from the summit, including remarks by keynote speaker Newt Gingrich, shown below with the journalists, click here.

Forest Service allows logging at Blowing Rock, N.C.

In 2006, the U.S. Forest Service announced plans to log in the Pisgah National Forest near the mountain resort town of Blowing Rock, N.C., about 90 miles northwest of Asheville. Since then, environmentalists and locals have opposed the logging in the section known as the Globe (in photo by Jeff Eason for The Watauga Democrat) since many of the affected areas would be visible from popular tourist spots, but this week the Forest Service said it would continue with the plan, reports Bruce Henderson of the Charlotte Observer.

"Forest Supervisor Marisue Hilliard, who oversees national forests in North Carolina, upheld an October logging decision that environmental groups had appealed," Henderson writes. "She promised 'continued dialogue ' with opponents and other potential concessions, such as cutting the trees in stages over a decade." (Read more)

The plan calls for logging trees in 17 scattered units for a total of 212 acres within the 11,225 acres of the Globe area. More than 1,000 public comments were filed in response to the plan, and environmental groups opposed the logging, saying that some trees in the area had been for more than 300 years. The Southern Environmental Law Center appealed on behalf of three environmental groups, and the Blowing Rock, Boone and Watauga County governments passed resolutions calling for a federally designated scenic area that would prohibit logging.

The original plan called for the logging of 231 acres, but the 19-acre reduction was not enough to satisfy opponents such as Chris Joyell of Wild South, reports Scott Nicholson of the Democrat, a weekly newspaper in Boone, N.C. (Watauga Cpunty). Joyell told Nicholson the service should at the very least avoid logging in areas that could receive the scenic designation.

“We’re prepared to do whatever it takes to protect the Globe basin and best represent the community’s interests for that area,” Joyell said. “We hope to gain time and help them understand the importance of this area to the community.(Read more)

In the poorest rural schools, most students are Afican American, Hispanic or Native American

In the nation's poorest rural districts, the classes are filled mostly by students of color, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by the Rural School and Community Trust.

The January issue of the trust's Rural Policy Matters reports that among the 800 rural districts with the highest poverty rates, about 26 percent of the students are African American, 20 percent Hispanic and 10 percent Native American. These districts, called the "Rural 800,"serve 969,000 school-age children in 38 states. In Alabama, 81 percent are African-American, while in New Mexico 90 percent are either Hispanic (47 percent) or Native American (43 percent). Nationwide, 11 percent of students in the Rural 800 are English Language Learners. (Read more)

The January issue (available here) also highlights the five states with the lowest per rural pupil expenditures: Oklahoma ($3,591 per pupil), Mississippi ($3,688), Arkansas ($3,790), Alabama ($3,793) and Tennessee ($3,856).

Museum and its branches bring art to rural Pa.

In 1975, Sean M. Sullivan decided he wanted to create a museum that gave rural Pennsylvanians access to art for free. He discovered the answer was not one museum but four of them, writes Kurt Shaw of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. (T-R photo by Guy Wathen shows a wall of paintings, part of the current “Chuck Olson: Visual Histories” exhibit.)

"Although the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art -- or 'SAMA,' as it is affectionately called by most -- is considered one organization, it actually is four museums," Shaw writes. "With locations in Altoona in Blair County, Johnstown and Loretto in Cambria County, and Ligonier Valley in Westmoreland, it is widely recognized as the most successful longstanding satellite museum system in the country."

Sullivan took the idea from the success of the Boston Museum's satellite branch in Quincy Market, a major tourist attraction. Using that as a model, Sullivan led a group of investors to open temporary and then permanent exhibition spaces throughout the region.

"What all of the facilities do is they minimize cost, maximize resources, and make the collections and activities of the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art directly accessible to a rather non-mobile public," Michael M. Strueber, chairman of Fine Arts Department at Saint Francis College in Loretto, Pa., where the museum has one of its branches.

The SAMA operates on an annual budget of $1 million — most of it comes from fundraising — and it offers a successful model for how to bring art to rural areas as well as provide educational opportunities in those communities. (Read more)