As isolated rural community celebrates broadband success, others fear funding sources will dry up

Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks Telephone Cooperative, with an average 2.5 customers per square mile, could be the first telephone cooperative to provide fiber-to-the-home broadband to “one of the most sparsely populated areas of West Virginia” if federal funding is not reallocated, reports Miranda Kessel for the Daily Yonder.

In 2008, the co-op received a $7.7 million loan from the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service to update its copper-line telephone system the latest fiber-to-the home broadband technology. It got another $8.5 million was in 2010 as a part of the Broadband Initiatives Program, to “expand their (SKSRTC) customer base in surrounding rural communities, including Green Bank”, reports Kessel, a West Virginia University graduate student. (Read more)

Vickie Colaw, the co-op's eneral manager, credits the project to subsidies form the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes rural phone service. The Federal Communications Commisison wants to restructure the program to give more help for broadband, but the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association fears that will penalize rural phone co-ops that have made a strong commitment to broadband delivery, like Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks. For background on that debate, go here.

OSHA is doing more inspections of farms with more than 10 employees

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is increasing inspection of farms that have more than 10 employees or operate a temporary labor camp, Brownfield Network reports. OSHA compliance assistance specialist Mary Bauer told Bob Meyer of the network that in areas like hers, in western Wisconsin, the Labor Department agency is focusing on dairy farms. (Read more)

Cash-strapped school districts turn to bus ads

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-16-schoolbusads16_ST_N.htm

Interior Dept. has website for youth to find jobs, events as part of Great Outdoors Initiative

The Department of the Interior has created a website for young people to serve as a "one-stop shop for information on job and internship opportunities, upcoming outdoor events, educational resources and more," the department said today. The new website – http://www.youthgo.gov/ – is part of President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, which also includes the Department of Agriculture.

The site links to internships, seasonal jobs and career opportunities in the Interior Department, ranging from working concessions in a national park to building trails on public lands. “This website is designed to help young people get out, get involved, and get a job when it comes to the great outdoors,” said Secretary Ken Salazar. He said it is part a department-wide effort to get youth more involved in recreation and conservation, and to increase employment and career opportunities. (Read more)

House votes to deny NPR federal funds; unlikely, but would have disproportionate rural impact

The U.S. House voted 228-192 today to keep federal funds from going to National Public Radio, a move that would have a disproportionate impact on public stations in rural areas.

"All but seven Republicans voted for the measure, and all Democrats present voted against it," reports Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post. "The measure is unlikely to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate." However, in the current budget-cutting atmosphere, and recent impolitic statements and actions by NPR officials, the issue is unlikely to go away.

"Could NPR survive without public funding? That depends on which NPR you're talking about," writes Clarence Page, Washington columnist for the Chicago Tribune. "There are two NPRs. There's the national news and talk show syndicator formerly known as National Public Radio, and there are about 800 local "member stations" that buy its programming. It is the local stations that serve more rural and less wealthy markets that would suffer the most without the federal grants they receive" from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which House Republicans have voted to de-fund. (Read more)

Former Post editors Len Downie and Bob Kaiser make similar points in an op-ed piece that concludes by urging local stations and their supporters to speak up: "The public broadcasting community has appeared flustered by the ferocity of its critics’ attacks, some of which are ideologically motivated. But most members of Congress are sent to Washington by communities with NPR member stations, which could do a better job of selling their increasingly vital role in news reporting. Consumers of public broadcasting could raise their voices, too. Public broadcasting should be able to accept and manage a fair share of federal budget cuts, but should it be abandoned?"

Alaska is especially dependent on public radio, Erika Bolstad of McClatchy Newspapers reports: "The state's public radio stations have long been woven into the fabric of life, and the state's 700,000 residents could be hard hit if Congress limits how local public radio stations spend federal money — or if it does away altogether with government funding of public broadcasting." She quotes Steve Lindbeck, president and general manager of Alaska Public Telecommunications Inc.: "The more rural and remote you are, the more dependent you are." (Read more)

Rhonda McBride of KTUU-TV in Anchorage reports, "If you tuned in to KYUK, the public radio station in Bethel at noon on Monday, you would have heard Lillian Michael broadcast in Yup’ik, the Eskimo language of Southwest Alaska. On the radio, she goes by her traditional name, Atmak, which means 'backpack' and, true to her name, she shoulders an important responsibility. She helps to keep elders in her region informed about state, local and national news. In so doing, she helps to keep the Yup’ik language alive. Native language broadcasts are just one of the reasons the Alaska public broadcasting system is different from those in the Lower 48. Stations also receive more federal funding, due to their remote location and sparse population, which in most rural communities is not big enough to support commercial radio."

The boss of the public station in Carbondale, Ill., WSIU, Greg Petrowich, discussed the issue with Chicago's WBEZ-FM. To listen, go here. Rural NPR affiliates came under attack when the network fired commentator Juan Williams. For that story, click here.

EPA imposes first limits on mercury, lead, arsenic, other pollutants from coal-fired power plants

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday unveiled its first national standard for emissions of mercury and other previously unregulated pollutants from coal-burning power plants. The proposed rules could lead to the early closing of a number of older plants and are likely to be challenged by congressional Republicans, John M. Broder and John Collins Rudolf of The New York Times report.

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said compliance with the standard would cost the industry about $10 billion annually and would result in an increase of $3 or $4 for monthly household electric bills. It could also accelerate coal-burning utilities' use of natural gas. EPA "said the proposed rules, once fully implemented, will prevent 91 percent of mercury in coal from being released into the air," Timothy Garder of World Environment News reports. "Power plants would have four years to meet the standards."

The Times reports, "Roughly half of the nation’s more than 400 coal-burning plants have some form of control technology installed, and about a third of states have set their own standards for mercury emissions. But the proposed rule issued Wednesday is the first national standard and will require all plants to come up to the standard of the cleanest of current plants."

The rules had long been expected, but the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a group of utilities, called them "an extraordinary threat to the power sector" and questioned Jackson's claim that the technology needed to reduce emissions of mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium and other airborne pollutants was readily available and reasonably inexpensive. (Read more)

Rural cops seek more effective national voice

Rural law enforcement agencies have reponsibility for the vast majority of the American landscape, but lack an effective voice at the national level for their concerns and those of their communities, so they need to work on that, many of them concluded at a recent conference.

At the 2010 National Summit for Small Law Enforcement Agencies, attendees from 27 states “identified their primary concern as the lack of a unified voice at the national level to present the concerns of small and rural agencies,” TechBeat, part of the Department of Justice, reports on PoliceOne.com.

Most attendees agree that until they have a unified voice, their other goals cannot be met. Some said they have success working with state law-enforcement associations. Kim Wallace, chief of a six-officer force in Dover, Tenn., told TechBeat that she is working with her state association to start a Rural Law Enforcement Committee.

The conference was sponsored by the Small, Rural, Tribal and Border Regional Center of the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center System. Scott Barker, director of the center, told TechBeat, “Quite often, when the national organizations form committees and working groups, they typically select representatives from major cities. It isn’t that they have a hidden agenda, they just don’t realize that policing is different in rural areas.” (Read more)

Barker's center is part of the National Institute of Justice in the Justice Department's Office of Justice Programs. TechBeat is a service of the institute.

Fracking puts gas industry on the defensive

The public backlash against hydraulic fracturing is being felt throughout the oil and gas industry. "Protests across New York state have temporarily banned the practice," Steve Hargreaves of CNN reports. "Unfavorable coverage in the media and a scathing documentary film that was nominated this year for an Oscar also seem to have scared the industry." One gas company executive recently noted during a fracking discussion at a recent conference, "We've done a terrible job at getting our message out to the public. Now we're locked out of New York."

In fracking, which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are injected into wells drilled into dense shale formations, releasing natural gas or oil. Critics worry that the process may taint drinking water sources. At the conference, sponsored by energy consultant IHS CERA in New York, the Oscar-nominated documentary "Gasland" and a recent fracking series by The New York Times both were mentioned as examples of poor publicity for the industry. Despite the increased focus on fracking, no representative from a drilling company that is fracking was included on the panel. "Typical," said one attendee from a water purification company. "Put the environmental guys in a room and let them talk to each other." (Read more)

Gas drilling may be causing problems for water treatment plants in Western Pennsylvania

Wastewater from natural-gas drilling may be causing problems for water systems in Western Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh water official tells Don Hopey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“The spike in salty bromides in Western Pennsylvania's rivers and creeks has already put some public water suppliers into violation of federal safe drinking water standards,” Hopey writes. “Others, like the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, haven't exceeded those limits but have been pushed up against them. Some have had to change the way they treat water.”

The concern with bromide in the water supply comes when it is treated. “Bromide facilitates formation of brominated trihalomethanes, also known as THMs, when it is exposed to disinfectant processes in water treatment plants,” writes Hopey. Some studies suggest links between THMs and various cancers and birth defects.

Stanley States, water quality manager for the Pittsburgh system, told Hopey the elevated bromide levels in the river could be coming from municipal sewage-treatment plants and private brine-treatment plants handling drilling wastewater. (Read more)

Closing and consolidation: Is this the future of rural education?

After a 10-year battle in the Arkansas courts, the Lake View School District in the Mississippi River Delta was awarded equal funding from the state budget. However, “within a few years of this decision, the Arkansas school funding system was dramatically overhauled,with significant increases in funding for operations and facilities and with more emphasis on getting the money to high-needs districts,” but it included A mandate that all districts with fewer than 350 students be closed, and that included Lake View, writes Marty Strange, policy director for the Rural School and Community Trust, in the latest edition of Phi Delta Kappan Magazine.

Lake View is not alone. Strange identifies four main factors for mandated closings of rural schools or districts: increasing per-pupil costs due to declining enrollment, state budget cuts, disparities in economic fortunes of a state's rural and urban areas, and court decisions like the one in the Lake View case. Strange reports that these problems are exasperated by state and federal funding formulas that limit funding to rural areas. For example, much state aid is based on district enrollment size. To read Strange's entire report, with details about the federal funding formulas, click here.

Two newspapers serving rural readers are among 10 recognized for digital innovations

A rural newspaper in Connecticut and another one serving rural communities in California made this year's list of "10 Newspapers that Do It Right" from Editor & Publisher magazine.

The Register Citizen of Torrington, Conn., pop. 35,000, won recognition for tearing down the walls between its newsroom and the public with the Newsroom Cafe, where folks sip coffee, munch pastry, use wi-fi, talk with staffers, comment on just-published stories and suggest others. "The public is even invited to daily story meetings, which are streamed over the Internet with live chat," report Kristina Ackermann and Deena Higgs Nenad.

"It has generated a slew of story ideas and has even convinced a stingy advertiser to buy digital space for the first time," E&P reports, citing Publisher Matt DeRienzo, who told the magazine: "It's like social media. It peels back the curtain like the Wizard (of Oz) ... the great and powerful newspaper how it used to be." Well, actually, Toto pulled back the curtain to reveal the wizard, but we get the point.

The 8,000-circulation daily is owned by Journal Register Co., which emerged from bankruptcy with a new motto, "Digital First," and a goal of $40 million profit in 2010. "You hit more than $41M," CEO John Paton told employees in his Digital First blog, announcing that all would get an extra week's pay. "Not bad for a bankrupt, beat-up, old newspaper company people had written off as dead in 2009. But we didn’t write ourselves off. We picked ourselves up and got working. We learned to harness both cloud and crowd. Using new tools and working the new news ecology we produced new digital products and revenue streams AND reduced costs. We focused on what we do best and linked to the rest."

E&P also recognized The Appeal-Democrat of Marysville and Yuba City, Calif. The cities have a combined population of 72,000, and Yuba and Sutter counties 162,000, but are the hub of farm country and Sierra Nevada foothills north of Sacramento. Last year the Freedom Communications paper went big on multimedia, started using QR codes, "bar-type codes that enable smartphone users to link content, enter online contests, and view photos," and teamed with the two cities' chambers of commerce "to produce nearly a dozen political forums during the primary and general elections last year," E&P reports. "Employees, including the editor, lugged the necessary equipment to various locations so they could do live webcasts and live blogging. Total video views and visits to the Appeal-Democrat website exceeded 15,000 in a month." (Read more)

Crackdown on fertilizer fraud leads to indictment of another 'organic' manufacturer in California

Kenneth Noel Nelson Jr., the largest supplier of organic fertilizer in the Western U.S., was indicted by a federal grand jury last week on 28 counts of mail fraud. The indictment accused Nelson of "selling premium-priced liquid fertilizer touted as made from all-natural products such as fish meal and bird guano that instead was spiked with far cheaper synthetic chemicals," P. J. Huffstutter of the Los Angeles Times reports. This is the second indictment of a California organic fertilizer producer in five months and has "fueled fears among some farmers about possible contamination of their pristine fields," Huffstutter writes.

To be certified organic, the federal government requires farmers to not put synthetic chemicals on their land for three years before harvest. Justice Department officials told the Times that federal law prohibits organic farmers from using synthetic fertilizer with limited exceptions. The indictment says Nelson received organic certification from the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the Organic Materials Review Institute by lying about the ingredients he was using. "The motive in these types of cases is economic," U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner said. "Consumers pay a premium for organic products, and they should not be misled." (Read more)

Coal company paying big fine for water pollution, and a lot more for new pollution-control system

The nation's largest underground coal producer, Consol Energy, has agreed to pay a civil fine of $5.5 million for water-pollution violations that caused a huge fish kill in Dunkard Creek, along the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border. The company also agreed to built a "state of the art" pollution-control system, at an estimated cost of $200 million, for wastewater from its mines, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a news release.

"As is standard procedure in such agreements, Consol did not admit any liability," reports Don Hopey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "It issued a lengthy news release touting its economic importance to West Virginia and its environmental record."

Consol said in its release that it "challenges other operators along the Monongahela [River] tributary to follow its lead to protect the watershed and believes that today's announcement sets an example for everyone in the energy industry." For our most recent item on the Dunkard Creek spill, click here.

Horse slaughter could be banned in Canada

The U.S. essentially stopped domestic horse slaughtering in 2007 by prohibiting federal funds from going to inspection of horse slaughterhouses, and now "there is a movement to bring the ban to Canada," Liz Twan, a rancher and columnist, writes for the Williams Lake Tribune in British Columbia.

A bill in the House of Commons would ban horse slaughter for human consumption in Canada. Twan warns "there should be grave concern at the thought of the Canadian government blindly galloping into the same box canyon as the U.S. regarding horse slaughter," noting the uptick in abandoned horses in the U.S. In the face of mounting horse neglect, many horse lovers in the U.S. are advocating a re-opening of domestic slaughter facilities, she notes.

While consumption of horse meat may sound alien to Americans and Canadians, the world consumes about a million tons per year, Twan notes. "Worldwide there are many meat dishes that you’d not be able to force the average Canadian to eat, knowing beforehand what animal was killed to make it," she writes, citing Mark Schatzker of The Globe and Mail in Toronto's key facts about horses: "They're cute. They're edible. You probably haven't eaten any lately because of No. 1."

Twan concludes, "We may love our horses with all of our hearts and souls, but trying to keep them all forever might not necessarily be the kindest, most humane option." (Twan's original column said the U.S. has banned horse slaughterhouses, but she clarified that in a subsequent column.)

Derry Brownfield, famous farm broadcaster, dies

Derry Brownfield, who founded and sold an agricultural radio network that later fired him because he was too hard on Monsanto Co., died Saturday of an apparent heart attack at the age of 79.

Brownfield, left, was a cattle farmer and University of Missouri graduate. He and friend Clyde Lear established Brownfield Network in 1972, and he called himself "America's most listened-to farm broadcaster." He sold the network to Lear in 1997 but kept the talk show he had started three years earlier. He called it "Common Sense Coalition" and used it to attack Monsanto for its business practices. In 2008, after complaints from the Learfield Communications sales staff, which feared loss of advertising from the chemical-and-seed giant, Lear asked his old friend to "lay off" the company or have a Monsanto representative on the show. Brownfield refused, and Lear canned him. For our story on that, go here.

"Never one to give up, Derry continued broadcasting his show via webcast," the Daily Yonder reports. "Long an advocate for family based agriculture and a harsh critic of its enemies, Derry Brownfield will be missed across Missouri and the entire nation." His old network has a Soundslides tribute to him on its home page, with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing Dale's "Happy Trails to You," which he used to end his show. It also has a video of Brownfield at work and a tribute from his friend Bob Priddy, which begins "He used to joke about things that would have to wait for 'Bury Derry Day'."

Rural reporter gives school district some advice about public relations, or public information

Some rural school administrators who already have plenty of responsibilities sometimes spend too much time worrying about the image of their school systems, which, of course, means their own image as well. That can cause problems for rural journalists, and Allison Hollon smelled that coming last month when the school board in Adair County, Kentucky, unveiled a draft public-relations plan.

"I applaud you for making the effort," Hollon, left, wrote in a column, but urged officials not to adopt a policy that school-district employees go through a public-relations person before speaking to the news media. "Employees of any school district already have reservations about speaking to the media," she wrote. "I strongly believe if the school district develops a system where employees have to go through a public relations department before they can speak to me or any other media, it will increase that fear."

Hollon, who has had classes in public relations, also questioned the school superintendent's plan to have "print ready" press releases. "When I receive a press release in 'print ready' form, the first thing I do is come up with a way to change it that makes it unique to our publication," the weekly Adair County Community Voice, Hollon wrote. "Any good journalist worth their salt would do the same thing." The Voice competes with the weekly Adair Progress.

Hollon said a role model exists right there in Columbia: Lindsey Wilson College. "I can call just about anybody at LWC and have an on-the-record conversation. ... Developing a relationship with the media is more than just sending out story tips or press releases. It’s also about developing an open line of communication between the media and janitors, teachers, bus drivers and administrators." (Read more)

Hollon has it better than some. Lisa Gross, the director of the Division of Communications and Community Engagement at the Kentucky Department of Education, told us in an e-mail: "I recently talked to an editor at a newspaper in Eastern Kentucky, who told me that the superintendent of the school district he covers had informed him that he’d no longer be receiving press releases or news items from the district, because the paper had reported (truthfully) on some negative issues at a local school. When I talk to school district PR folks, I remind them that their local media outlets are not there to serve as 'cheerleader' for their school systems – media can be helpful, but they should not expect to only see the good things covered and not the 'bad' things." That's good advice that rural journalists need to remember, and on occasion share with school folks.

Is Conservation Reserve Program to protect marginal land causing rural population loss?

A federal farm program that pays farmers to idle their land may be causing population losses in rural America. Leaders of small towns across Washington state think it is. The Conservation Reserve Program, which was established 25 years ago, "paid Washington farmers $84.6 million to leave 1.4 million acres for habitat and erosion control," John Stucke of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane reports. In Whitman County, where more than a dozen towns lost people over the last decade, but the county's largest city, Pullman, enjoyed a 21 percent population growth, the program has become a target of local ire. (Wikipedia map)

"CRP is killing our towns," Whitman County Commissioner Greg Partch told Stucke. Critics of the program say that when farmers idle land, they no longer buy fuel or fertilizer or hire local help for the harvest. Partch argues the program stifles "the local economies by suppressing high-production agriculture in an area that boasts some of the best wheat-growing conditions in the world," the Palouse region, Stucke writes. Still, Judy Olson, state executive director of the federal Farm Service Agency, says the CRP has helped thousands of farmers hold onto their land during down years.

"In the past several years the high price of wheat and other crops has helped farmers fetch a handsome profit, dulling the conservation program’s allure as a safe financial bet," Stucke writes. Farmers who pull land out of the program before its contract expires must pay penalties, and in some cases might have to return the signing bonuses collected upon enrollment. While that is a business decision for many farmers, LaCrosse Mayor Larry "Butch" Burgess still wishes the local economy wasn't hurt. "Used to be around here that the town would get some sales tax money when farmers would spend a few million dollars on new combines," he told Stucke. "We miss that." (Read more)

There's no reason to think that this phenomenon is limited to eastern Washington. What do your local leaders think?

Obama ramps up plea to fix No Child Left Behind, opposes cutting federal spending for schools

"We have to reform No Child Left Behind," President Obama said at a Virginia middle school this morning, urging Congress to "fix" the No Child Left Behind Act "before the next school year begins" in August. He also said that as Congress cuts federal spending, it should not cut aid to education.

The speech was "the administration's highest-profile pitch yet for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is seen as one of the few pieces of legislation that could garner bipartisan support in a deeply divided Congress," Alyson Klein of Education Week reports.

"High-profile education programs have already taken a hit in the stopgap spending measure now funding the federal government," Klein notes. "And the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has shown support for slashing Pell Grants, Head Start, Title I grants to districts, and money to turn around low-performing schools." (Read more)

Obama said the law's goals of an excellent teacher for every child, with higher standards and accountability, are correct, but the law is "denying teachers, schools, and states what they need to meet these goals. That's why we need to fix No Child Left Behind," he said to applause. "we need a better way of figuring out which schools are deeply in trouble, which schools aren’t, and how we get not only the schools that are in really bad shape on track, how do we help provide the tools to schools that want to get even better to get better."

Obama called "inexcusable" the fact that "15 states have actually lowered their standards to make it easier for their kids to meet the targets set by No Child Left Behind. . . . So instead of measuring students based on whether they’re above or below an arbitrary bar, we need to set better standards to make sure our students are meeting one clear goal –- they’re graduating ready for college and ready for a career." The president's quotes come from a White House transcript, which is online here.

UPDATE, March 15: "Pitching the area Republicans agree the most with him on, education," Obama is doing local TV interviews today with affiliates in Albuquerque, Pittsburgh and Hampton Roads, Chuck Todd and Domenico Montanaro of NBC News write on First Read. "What do they all have in common? They’re all in swing states." But it's not all politics. Klein notes the unusual direct involvement and bipartisan cooperation among four senators "overseeing reauthorization in that chamber . . . Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee; Sen. Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the top Republican [on the panel]; Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., himself a former secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush; and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M." Education reporters in those states, take note.

Small-town hair salon good place for a story

Here's a story that can be done in many small towns with a longtime hair stylist, and a good example of how to do it, from Brittany Cofer of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. She went up US 127 to Dunlap, population 5,200, to profile the Bouffant Salon, named for the most popular hairstyle when it opened 50 years ago.

"Leaning over a small table, Anna Faye Heard files down Naomi Barker’s nails. Barker, with her hair wound tightly in yellow, blue, orange and purple rollers, has visited Heard’s shop twice a week for nearly 15 years," Cofer writes, quoting Heard: "This is a modern day ‘Steel Magnolias,’ that’s what I like to say."

(TFP photo by Jenna Walker: Heard does Barker's hair) Heard, 68, was 18 when she opened the shop. Naomi Barker is my aunt, and she displayed the Miller girls' capacity for succinct wisdom when she told Cofer why she had been a Bouffant regular from her first visit: “What lady doesn’t want to get her hair done? She does what we want, and it’s a friendly atmosphere.” (Read more)

Future of strip mining in Appalachia could depend on something called conductivity; what is it?

The future of surface coal mining in Appalachia could depend on a scientific standard that the Obama administration has adopted as a sort of litmus test for water pollution but one that the coal industry says hasn’t been proven in the field.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says research has proven that high conductivity, which indicates a high level of salts, damages aquatic life in streams. The coal industry says that research is far from conclusive. But EPA’s independent Science Advisory Board found in September that the agency was correct in concluding that valley fills increase conductivity in downstream waters, threatening stream life.

If EPA’s standards remain in place, coal companies will find it difficult or impossible to win approval for mountaintop-removal permits like those issued in the past, industry and agency officials agree.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says her agency isn’t trying to end surface mining in Appalachia. “This is not about ending coal mining,” she said in a conference call after the agency announced its conductivity guidance in April. “This is about ending coal mining pollution.”

For the full story by Jon Hale of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, click here.

Claim of rural bias in federal spending disputed; Vilsack says ethanol subsidies need a phase-out

Federal spending on rural issues became the target of a recent blog post from Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, but his argument that the government subsidizes rural life to the detriment of cities may not hold up. "Klein’s initial point was that cities are unique in the efficient way they create new wealth," Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder reports. "He then said that we should capitalize on this unique attribute of urban life, but that we won’t because the structure of the Congress inevitably leads to programs and spending that subsidize rural life." Bishop writes that argument doesn't hold up because federal spending per capita on urban counties is usually higher than it is in rural counties. (Yonder chart of per capita rural and urban spending)

Klein mentioned federal farm subsidies, but Bishop notes, "crop subsidies are a drip in the bucket of federal spending." Klein said disproportionate rural representation in Congress leads to a rural bias in spending, but Bishop says no such bias is reflected in spending on community development. "Spending on community resources in rural areas (for housing, community assistance, Native American programs, environmental protection, regional development and transportation) is far lower on a per capita basis in rural counties," he writes.

"The one area of federal spending where rural areas exceed urban ones is in the broad category of income security," Bishop writes. "This includes medical benefits, Social Security, disability, food and nutrition programs and education." This disparity can be attributed to the fact that rural people tend to be on average older and poorer than their urban counterparts, he argues.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also took issue with Klein's story, but did say that ethanol subsidies to corn farmers should be phased out. Bishop argues the conversation between the two men was fruitless. Instead of discussing easily available facts, conversations like that one mean "nothing changes and nothing gets better, but everybody feels supremely righteous," he writes. An unnamed writer for The Economist says Vilsack offered "a pandering defence of agricultural subsidies so thoroughly bereft of substance I began to fear that Mr. Vilsack would be sucked into the vacuum of his mouth and disappear." (Read more)

Bush EPA official: fracking study shouldn't have been used to support exemption from regulation

A 2004 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report that concluded hydraulic fracturing was not a significant threat to drinking water was never intended to permanently preclude the drilling method from environmental regulation, says a former agency official who oversaw the report. "Whether it's hydraulic fracturing or any other type of practice that can have an impact on the environment, one single report shouldn't be the basis for a perpetual, never-ending policy decision," Benjamin Grumbles, who was assistant administrator for water at EPA during in the George W. Bush administration, told ProPublica.

The industry and Congress used the conclusions from the report to "bolster the case for passing a law that prohibited the EPA from regulating fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act," Abrahm Lustgarten reports. "It wasn't meant to be a bill of health saying 'well, this practice is fine. Exempt it in all respects from any regulation,'" said Grumbles, who is now on the board of the Clean Water America Alliance. "I'm sure that wasn't the intent of the panel of experts, and EPA never viewed it that way." Grumbles also noted Bush administration officials made it clear no EPA employees were supposed to publicly support or oppose the legislation. (Read more)

EPA boss debunks myths about agency's farm plans

A series of fictions have incorrectly characterized the Environmental Protection Agency's attempts to regulate agriculture, says the agency's director. Speaking to the House Agriculture Committee, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson highlighted five of those myths, Andrew Restuccia of The Hill reports. First was the claim that EPA will implement a cow tax that will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cattle. "The truth is — EPA is proposing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a responsible, careful manner and we have even exempted agricultural sources from regulation," Jackson said.

Jackson said the claim that EPA will used regulations for oil containment facilities to regulate spilled milk was "simply incorrect," and the agency has moved to exempt milk containers from the law. Sen. Mike Johnanns, R-Neb., "pressed Jackson to finalize" that exemption, Dairy Herd Network reports.

Jackson said EPA had no plans to expand regulation of dust from farms, and the agency does not want to regulate all pesticide drifts from farms. "While no one supports pesticides wafting into our schools and communities, EPA does not support a 'no-spray drift policy'," she said. "EPA has been on the record numerous times saying this, but the incorrect belief that EPA desires to regulate all spray drift persists." Jackson also said EPA is not developing limits on nutrient pollution limits from animal manure and chemical fertilizers. (Read more)

Environmental groups allege another coal firm misrepresented water-quality monitoring data

A Kentucky coal company has submitted seemingly fraudulent water-pollution monitoring data to state regulators, says a group of environmentalists who have been examining public records. "Five environmental groups on Wednesday alleged that 12,000 violations of Clean Water Act reporting requirements occurred at 15 Nally & Hamilton Enterprises Inc. mining operations in seven Eastern Kentucky counties," James Bruggers of The Courier-Journal reports. Aaron Colangelo, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the five groups, told Bruggers "Over and over in its monitoring reports, Nally & Hamilton simply repeated the results from one month to the next. These cut-and-paste reports are obviously false."

"The same environmental groups previously submitted findings that resulted in the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet last year issuing $660,000 in fines against two other coal-mining companies," Bruggers writes. The new allegations concern active strip mines and reclamation sites in Letcher, Perry, Leslie, Harlan, Knott, Bell and Knox counties. Nally & Hamilton representatives did not respond to the Courier-Journal's request for comment Wednesday. In addition to the NRDC, environmental groups Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Kentucky Riverkeeper and the Waterkeepers Alliance joined in the allegations. The groups say they have "taken the first step toward filing a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act by putting the company on notice and giving it 60 days to respond," Bruggers writes. (Read more)

4 of 5 public schools could fall short of federal standards this year, education secretary warns

Around 80 percent of the nation's 100,000 public schools could be labeled as failing under No Child Left Behind, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan warned yesterday. That estimate, "based on an analysis of testing trends and the workings of the law’s pass-fail school rating system, was the latest evidence of the law’s shortcomings and the need to overhaul it," Sam Dillon of The New York Times reports.

Even many of the nation's best public schools are likely to miss the federal education law's rising standardized testing targets, Duncan said. "This law is fundamentally broken, and we need to fix it this year," he told the House education committee. Last year 37 percent of schools missed the testing targets, and Duncan said this year's number could be as high as 82 percent. "I find it hard to believe that the percentage would rise that much in one year," Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy in Washington, told Dillon. "Maybe they are right. If so, it’s certainly a mind-blower."

"The No Child Left Behind Act, introduced in 2001 by President George W. Bush and passed by Congress with bipartisan support, requires that all schools bring 100 percent of their students to proficiency in math and reading by 2014," Dillon writes. President Obama and Duncan have mounted a push to reform the law this year, a move that has been met with support by some Republicans. "States are now facing very steep goals under the law, and they are not going to meet them," Peter Cunningham, an Education Department spokesman, told Dillon. "Arne is just telling the committee that is charged with rewriting this law what’s coming." (Read more)

Vote buying lingers on; former E. Ky. officials get long terms in federal probe, and more are coming

Vote buying remains a problem in poor areas, perhaps more so in rural ones, where voting places are more isolated and there are fewer eyes to watch election officials. Two former election officers and a former circuit judge in Clay County, Kentucky, were sentenced this week to prison terms of 20 years and more for their role in a massive vote-buying and corruption scandal that has consumed the county for almost a decade.

"U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves sentenced Charles Wayne Jones, 71, to 20 years in prison and William E. Stivers, 58, to 24 1⁄3 years," Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. Six other former county officials, including a former school superintendent, county clerk and magistrate, who were convicted with Jones and Stivers last year, will be sentenced this week. Today, former Circuit Judge Cletus Maricle, 67, was sentenced to 26 2/3 years.

"Jurors convicted the eight of using Clay County's election board as a tool to corrupt elections in 2002, '04 and '06 by buying or stealing votes on a scale that Reeves said he hadn't seen in any other case," Estep writes. Stivers was an officer at a polling place during the scandal, and Jones was the county's Democratic election commissioner. Stivers' attorney had sought a sentence of less than 20 years for his client because of Stivers' age and serious health problems, but Reeves said Stivers could receive adequate medical care in prison. (Read more)

Postal service tells folks in tiny town they might lose their post office; could keep mailboxes

Residents of Fairfield, Ky., population 78, have been put on notice that their post office might close, and the city's current and former mayor say that could signal the death of the community. "We just feel like it’s going to be one more nail in the coffin that will end our city," former mayor Mary Ellen Marquess told Stephanie Hornback of The Kentucky Standard in the county seat of Bardstown. (Photo by Hornback)

Her comments came after the United States Postal Service sent Fairfield residents a letter on Feb. 25 that asked how they got their mail because "the maintenance of the Fairfield Post Office may not be warranted," Hornback reports. We haven't heard of other communities receiving such letters, and would like to know about others.

"Fairfield Mayor Tommy Trent said a representative from the postal service contacted him before the letter went out and asked if the city would be interested in buying the property, making one side its city hall and keeping the P.O. boxes on the other," Hornback writes. Under that arrangement the post office, which is currently open for four hours on weekdays, would no longer employ a clerk.

"A town loses its identity if it gets stuck with a rural route address," Trent said. "Although we’re small, an incorporated town with a post office and its own ZIP code means a lot as far as communicating with your people. It would just be a total loss for the city itself." (Read more)

A couple of counties to the east, in Midway, the USPS is scaling back the level of service, prompting concerns that the office might be closed. No way, the service says, but some residents are skeptical.

Ethanol boosted by soaring oil prices; bipartisan Senate duo moves to repeal industry's tax credit

Rising oil prices have boosted the ethanol industry, but it may lose its federal tax credit in the battle over the federal budget deficit.

"Since December the rise in the price of crude oil has driven the wholesale price of regular gasoline to $3 per gallon," Dan Piller of the Des Moines Register reports. "That made room for the price of ethanol to climb from $2 per gallon in December to $2.59 per gallon Monday." The spike is particularly helpful for the industry, squeezed by the doubling of corn prices in the last half of 2010.

"The lower price of ethanol gives oil companies extra incentive, beyond the federal renewable-fuels mandates, to purchase ethanol to blend with unleaded gasoline," Piller writes. A decline in gas consumption early last year hurt ethanol demand, but ethanol margins improved as oil prices began to rise. Then came soaring corn prices. The industry could face a crisis by fall if U.S. farmers don't produce a bumper corn crop, Todd Becker, chief executive of Green Plains Energy, told Piller. "Most plants will get through the second quarter of this year all right, but a lot of plants are very nervous about the third quarter," he said. "We could see some plants shut down." (Read more)

A true sea change may be in the works for ethanol. A bipartisan Senate duo on Wednesday introduced legislation that would repeal the 45-cents-per-gallon credit that goes to refiners and gasoline blenders for each gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline, Ben Geman of The Hill reports. The bill is sponsored by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn and Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin. "The ethanol tax credit is bad economic policy, bad energy policy and bad environmental policy," Coburn said in a statement. "The $6 billion we waste every year on corporate welfare should instead stay in taxpayers’ pockets where it can be used to spur innovation, stimulate growth and create jobs." (Read more)

Electric co-ops reluctant to adopt renewables; some pose obstacles for members' opinions

Few rural electric cooperatives have been on the forefront of renewable energy development, and most are heavily dependent on coal. Now many are facing increasing pressure from their members to begin looking at new energy sources, and some make it hard to apply that pressure, freelancer Allen Best reports for Planning magazine.

When Tona Barkley tried to attend a directors' meeting of her co-op, Owen Electric in Kentucky, she was met with a closed door and instructions to file a written request at least a month in advance if she wanted to speak at a future meeting. Owen Electric is not the only co-op with a closed-door atmosphere, Best writes. "Our co-ops, for the most part, tend to build pretty sturdy stockades around their processes," Steve Wilkins of Berea, Ky., a member of Blue Grass Energy, which he said also bars members from directors' meetings.

"Too many electric co-ops have turned away from their historic role as exciting, pro-consumer organizations and have instead taken on deeply troubling anti-consumer behaviors," Tennessee Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper wrote in a 2008 essay in the Harvard Journal on Legislation, which Best quotes.

Rural electric co-ops get 80 percent of their electricity from coal, much higher than the national figure of less than 50 percent. With prices of coal-fired energy on the rise and an uncertain future regarding environmental regulation of coal mining, some co-op members are questioning the logic of continuing to invest in coal-fired power.

Some co-ops have moved away from coal, but face questions about where their energy will come from in the future. In 2006 Western Colorado's Delta-Montrose Electric Association refused a contract extension with its current electricity supplier that would have financed a new coal-fired power plant, but now the company "must figure out its own electrical future after 2040," Best writes.

"It's uncharted territory, and it could be we spoke more optimistically than we should have," Ed Martson, a Delta-Montrose director for 15 years, told Best. "Now that you're in the execution phase, you'd understand better what you're up against." John K. Hansen, president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, sees renewable energy as key to bringing jobs to rural areas, which can only help electric co-ops. "It doesn't do any good to have a [rural electrical association] if you don't have any customers," he told Best, referencing the population loss of many rural areas. (The entire story will be available after next month's issue of Planning magazine is published.)

Missouri farmer objects to state protections for concentrated animal feeding operations

A pair of Missouri bills would limit damages property owners can seek against large agricultural facilities, such as concentrated animal feeding operations. That goes too far, one Missouri farmer writes. "According to the wisdom of our elected leaders, if a CAFO damages a neighbor, damages are limited to the sale price of the property," Richard Oswald, president of the Missouri Farmers Union, writes for the Daily Yonder. "Wreck my home and all you have to do is hire an appraiser, get a price and buy me out." Both the state House of Representatives and Senate have passed similar bills, HB 209 and SB 187. The bills arose after 15 residents of northwest Missouri, Oswald's home area, were awarded $11 million in damages in a lawsuit last year against Premium Standard Farms, a CAFO subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, for property damage.

"Don’t get me wrong, I’m a farmer," Oswald writes. "I’ve had fertilizer of the livestock variety on my boots and I’m not allergic to it. It’s just that what’s going on here is an insult to responsible livestock producers wherever they are." He notes some CAFOs are well designed and maintained, but he claims the Missouri bills would take away the incentive to run a good CAFO. Oswald concludes with one question: "Now that Missouri has greased a path for Big Pig pollution that resembles corporate take-all power of eminent domain, and Missouri voters have lost a big slab of their property rights . . . How big can Big Pig in Missouri grow?" (Read more)

Applications sought for rural broadband grants

On Friday the Rural Utilities Service of the Department of Agriculture's announced it was accepting a new round of grant applications to provide broadband Internet access in communities that have no broadband. Funding is through the Community Connect Grant program. The grants are available to "communities in the most rural, economically challenged areas where loans would not be sustainable," USDA said in a news release.
Incorporated organizations, tribes and tribal organizations, state and local government bodies, for-profit or non-profit cooperatives, private corporations and limited liability corporations are all eligible to apply. Funds may be used to "construct, acquire or lease facilities to deploy broadband to residents, businesses and essential community facilities such as police and fire stations, libraries, schools, and health care clinics," USDA says. (Read more) You can find more information about the grant applications here and here.

Real-estate developers reap huge tax breaks from metro-area land classified as agricultural

In a phenomenon that may be evident in rural areas across the country, and bears investigation, farmers are not always the main beneficiaries of tax breaks for land designated as agricultural for tax purposes.

In Douglas County, Colorado, south of Denver, about "one in six of the county's parcels taxed as agricultural are owned by subsidiaries of Denver home builder MDC Holdings Inc.," Christopher N. Osher and Eric Gorski report for The Denver Post. In Broomfield County, in the same metropolitan area, "a staggering 95 percent of the county's agricultural parcels are controlled by developer, commercial or investor interests," Osher and Gorski write.

"From Denver's outskirts to exclusive mountain communities, the story line is similar," the reporters write. "Developers and corporations more interested in bulldozing land for houses and strip malls than raising cattle or crops are saving millions of dollars in taxes by taking advantage of a state law meant to help struggling farmers." The Post's analysis of property-tax records reveals developers and firms with little ties to agriculture control over 40 percent of the almost 54,000 parcels classified for agriculture in eight Front Range counties. "The lenient tax structure saves developers, businesses and others who have no real mud on their boots an estimated $366 million a year in those counties," the reporters write.

In 10 mountain counties analyzed by the Post, groups that don't meet the traditional definition of "farmer" or "rancher" own more than 9 percent of the 23,244 agricultural parcels. "The constituencies that currently benefit from the tax break don't want a change," said state Rep. Matt Jones, D-Louisville. "And there's not a strong constituency for the average taxpayer." Or perhaps no well-organized constituency that lobbies.

Farm interests say the tax breaks keep good land in production, while real-estate companies and homebuilders say higher taxes on undeveloped land will lead to higher home prices, Osher and Gorski report. "I think it is a shame, and it adds to sprawl," Former Gov. Dick Lamm told the Post. "It is unfair, and it unjustly enriches people. It allows people to tie up land under so-called agriculture and use it as a speculator's device." (Read more) (Post graphic of Broomfield County land parcels)

Duke Energy CEO keeps pushing climate legislation

A key player in passing comprehensive climate legislation may be an unlikely source: Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers. Duke "supplies 35,000 megawatts of power to consumers in the Southeast and Midwest, most of it through coal or nuclear, making him one of the biggest carbon emitters in the country," Bryan Walsh of Time reports. "Yet it was Rogers who emerged as a key corporate player in the attempt to build a grand alliance for a carbon-cap-and-trade bill between 2008 and 2010." The push for climate legislation failed last year, but Rogers, right, says it is still needed to fix the uncertainty currently surrounding environmental regulation. (Getty Images photo by Jeffrey Camarati)

"In the 20th century, the goal was universal access to electricity," Rogers told Walsh. "In the 21st century it will be about modernization, and by 2050 all our existing plants but hydro" may be closed down or changed because of environmental regulations. Some lawmakers are hoping to block the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing controls over greenhouse-gas emissions, but no matter what happens on that front, "gradual tightening by the EPA of existing rules on pollutants like sulfur and nitrous oxide will force tough choices on utilities," Walsh writes.

"There's over 300,000 megawatts of electricity in existing coal plants, about 50 percent of what the U.S. produces," says Rogers. "Up to one-third of them are over 40 years old, and depending on how the regulations play out, anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 megawatts could be shut down." In the absence of carbon legislation, Rogers says lawmakers should put more money toward research into making renewable fuel services more competitive. "Think about how much it would change the debate if solar and wind were as cheap as coal," he said. (Read more)

Utah legislature sneaks through bill exempting electronic records from state open-records law

UPDATE, March 9: Utah legislators have delayed the effective date of  "the controversial bill that they had passed quickly last week to shield more records from public disclosure and charge more for those that would still be available," writes Lee Davidson of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Gov. Gary Herbert, who had signed the bill, said he was “pleased” by the move: “I’m encouraged they are committed to amending the bill in order to provide for a more thorough and deliberative process,” in a special legislative session to be held this summer. Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press asked in a news release, "If the legislation still needs debate, why did the governor sign it?"
Senate President Michael Waddoups "said the move Monday was needed to avoid a veto," Davidson reports. "Earlier, the Senate president said Herbert 'doesn’t like the process that we went through. He feels it was rushed. We all have to grant him that point." (Read more)

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and other open-government leaders are urging Utah Gov. Gary Herbert to veto a bill that would “only invite greater government secrecy and back-room dealings,” as Reporters Committee Executive Director Lucy Dalglish put it. In a letter sent to Gov. Herbert today, Dalglish called on the governor to “side with the people of Utah and veto this bill,” which passed the legislature in little more than a day last week.

Dalglish and University of Missouri professor Charles Davis, former freedom-of-information chair for the Society of Professional Jounalists, said the bill would make Utah as the only state to take such draconian provisions against open government. "HB 477 represents the most backward, retrograde legislative proposal to the status of a state's public-records law, a topic I have studied fairly myopically for 20-plus years," Davis wrote. "It puts Utah in a class of one, alone in an anti-democratic zone in which the governors enjoy almost carte blanche over what information they deign to share with the rabble."

The bill would change the state Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) allowing, among other things, text messages and other electronic communication, including correspondence, to be withheld from release. "Unlike every other state in the country, Utah is now embracing the concept that the medium, rather than the message, is what's important when it comes to openness," Davis writes.

Pennsylvania regulators' tests show no extra radiation in streams from fracking wastewater

Following a story by The New York Times that suggested Pennsylvania rivers and streams may be at risk from radioactive pollution from hydraulic fracturing in gas drilling, state regulators announced Monday that water sampling on seven Pennsylvania rivers found no elevated radiation levels. Still, "the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urged additional testing and said it will take a significantly more active role in reviewing permits and environmental impacts from the discharges," Don Hopey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

In a letter to state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer, EPA said municipal drinking water systems near facililties receiving Marcellus Shale drilling wastewater "should be required to conduct expedited and more frequent radiation testing," Hopey writes. The agency said pollution permits of all sewage treatment plants accepting fracking wastewater must be amended to include provisions for its treatment. In a written response "Krancer said the DEP is evaluating the EPA letter and twice mentioned that natural gas development will play a key role in future energy needs," Hopey writes.

"We at DEP know what our responsibilities are," Krancer said. "We will focus on protecting public safety and the environment and we will do that with facts and science. We will work with EPA to be sure that it is aware of everything we are doing in Pennsylvania in that regard." Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources, one of the biggest drilling companies in the state noted "The DEP has now indicated, for the second time in three years, that radioactive material is not a constituent of concern. We still encourage regular testing. Radioactivity is a scary word, but it's important to use good science and apply proper context to the issue when discussing it." (Read more)

Market for cellulosic ethanol sours before fuel establishes foothold; Ga. plant too big a jump

Four years after Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue touted his state's new plant that would turn wood into fuel as part of the expected boom in cellulosic ethanol, the plant is closed after running out of money before becoming commercially viable. The Georgia facility was supposed to be the nation's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant and the federal government promised $76 million for the project, Josh Goodman of Stateline.org reports. Georgia was hardly alone in "hoping that cellulose from all manner of plant material — from tree waste to grasses to corn husks — would serve as fuels that could clean the environment and end America’s dependence on foreign oil," Goodman writes.

The Georgia plant, which was operated by Range Fuels, was supposed to produce 20 million gallons of fuel in 2009 before increasing to 100 million gallons in subsequent years. "It never happened," Goodman writes. "Today, the facility is closed, at least temporarily." Federal legislation passed in 2007 called for 150 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol to be produced this year, but the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that less than 4 million gallons actually will be produced. For now commercialization of cellulosic ethanol has been delayed, Goodman writes, noting it remains unclear "whether the reversal reflects the dangers of chasing new technologies or whether the backers of cellulosic ethanol need just a little more patience."

Cellulosic ethanol proponents saw the fuel as a product that could be produced anywhere in the country, unlike corn-based ethanol, and turn obscure plants like switchgrass into cash crops, Goodman writes. So what went wrong? Some say the fuel wasn't ready for prime time when the Georgia plant was built. "You just don’t scale from a chemical lab scientific demonstration up to a $400 million plant in one step," Sam Shelton, the founding director of Georgia Tech. University’s Strategic Energy Institute, said. Others note investor interest in the fuel dropped after oil prices went down following the 2007-08 spike. (Read more)

Young editor-publisher in Oregon wins Gish Award for courage, tenacity, integrity in rural journalism

Samantha Swindler, the publisher and editor of the weekly Headlight Herald in Tillamook, Oregon, is the winner of the 2010 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism.

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky, gives the award in honor of the couple who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years. Tom Gish, who died in 2008, and his wife Pat were the first recipients of the award.

Like the Gishes, Samantha Swindler is being recognized largely for her courage, integrity and tenacity in Eastern Kentucky, but also in Texas, where she began her newspaper career less than seven years ago. She has been in Oregon since July 2010.

The award will be presented to Swindler on April 1, at the spring symposium of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association in Albany, Ore.

As managing editor of the daily Times-Tribune of Corbin, Ky., circulation 6,000, Swindler spearheaded an investigation of the Whitley County sheriff that helped lead to his defeat for re-election and his subsequent indictment on 18 charges of abuse of public trust and three counts of tampering with physical evidence.

Swindler and her reporter, Adam Sulfridge, received repeated warnings about their safety as they revealed irregularities in how Sheriff Lawrence Hodge accounted for missing guns his officers had seized, problems with his alleged payments to informants, his failure to present cases against anyone arrested for felony drug violations, failure to send seized drugs to the state crime laboratory, and his officers' repeated failure to testify, resulting in dismissal of serious drug charges.

“She did not let anyone scare her off the story or push her around,” said William Ketter, who worked with Swindler as senior vice president/news for Community Newspaper Holdings, which owns the Times-Tribune.

The prosecutor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Allen Trimble, told the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues that the paper's "very persistent" reporting "was a very significant influence on me."

Swindler recounts her experience in the latest edition of Nieman Reports, published by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

“There is a great need for good investigative journalism in rural America,” she writes. “Young reporters tend to think they need a byline from The New York Times to make a difference in the world. If they really want to have an impact, get a job with a community paper and start asking the tough questions that no one ever asked before.”

The investigation of the sheriff was the capstone to Swindler’s four years in Corbin, in which she held local officials accountable on a wide front, revealing that the county was improperly using a tourism tax to fund an airport and that city officials spent $20,000 on tickets to a country-music concert for city employees and their friends.

When Swindler was managing editor of the Jacksonville (Tex.) Daily Progress, the paper won a Freedom of Information Award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors for coverage of city police corruption. The city manager was fired after Swindler, then a reporter, found he was illegally burning condemned houses.

A native of Metairie, La., Swindler is a 2002 graduate in communication from Boston University.

“She makes a wonderful example for the rest of us,” said Ben Gish, editor of The Mountain Eagle, son of the couple for whom the award is named and a member of the award selection committee.

“If in the past decade there's been any other journalist in America, rural or city, who has demonstrated the level of tenacity, courage and integrity Swindler did with that series, then I'd like to meet them,” Gish said. “Unless they were able to walk in her shoes, it would be impossible for a reporter/editor at a large metropolitan daily to understand the danger Swindler faced while letting Whitley County know its top law enforcement officer was a crook.”

Ketter said, “Never has there been a greater need for perceptive, courageous reporting in smaller communities as big city papers reduce their resources and reach across rural America. That’s why it is so important that journalists such as Samantha Swindler stand their ground, however fraught with risks, as the people’s surrogate, holding public officials accountable.”

The Gish Award has a criterion of tenacity “because our craft has had many courageous rural journalists whose achievements have been meteoric, ending in burnout,” said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. “It’s very difficult to show courage over a long period, as Tom and Pat did. So, I never really anticipated that the award might go to someone who hasn’t turned 30. But in her short career, Samantha Swindler has demonstrated the tenacity, courage and integrity that we had in mind when we created the award.”

Besides Tom and Pat Gish, other winners of the award have been the Ezzell family, publishers of The Canadian (Tex.) Record, in 2007; and former publisher Stanley Dearman and Publisher Jim Prince of The Neshoba Democrat of Philadelphia, Miss., in 2008. No award was presented for 2009. Nominations for the 2011 award are welcome at any time before Sept. 1, 2011.

Farm-belt Republicans reject Vilsack's plan to cut farm subsidies to big recipients right away

In a faceoff with House Republicans from his home Upper Midwest, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "stood firm in insisting it's time to lower the income cap for farm program payments," the weekly Washington newsletter Agri-Pulse reports. "With farm prices as strong as they are today, we think it is appropriate to ask the most successful farmers to consider perhaps receiving a bit less than they have been receiving," Vilsack told the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee.

President Obama's proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 calls for subsidies to go only to farmers with an adjusted gross income of less than $500,000 after three years. The current limit is $750,000. Also, "The administration maintains the maximum amount in direct payments should be set at $60,000 per farm, down from the current $80,000," writes Bill Straub of the Washington bureau of the Evansville Courier & Press "In all, the plan would save $2.6 billion over 10 years."

Iowa Republican Rep. Tom Latham said that plan would result in little actual savings. He said it was unrealistic to impose new limits on farm program payments, because that would involve re-opening the 2008 Farm Bill, which is not scheduled for review until next year. Vilsack pushed back: "We're not going to give up on that. ... It's a new day here. We're going to talk about a lot of things we've never talked about before." Vilsack said the administration's plan for cutting direct payments would affect just 2 percent of farm-program participants. Latham told Vilsack, "The reality is that we are not going to reopen the Farm Bill." Agri-Pulse is a subscription-only newsletter but offers a free four-issue trial subscription.

Straub writes, "Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have voted to slash programs affecting everything from poison control to Big Bird in their crusade to corral the $14 trillion national debt, but one item in the federal budget managed to sail through untouched — the farm subsidy program." (Read more)

Italian professor's oral history of Harlan County, Kentucky, gets Appalachian literature award

A book detailing oral histories of Harlan County, Kentucky, from an Italian historian is being honored as the best Appalachian book of 2011. They Say in Harlan County was written after more than 25 years of study in the county by Alessandro Portelli, a professor of American literature at the University of Roma-La Sapienza. It was selected by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association for the Willis Weatherford Award for nonfiction. The awards, which also honor fiction and poetry, go to a book "which in its year best illuminates the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South," the award's criteria say.

"More than 150 men and women from the region share their stories of the area, telling tales from the pioneer times, the coal mining strikes of the 1930s and 1970s, and on up to the present," Joshua Brock of the Harlan Daily Enterprise reports. Dr. William Turner, distinguished professor of Appalachian studies and regional ambassador at Berea, said "Portelli presents the people of Harlan much like [Harold] Pinter did in his dramas. He begins by painting them on a deeply etched historical canvas in colorful detail. He allows the strong people of Harlan to speak — in their own words — about how they were pitted in strong conflict against themselves and in struggle against powerful economic and social forces." (Read more)

Report noted serious enforcement lapses in mine-safety field offices before big disaster

Just two weeks before the April 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine, federal mine-safety regulators warned lawmakers about serious enforcement lapses in the agency. "On March 25, 2010, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration submitted a mandated report to the Senate Appropriations Committee on the activities of MSHA's internal Office of Accountability," which revealed, among other things, that over the previous two years MSHA "inspectors in 20 of 25 field offices reviewed did not properly evaluate the gravity and negligence of mine operator safety and health violations," Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette reports. The report covered the last year of the Bush administration and the first year of the Obama administration.

The report also revealed MSHA officials in 15 of the 25 field offices did not adequately document inspections so that any enforcement actions taken would stand up in court, supervisors in 21 of the 25 offices did not perform in-depth reviews to ensure that inspectors took appropriate enforcement actions, and inspectors in four offices did not complete mandatory spot inspections for mines that generated large amounts of explosive methane gas. At an unspecified number of field offices, there was a "lack of comprehensive inspections of all areas of the mining operation" and inappropriate "levels of enforcement issuances," Ward writes. MSHA said the report was focused on offices where the agency believed there were problems and therefore does not reflect the agency's work as a whole.

"The MSHA report -- just five pages long -- did not list the field offices that were audited or those where problems were found," Ward writes. "And MSHA does not post individual audit reports by the accountability office on its website." MSHA said it would take more than 30 days to respond to the Gazette's request for the individual audits and the agency could not release the full report because it could only be made public by Congress. "MSHA said it planned to spend $600,000 on the [accountability] office during the 2010 budget year, but was 'currently evaluating the restructuring' of the office 'to assure that targeted areas are effectively audited,'" Ward writes. (Read more)

Some rural phone firms want pieces of broadband spectrum designated for public safety

Part of the Obama Administration's plan to bring broadband Internet access to rural areas includes a $10.7 billion effort to create a national broadband network for public-safety agencies, but some telecommunications companies want a piece of that spectrum. "The plan would allocate one type of broadband spectrum, called "D Block," purely for public safety -- firefighters, police officers, ambulance personnel and other first responders," Jonathan Riskind of Maine Today reports for the Kennebec Journal. The administration plans to pay for the public-safety network, along with reducing the deficit by $9.6 billion and providing $5 billion to increase wireless coverage in rural communities, by auctioning off other spectrum segments.

Broadcasters fear they will be penalized if they do not voluntarily allow some of the segments they control to be auctioned to help pay for the plan, Riskind reports. Some companies, including Sprint, T-Mobile and smaller rural carriers, have formed a coalition that argues they should have access to "D Block" to better compete with the nation's largest carriers while partnering with public safety agencies. The coalition, Connect Public Safety Now, says its plan would "help build an efficient wireless network faster and more cost-effectively than" Obama's plan, Riskind writes.

Kevin McGinnis, a communications technology adviser to five national emergency medical-service organizations and a former Maine EMS director, disagrees. The coalition's "real goal has nothing to do with public safety. Their whole point is they want D Block to better compete with AT&T and Verizon. They want D Block because that is prime real estate," he told Riskind. The Obama administration plan, which would have lawmakers change the Federal Communications Commission's current mandate to auction off "D Block," has been met with bipartisan support. Still others, like Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe have reservations. "No amount of spectrum will be effective unless we also address several key areas such as adequate funding for the network, proper planning and governance to build and administer the network, and seamless coverage and interoperability to ensure undisrupted communications," she said. (Read more)