Lack of cell-phone coverage hampers economic development in some rural towns

Sparse cell phone coverage around Bridegport, Ala., population 2,728, is hurting its prospects for economic development because current prospective employers dissatisfied with the lack of cell service choose other locales, Andy Johns of the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports.

"They found out we don't have any service, so they went somewhere else," city council member Leon Dave told Johns. "We feel like we're getting left out."

Steve Berry, CEO of the Washington-based Rural Cellular Association, told Johns, "Bridgeport's frustrations are valid, and the same thing is happening in sparsely populated areas nationwide." He added, "There are coverage gaps nationwide where large cellular companies have decided it's not profitable to build towers. It's tough for small companies to come in and fill those gaps . . . because their phones won't work with the larger networks outside their small areas."

Sharing of towers among cell-phone companies is "not likely to happen anytime soon, because opponents argue that sharing towers would take away companies' incentive to expand and forfeit the money industry leaders have spent to gain commercial advantages," Johns reports. Berry suggests that Bridgeport and other small communities "contact the carriers and offer city cell contracts to any provider that gives reliable service. That would give a cell company some guaranteed customers before it brought its system online." (Read more)

Rural telecoms ask FCC to probe calling problems

Four rural telecommunications associations are asking the Federal Communications Commission for an investigation into declining telephone service to rural customers. This request comes following an increase in reported calling problems from 78 in April 2010 to 1,811 in March 2011, D.R. Stewart of the Tulsa World reports.

"We are running into problems on call-termination issues in rural parts of the state," Bob Stafford, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Telephone Association, which represents more than 40 rural telephone companies, told Stewart. "A person will call from out of state to a rural area in Oklahoma, and the calling party hears the phone ring and ring, but the call is not getting to the local telephone company."

In the letter to the associations share stories of rural customers who learn of the uncompleted calls only after their friends, family, or business associates reached them through e-mail or cell phone and several "small businesses losing tens of thousands of dollars in sales because their customers can't reach them," Stewart reports. The letter says some reported calls never went through or the call rang several times with no answer. Some customers even reported "their caller ID devices display unintelligible information" or they received a false message about the failure of the rural local exchange carrier.

Unsure of where the problem lies, the FCC plans to start its investigation with the originating carriers, Stewart reports. "There are some suspicions that when the calls go from more traditional technologies to VoIP [Voice Internet Protocol] technology, there may be issues there, Bob Gnapp, director of demand assurance and network analysis for the National Exchange Carriers Association, told Stewart. "We certainly know the scope of the problem, where the calls originate, but yet it's difficult to say with any assurance exactly what is happening in the middle of the telephone route."

Joining the association in the request to the FCC were the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and the Western Telecommunications Alliance. (Read more)

Tenn. opts for tracking system, not prescription law, to fight meth; officials say 'smurfs' will prevail

Tennessee pharmacies have until Jan. 1 to comply with a new law requiring participation in NPLEx, a free regional tracking system for pseudoephedrine purchases, Brian Haas of The Tennessean reports. Legislators declined to make methamphetamine's key ingredient, pseudoephedrine, prescription-only, instead opting "for a system used in Kentucky, as stricter cap on how much pseudoephedrine-based, over-the-counter drugs a person can buy in a day."

While the new law does include "new limits on pseudoephedrine purchases, new fines for manufacturing meth and strengthening child endangerment laws to include meth laboratories," Haas reports, some say it "will do little to curb the meth-manufacturer practice of 'smurfing'– recruiting other people to buy small amounts of pseudoephedrine to contribute to a meth batch."

"We basically have a whole cottage industry out of here of people who do nothing but go around and buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, " Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force, told Haas. "They run under the radar by not exceeding those legal limits, those thresholds." (Read more)

Most rural ER patients are low-income adults, and few result in admissions to the hospital

A new report from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows that low-income adults accounted for 56 percent of the 8 million rural emergency room visits in 2008. In non-rural hospitals, low-income adults accounted for only 30 percent of emergency room visits.

According to the report, 44 percent of adult visits to rural emergency departments were paid for by Medicaid, were uncompensated, or billed to uninsured patients. Only 31 percent were paid for by private health plans. In non-rural hospitals, 37 percent of adult visits were paid for by private health plans, and 42 percent were paid for by Medicaid, uncompensated or billed to uninsured patients.

Emergency business is mainly just that for rural hospitals. Only 8.3 percent of rural emergency department visits resulted in a hospital admission, compared to 16 percent of non-rural emergency department visits.

The report also noted the lack of rural hospitals with trauma-level emergency departments. Nationally, only 2.4 of rural emergency departments held any level of trauma designation. Among non-rural emergency departments, 35.5 percent had a trauma designation. Read more here.

Life expectancy declining in some counties; trend seems common in Appalachia and the Black Belt

Life expectancy is declining in an increasing number of U.S. counties, and some rural areas stand out, according to a study covering the two decades from 1987 to 2007. In the first decade, life expectancy declined in 314 counties; in the most recent decade, it dropped in 860. Most of those counties, 561, are rural, the Daily Yonder reports: "Nearly one out of four rural Americans live in counties where women in the last decade can expect to live shorter lives."

"The region where life expectancy is lowest, and in some places declining, begins in West Virginia, runs through the southern Appalachian Mountains and west through the Deep South into North Texas," writes David Brown of The Washington Post, who apparently doesn't recognize the Black Belt when he sees it (see maps at bottom). "Places of high life expectancy are more scattered." (Click on map for interactive versions with county data)

Declines in life expectancy were more common among women. Counties that also had declining life expectancy for men included Pike in Kentucky, Grundy in Tennessee, Walker in Alabama, Baker in Florida and La Paz in Arizona. "There are several possible reasons for the slowing of longevity in parts of in the United States," Brown writes. "The rising rate of obesity and plateauing of the smoking cessation rate among women are two. Poorly controlled blood pressure and a shortage of primary-care physicians are two others." Here's another version of the interactive map, showing in yellow the counties where women's life expectancy declined from 1987 to 2007:

Brown explains, "Life expectancy is an abstract concept that summarizes the health and threats to longevity that exist at a particular moment in history. It is not an actual measure of how long people are living." For a further explanation of that, and the rest of the story, click here. For the press release about the study, go here; for the full study, which includes larger versions of the maps below, from Population Health Metrics, here. The Yonder story by Bill Bishop, with lists of the rural counties where life expectancy is shortest and longest for men and women, is here.

Is your hospital a hotspot for doubling up on CT scans? NYT interactive map makes it easy to see

The hotter the color on this map, the more likely the local hospital is to be doubling up on computerized tomography (CT) scans, part of a phenomenon costing Medicare an extra $25 million a year and exposing patients to radiation without it being medically necessary, according to an analysis of data by The New York Times. Typically, one scan will use iodine to check blood flow and one will not. "Radiologists say one scan or the other is needed depending on the patient’s condition, but rarely both," Walt Bogdanich and Jo Craven McGinty report.

Nationally, 5.4 percent of outpatients on Medicare got two scans in one day during 2008. At major teaching hospitals the rate was usually less than 1 percent, but at more than 200 hospitals the average was more than 30 percent. Those over 25 percent are marked by red dots on the map, those between 15 and 25 percent with yellow dots, and those below 15 percent with blue. Data for 2009, which are very similar, are to be released next month by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Click on map to get interactive version with data for individual hospitals)

"Double scans expose patients to extra radiation while heaping millions of dollars in extra costs on an already overburdened Medicare program," the Times points out. "A single CT scan of the chest is equal to about 350 standard chest X-rays, so two scans are twice that amount. . . . Officials at hospitals with high scan rates said radiologists ordered the extra chest scan figuring that more information is better. In rare instances, the two scans might help a doctor distinguish between tangled blood vessels and a tumor," according to Dr. Michael J. Pentecost, a radiologist who reviews claims for CT scans.

The phenomenon appears more prevalent at rural hospitals. "Dr. Harold Smitson, who helps to oversee radiology at two East Texas Medical Center hospitals with high double-scan rates, told the Times, “These are small and rural hospitals, without a complete range of medical services, which are mandated to evaluate patients quickly and efficiently to determine the need for transfer to a higher level of care. ... “Combining these tests expedites the diagnosis and the care to the patient.” (Read more)

East Texas was one of the rural hotspots; ETMC Fairfield's double-scan rate was 88 percent, one of the highest in the nation. Another rural hotspot was in Tennessee and adjoining areas of Virginia and Kentucky. The highest in the region was Livingston Regional Hospital, at 87 percent.

House votes against tighter limit on farm subsidies, for cuts in nutrition and other programs

There's so much in (and not in) the appropriations bill for agriculture and nutrition programs, which narrowly passed House with no Democratic votes last night, 223-197, that we hardly know where to begin. But let's start with the vote to drop an amendment, approved in committee, that would have prohibited subsidy payments to farmers with adjusted gross income of more than $250,000 a year.

"The 228-186 vote still reflected growing support for this reform, which is strongly opposed by Southern land interests but has had the support of President Barack Obama and many Midwest farm-state lawmakers," writes David Rogers of Politico, who has been covering such measures for a long time.

"The farm lobby concedes that Thursday’s votes are only the opening shot in a bigger fight over a new farm bill next year. Annual direct payments are almost certain to be reduced under the recommendations coming from the House-Senate negotiations being led by Vice President Joe Biden. . . . As food aid programs —at home and abroad — are targeted for major reductions, this has strained old alliances for the farm lobby even as Republicans have felt less committed to agriculture — and traditional farm powerhouses like the ethanol lobby," which was losing a skirmish in the Senate.

"The current [subsidy] limit is $1.25 million per individual with separate maximums for farm and off-farm income," Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register explains. Brasher also writes, "In a rebuff to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the House voted to stop him from spending money on the administration’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative that’s promoting local foods and small-scale agriculture."

The House voted 223-197 to stop paying $147 million a year to the Brazil Cotton Institute in compensation for a World Trade Organization ruling that U.S. cotton subsidies violate trade treaties. That threatened final passage of the bill, so Republican leaders rounded up votes by saying that the issue would be addressed in a House-Senate conference committee.

That also seems likely for other features of the bill, such as elimination of money for the Food and Drug Administration "to implement landmark food safety laws approved by the last Congress" and cuts in nutrition programs that "hunger groups said ... would deny emergency nutrition to about 325,000 mothers and children," Layton writes. Also approved was an amendment by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, to ban the sale of genetically modified salmon, "which would be the first genetically engineered animal sold as food in the United States."

The bill also would prevent the Department of Agriculture from going through with new regulations on livestock and poultry contracts, designed to help small producers.

Senate votes 73-27 to repeal ethanol subsidies; lobby offers to trade tax aid for help with pumps

The U.S. Senate voted 73 to 27 today to repeal the federal subsidies for ethanol, a vote that will have no immediate effect but probably signals the eventual end of a tax break that was politically popular in much of the country and drove corn production to the point that two of every five bushels are now used to make ethyl alcohol for blending with gasoline.

"The prospects for repealing the tax credit in the House are shaky, Michael Cohn of Accounting Today reports. "It is opposed by many farm state lawmakers whose constituents benefit from the tax credits for corn-based fuel additives. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has led opposition to the measure, said on the Senate floor that the bill was not likely to even be voted on in the House. . . . However, the tax credit repeal may be included as part of a larger deficit reduction deal." (Read more)

UPDATE, June 18: In the wake of the vote, "Ethanol producers are offering to let Congress end the industry's 45-cent-per-gallon tax credit ahead of schedule so some of the savings can be put toward installing pumps and storage tanks needed to increase the amount of ethanol being sold by service stations," reports Bilip Brasher of The Des Moines Register. "With Congress committed to cutting the federal deficit, waiting until the end of the year in hopes of finding another source of money for the industry isn't an option, said Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, an industry trade group." (Read more)

National Rural Assembly is next week

June 28-30, more than 250 leaders and supporters of rural America are expected to gather in St. Paul, Minn., for the 2011 National Rural Assembly. The gathering "will focus on health reform, housing, transportation, immigration, broadband access and opportunities for young people," the assembly says in a press release. Speakers for the event include Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Navy Capt. Wayne Porter and Marine Col. Mark Mykleby.

"We can stand pat and just get more of the same in rural America, including the highest rates of child poverty and the hollowing out of our towns," Dee Davis, chairman of the Assembly's steering committee. said in the release. "Or we can start down a different rural path toward sustainable energy, local food production, and Internet connectivity that can help the whole country get back on its feet."

Registration for the event is open to individuals and organizations interested in the future of rural America. Click here to learn more about the event or to register.

Officials in an Eastern Kentucky county at odds with each other over the power of coal

At a recent city council meeting in Lynch, Ky. (Wikipedia map), Mayor Taylor Hall and several city council members accused Harlan County Judge-Executive Joe Grieshop of "criminal coercion" following a meeting between Hall and Grieshop, Anders Eld of the Harlan Daily Enterprise reports.

"When you say to us, that we will negotiate with the coal companies or not receive any money through the fiscal court, I think that is paramount to criminal coercion," Hall said of Grieshop's actions. He said he plans to talk to the state prosecutor about it. City officials oppose coal companies' plan to strip-mine mountains above the town, population 900.

Hall told Eld that Grieshop's "response on the fiscal court's original pledge to help with the match was that there were certain concessions he wanted. He told me that Lynch would have to go back into negotiations with the coal operators on mountain top removal and make concessions or there will be no funds."


Greishop essentially acknowledged what Hall alleged, thought it is open to interpretation. "Asking the city to sit-down with the coal company across from the table and negotiate on the issues is not criminal coercion," Grieshop told Eld. "I simply said that if you are not going to work with the coal companies and that's the source of money to help you. How do you expect the fiscal court to help you?"
Grieshop added, "I just told them that the coal companies are where the money comes from. If you're not willing to work with them and you're anti-coal, then the fiscal court members are not going to support you. They have already stated that. They don't feel comfortable helping out cities with coal monies, when the city is not trying to work with the coal company." (Read more)

Environmental group starts website with information about the Marcellus Shale

The Pennsylvania Environmental Council unveiled "a new website aimed at organizing the avalanche of information on all things Marcellus Shale," the rock formation that is producing much natural gas with hydraulic fracturing, the council says in a press release.

MarcellusFacts continuously searches the Internet for new information on Marcellus Shale and presents it in an easy-to-read format. The site collects information from gas industry sources, nonprofit environmental organizations, Pennsylvania newspapers, Google News, universities, and the council's website. The goal is to present unedited information from all sides of the debate in a "clear and concise format for computers or smartphones," it says.

"There is so much information about Marcellus Shale in cyberspace that it has become very difficult to manage it all," Council President Paul King says. "Our goal in creating MarcellusFacts is to simplify the challenge of being well-informed on the issues and to make the people of Pennsylvania better participants in the public process."

Community journalism principles still apply in digital age, Institute director says in national journal

The director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and several other well-known journalism scholars join together in the latest issue of Nieman Reports from Harvard University to address the impact of digital tools on people's sense of community. Al Cross, the publisher of The Rural Blog, specifically addresses the impact of the digital age on community journalism.

Chris Evans, editor and publisher,
The Crittenden Press, Marion, Ky.

Cross says the basic principles of community journalism remain unchanged. He writes of Tom and Pat Gish of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., revealing "mutual respect they had with their readers" as key to their "ability to keep going for more than 50 years in the face of economic boycotts, personal shunning, and even a firebombing by a local policeman" as they "crusaded against the abuses of coal companies and feckless or corrupt officials."

Digital media presents community journalism with new challenges, "some so fundamental that they are altering the meaning of the word 'community'," Cross writes. He suggests community journalists "use social media to maintain and improve contact with community members and weekly newspapers use Facebook to keep readers up to date on breaking news, sports scores, and other topics of daily community interest."

"Our task is to be in a position to provide credible information in whatever form people what it in," Chris Evans, editor and publisher of The Crittenden Press in Western Kentucky, told Cross. "You've got to embrace technology, understand where your audience is at, and get there — and the credibility you have will draw people back to you." (Read more)

Rural library recognized for energy-efficient design

Residents of Naturita, Colo., never imagined they would get a new energy-efficient library almost eight times the size of their old library, let alone have it recognized by The Library Journal, the leading comprehensive publication for public, academic, and special librarians covering technology, management, policy, and other professional concerns, as 2011's Best Small Library. (Read more)

Ethanol subsidy remains in the cross hairs; allies file a repeal bill with an alternaitve

The ethanol subsidy was temporarily spared in a Senate vote Tuesday as opponents of the subsidy got only "40 of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on a proposal to abolish the tax credit immediately," Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports. However, opponents of the subsidy could get a chance to vote again as early as the end of next week.

Democratic leaders have agreed to allow a new vote because as many as 20 Democrats who voted against the subsidy "objected to the vote on procedural grounds," Brasher reports. Senate Majority Leader and Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, objected to Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn's forced scheduling of Tuesday's vote.

The new vote will include an alternative bill by industry allies "that would repeal the 45-cent subsidy July 1 and devote $1 billion of the savings to deficit reduction," Brasher reports. The bill includes a new subsidy to protect the ethanol industry against a decline in biofuel interest by refiners from oil prices dropping and government financial assistance to install new ethanol pumps at service stations.

Next week's votes "are still likely to be largely symbolic, because the House is expected to object to a tax-related measure originating in the Senate," Brasher writes. "But the votes will put senators on record on the issue, and lawmakers are reluctant to switch sides once they have taken a position."

This has the ethanol industry concerned. "Having 40 votes in favor of immediate repeal of the subsidy was a bad sign for the ethanol industry," analysts with Clear View Partners wrote. "That should leave little doubt about congressional will to spend on energy subsidies of any kind in the current fiscal environment." (Read more)

AEP wrongly blaming EPA for coal-fired plant shutdows, EPA chief says, with some evidence

American Electric Power was misleading when it blamed the shutdown of five coal-fired power plants on new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told reportes this morning after a Senate committee hearing.

AEP's claims were "misleading at best, scare tactics at worst," Jackson said. Gabiriel Nelson of Environment & Energy News writes, "Critics say that the new rules are not the main driver of the shutdowns. Of the 6,000 megawatts to be retired, 4,000 megawatts are the result of a 2007 settlement deal with states and the George W. Bush administration to resolve claims that AEP's plants were releasing too much air pollution."

Nelson notes CEO Michael Morris told during an investor conference last month "that most of the coal plants AEP planned to retire, with 5,500 megawatts of capacity, were 'high cost plants' that 'dispatch infrequently'." (Read more, subscription required)

Almost 1/4 of counties had fewer births than deaths in 2010, and 90 percent of those counties are rural

Almost one-fourth of U.S. counties had more deaths than births last year, and 90 percent of those counties were rural, says a researcher at the University of New Hampshire. "And, for the first time in U.S. history, deaths now exceed births in an entire state," West Virginia, said Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer with the university's Carsey Institute.

These are more than demographic trends, Johnson says, with "implications that reach far beyond demography to institutions that are the bedrock of communities." For example, "The viability of local schools becomes precarious as the student and parent populations diminish. ... And, the needs of families and children may get less attention in the political arena than those of the growing senior population." For Johnson's full report, click here. For the press release from Carsey, go here.

Fracking crackdown, natural-gas prices depress N.Y. leases, but activity spawns a new publication

Exxon Mobil's recent $1.7 billion acquisition of Phillips Resources and TWP's Marcellus Shale gas leases may mean Marcellus prices are dropping, report Christopher Swann and Reynolds Holding of Reuters.

Exxon is paying about $5,000 an acre; in 2010 leases were selling for as much as $17,000 an acre. Falling natural-gas prices and state regulators' crack down on hydraulic fracturing are leading many energy firms to find other locations, Swann and Holding report. "Marathon Oil paid $20,000 an acre for oil-rich land in Texas earlier this month." Marcellus land does have at least one advantage over many other locations. Its proximity to New York City, where the gas sells for a premium, has Shell "mulling a new petrochemical plant in the region," Swann and Holding report.

However, the closeness to Gotham, which draws its water from a Catskills area underlain by the Marcellus, also makes activity in the area more environmentally sensitive. An online publication, The Watershed Post, has sprung up to cover the rural area, and fracking in particular. Here is a story about it from Brett Norman of Columbia Journalism Review.

Duncan may grant No Child Left Behind waivers if Congress doesn't change law before school starts

As schools await Congress's rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act, Education Secretary Arne Duncan "is preparing to grant states relief from key provisions of the federal school accountability law in exchange for what he calls 'commitments to key reforms'," Michele McNeil reports for Education Week. Duncan's announcement came during a June 10 call with reporters in response to Congress' lack of action and a growing fear of schools' abilities to meet the 2014 deadline for proficiency in reading and math.

Though the details of Duncan's plans are unclear, he did say "he'd like to give states the ability to focus on student gains rather than absolute test scores . . . and he'd like to grant more flexibility in how Title I money for disadvantages students is spent," McNeil reports. The relief would primarily be waivers, Duncan spokesman Justin Hamilton told McNeil. "Unlike the Race to the Top, which allowed states to devise their own education improvement plans, the department would present states with a basket of strategies they would have to adopt in exchange for relief," he added. (Read more)

Duncan said his administration will start reaching out to governors, state school commissioners, and other leaders to discuss possible waivers and identify the most serious obstacles schools face and what improvements could be executed in exchange for waivers, Sam Dillon of The New York Times reports.

The announcement got mixed reactions. Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said, "Given the bipartisan commitment in Congress to fixing No Child Left Behind, it seems premature at this point to take steps outside the legislative process that would address NCLB's problems in a temporary and piecemeal way." But Diane DeBacker, commissioner of education in Kansas, which was denied a waiver in February, told Dillon, "I'm pleased that there is an option for a Plan B." (Read more)

As farmland values rise, so does investor interest

The value of U.S. farmland is on the rise, according to several regional Federal Reserve Bank reports. The Chicago branch reported a 16 percent "year-over-year increase in farmland values in in the first quarter of 2011," and the Kansas City branch reported that in the fourth quarter of 2010, Midwestern cropland values jumped almost 20 percent above year-ago levels."

Rising commodity prices and low interest rates have led to the increased demand for farmland, leading to a 30 percent decrease in the amount of farmland for sale, Lee Vermeer, vice president of real estate operations at Farmers National Co., told The Sun-Times in Heber Springs, Ark.

In Arkansas "75 to 85 percent of land buyers continue to be farmers," Vermeer said, but there is growing interest from outside investors. Keith Morris, area sales manager for Farmers National in Arkansas, southern Missouri, western Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, told the Sun that in his region, half the land buyers are investors. (Read more)

USPS defends use of suburbanites to sample rural opinion about ending Saturday mail delivery

The U.S. Postal Service, fighting to get Congress to let it stop delivering mail on Saturdays, is disputing an advisory opinion that questioned its cost-savings estimates and its lack of consideration for the effect that five-day delivery would have on rural areas.

The Postal Regulatory Commission said in March that the Postal Service should not eliminate Saturday delivery without more study of the impact on rural customers. It said a USPS poll asking Americans if they would rather have Saturday mail or pay more for stamps used "an improbable 10 percent rate increase, which may have biased the responses," and that the "rural" people in the service's focus groups about the issue were in Gwinnett County, Georgia, above, in suburban Atlanta, and Snohomish County, Washington, below, in suburban Seattle. (MapQuest images; click on either map for larger version)

USPS said the groups had people from "rural areas surrounding Atlanta and Seattle and are served by rural carriers," and the commission didn't object to that methodology in its 2009 report to the commission about universal service. It said the commission's concern about "customers who might rely on rural carriers to conduct retail transactions along a delivery route in the absence of an accessible post office location on Saturdays ... was not a concern expressed by the rural participants in the market-research focus-group sessions."

That's no surprise, since these were residents of metropolitan areas, not truly rural regions where post offices are the least accessible, making retail transactions with mail carriers much more common than on rural routes near major cities. The exception to that might be lightly populated central and eastern Snohomish County, but what were the chances that someone from there was picked for the Seattle focus group and was willing to drive to the city for it? Yes, the undersigned has an opinion on this subject, having testified before the commission that five-day delivery would have a disproportionate impact on rural America. For a video of the testimony, made on behalf of the National Newspaper Association, click here. For a PDF of the written testimony submitted in advance, click here.

Data on hospital-acquired conditions is online

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted information about hospital-acquired conditions on its website, and The Courier-Journal of Louisville not only has a story about it today, it has an easily serarchable database of Kentucky hospitals.

This is not information that the American Hospital Association wants online, at least in its current form. “You have to look at the totality of the care. And these little snapshots that CMS wants to pick out are very misleading,” Kentucky Hospital Association Senior Vice President Nancy Galvagni told C-J reporter Patrick Howington. She said the data don't allow for differences between hospitals, such as specialities, that may cause higher rates of acquired conditions.

However, Doug Leonard, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, told Howington that the industry needs to “embrace transparency. Sometimes we don't like the results of that, but I think transparency is good for us and good for the public.” Dr. Kevin Kavanagh of Somerset, Ky., chairman of the nonprofit group Health Watch USA, "said the data's greatest value may be to help hospitals spot areas that need improvement, rather than to help patients choose between hospitals," Howington writes. "In fact, a hospital shown as having a high complication rate 'may be the safest hospital to go to, because they were under pressure to get the problem corrected.'" (Read more)

The conditions tracked are trauma, such as falls; blood and urinary infections from catheters; bedsores; poor blood-sugar control for diabetics; foreign objects left in bodies; air or gas bubbles in blood vessels; and transfusions of the wrong blood type.

Postal commission chairman asks USPS for report that could head off some post-office closings

The head of the federal agency that oversees the U.S. Postal Service told Postmaster General Pat Donahoe in a letter last week that she fears the USPS is not following federal law in closing what appears to be an increasing number of post offices, many of them rural, and asked for detailed information about the topic in a way that could head off some office closings.

Ruth Goldway, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, reminded Donahoe that the Postal Service assured the commission that if new rules for evaluating post offices for closure "indicate that closing a significant number of existing retail outlets appeared justified," the service would seek an advisory opinion from the commission before closing the offices, which she said is required by Title 39 of the U.S. Code.

"Numerous articles have appeared in the press identifying facilities in a number of states that have been closed, or that have been evaluated for potential closing, or shortly will be evaluated for potential closing," Goldway wrote. "The Commission has received an increased number of post office closing appeals, hundreds of inquiries from citizens, and has had communications with concerned members of Congress. Thus, it appears that the Postal Service may already be engaged in a nationwide change in service without prior notification to the Commission as Title 39 requires."

Goldway said the USPS should seek an advisory opinion to avoid "the confusion that now surrounds post office closings," and include "a detailed discussion of how the cumulative impact of the local changes involved will affect the fulfillment of national access and delivery aspects of the Postal Service's universal service obligation." She said the commission wants to know the post offices that have closed since Jan. 1, those "noticed for closure or lease termination and that are still under consideration," the offices "for which cessation of service is currently under internal review," and a state-by-state list of post offices. To download the letter, click here.

Ethanol credit up for test in Senate Tuesday

UPDATE, June 14: The Senate defeated Coburn's amendment by a vote of 59 to 40. After Senate Democratic leaders worked against it, one of his initial co-sponsors, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., withdrew her support, citing "real concerns about the process used to bring this amendment to the floor." Majoriy Leader Harry Reid said he would hold a vote on ethanol June 24, but "It is unclear whether there will be a vote only on the amendment from Feinstein or whether an additional vote on an alternative measure, like the one offered from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), will be allowed," Darren Goode of Politico reports.

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, right, says he has the votes needed to pass legislation in the Senate that would repeal the federal tax credit for ethanol. The vote, set for Tuesday, will be on "an amendment to unrelated legislation that is not expected to pass," but a vote to kill the ethanol credit would be "a signficant break with more than two decades of GOP tax orthodoxy, which prohibits increasing revenue by any means other than economic growth," reports Lori Montgomery of The Washington Post.

"Coburn has argued that Republicans must abandon that orthodoxy to forge a compromise with Democrats on a viable plan to rein in the spiraling national debt," Montgomery writes, noting that the no-tax pledge signed by almost all congressional Republicans casts such a vote as a tax increase. Coburn told her, "I don’t think this is a tax increase. This is stupidity at its height. If you vote to give the richest oil companies in this country $3 billion between now and the end of December, then you don’t get it. You are absolutely confused about what the problems are in this country." (Read more)

In diagnosing your local hospital's cutbacks, take a national look

Is your rural hospital cutting staff and services? It may be part of a national trend, and is certainly affected by national phenomena, as Jennifer Gordon of the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press makes clear in writing about cutbacks at the small Atchison Hospital, in the Kansas town a few miles downstream on the Missouri River.

"The same set of issues that beset urban hospitals — declining physician reimbursement rates and an increase in patients unable to cover health care costs — affect rural facilities at a greater rate," writes Gordon, right. "On average, rural hospitals serve areas with higher incidences of unemployment and Medicare and Medicaid recipients. They also serve fewer patients and a shrinking population (the 2010 Census revealed Atchison County’s population has decreased 2.8 percent since 1990), which means rural hospitals cannot generate as much revenue as larger facilities."

Gordon's story is a good example of how to use national information to explain local events. To read it, click here.

Study finds eastern wolves are part coyote

A wolf, or a coyote, or both?

Wolves in the Eastern U.S. are hybrids of gray wolves and coyotes, and the region's coyotes actually are wolf-coyote-dog hybrids, with varying degrees of hybridization, according to a new study "that is adding fuel to a longstanding debate over the origins of two endangered species," the red wolf in North Carolina and the eastern Canadian wolf, Mary Esch of The Associated Press reports.

The global study, published online in the scientific journal Genome Research, used information from the dog genome. It followed a study which found that "domestic dogs likely originated in the Middle East and shared more genetic similarity with Middle Eastern gray wolves than any other wolf population," Esch writes.

As VA struggles to deal with recent vets' health issues, audit shows rural efforts' impact uncertain

"Long distances and restrictive rules have become obstacles to health care for many of the more than 3 million rural veterans enrolled in the VA health system," David Goldstein of McClatchy Newspapers reports. "But the agency's effort to aid rural veterans has other problems as well. An April internal VA audit found that it couldn't determine whether a lot of the money spent on rural health care in recent years care did any good."

Rural vets account for 41 percent of VA enrollees, and more than a third of those who served in Irag and Afghanistan, Goldstein notes. "While there appears to be general agreement that VA hospitals provide good medical care, the system has been under extreme stress because of the wars" in thoose nations, which have lasted longer than expected and caused many phsical disabilities and metal illnesses. "suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have reached record levels," Goldstein writes.

As Congress reconsiders ban on horse slaughter, GAO studies whether ban leads to more neglect

The Government Accountability Office is studying if there is a correlation between neglect of horses and the effective ban on horse slaughter in the U.S, reports Wendy Reuer of The Forum of Fargo.

"Although a ban to prevent horse slaughter in the U.S. was meant to protect horses, many say it is only hurting them," Reuer writes, quoting Charlotte Tuhy, above, owner of Hightail Ranch and Rescue in Hawley, Minn.: “I think they would be much better off as far as the horses are concerned to have horse slaughter in the U.S. because we can govern it.”

Horses can still be "sold for kill" and shipped to Canada or Mexico, where equine abattoirs are "often lightly regulated," Reuer reports, adding that the Animal Welfare Council says shipments now exceed 100,000 horses a year. Medora rancher Doug Tescher said horses that would once bring $300 to $400 for U.S. slaughter bring only $25 to $50, and sale costs average $30.

Reuer explains that "a 2007 federal appropriations bill blocks funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to inspect equine meat," and notes that the House Appropriations Committee voted only 24-21 to continue the ban recently. The GAO study could influence the outcome, but it's unclear when it will be released. The full House will vote on the USDA spending bill this month, Reuer writes.

Obama creates White House Rural Council; observers greet it with considerable skepticism

President Obama today created a White House Rural Council, chaired by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, right, and made up of representatives from other agencies, mostly Cabinet-level. Vilsack called it "a truly historic moment for the nation and "an unprecedented commitment to rural America."

In a conference call with reporters, Vilsack denied that the council was a response to Republican criticism of the administration's policies on issues related to public lands in the West, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar denied that it was created to enhance Obama's chances for re-election. Both said the administration has been better for rural America than its predecessors, or at least some of them. "It has been a forotten America," Salazar said. Vilsack added, "We need to do a better job, obviously, of reminding folks of what’s been done," which he also did in a White House Blog post.

Vilsack told reporters the focus of the council will be "innovative strategies to grow the economy in rural America," and Salazar said it would "help ensure that small towns and rural counties remain front and center in our policies and priorities." In response to the question about Obama's re-election, Vilsack said the council would "go out and listen to folks," and in his blog post said it would be "a means of connecting with rural America." Such activities were not mentioned in Obama's executive order.

Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder wrote that he was left unclear about just what the council would do, started a discussion on the Yonder's Facebook page and said Lynda Waddington of the Iowa Indepednent had some ideas. The White House has an Office of Urban Affairs. For Obama's press release, click here.

UPDATE, June 12: Miryam Ehrlich Williamson of The Back Forty suggests the council will have too many agencies and not enough decision-makers at the table, since the agency heads can deisgnate subordinates to represent them. She speaks from experience as a congressional aide. For her blog post, click here. One of those subordinates, acting Assistant Energy Secretaryn Henry Kelly, reports on the Energy Department's blog about the council's first meeting and writes about an energy-efficiency grant that is helping a Kentucky dairy farmer. For that story, click here.

AEP to shut 5 coal-fired plants, citing EPA rules, which will have major impact in several regions

First it was the Tennessee Valley Authority, announcing that it would close 18 old, coal-fired power plants as part of a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency. Now Amercian Electric Power Co. has announced it will shut five coal-fired plants and convert others to natural gas, to meet new EPA regulations. "Those changes would be driven by proposed rules requiring coal-fired power plants to cut their air pollution, handle chemical-laden coal ash differently and upgrade their cooling water systems to avoid killing fish," Gabriel Nelson of Environment & Energy News reports (subscription required). Three of the plants are in West Virginia, one in Virginia and one in Ohio.

A study by NERA Economic Consulting for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electrcity predicts the impact of the new rules by electric region:

"The cumulative impacts of the EPA's current regulatory path have been vastly underestimated, particularly in Midwest states dependent on coal to fuel their economies," AEP chairman and CEO Michael Morris said in a news release. "Because of the unrealistic compliance timelines in the EPA proposals, we will have to prematurely shut down nearly 25 percent of our current coal-fueled generating capacity, cut hundreds of good power-plant jobs, and invest billions of dollars in capital to retire, retrofit and replace coal-fueled power plants. The sudden increase in electricity rates and impacts on state economies will be significant at a time when people and states are still struggling." (Read more)

Not enough local journalism to hold government and business accountable, study concludes

“The independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism — going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy — is in some cases at risk at the local level,” says a report for the Federal Communications Commssion, "The Information Needs of Communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age." Though the report is for the FCC, it deals with all forms of local news media and was prompted partly by concern about daily newspapers.

“In many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting,” says the 478-page report, written primarily by veteran Washington journalist Steven Waldman. It recommends "making actual in-the-field reporting a part of the curriculum at journalism schools, steering more government advertising money toward local instead of national media, and changing the tax code to encourage donations to nonprofit media organizations," The New York Times reports.

The major philanthropic funder of journalism, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, endorsed the recommendations and pointed to recommendations its own Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities. For the Knight press release, click here.

The findings of the FCC report "painted a dim portrait of local media," Times reporters Jeremy Peters and Brian Stelter write, choosing this as the study conclusion to highlight: "Coverage of state governments and municipalities has receded at such an alarming pace that it has left government with more power than ever to set the agenda and have assertions unchallenged." (Read more)

Americans have "more news choices than ever," but "non-profit websites and other media ventures . . .  are still not filling the journalism gap left by the contraction of newspapers, said Waldman, co-founder of the religion website Beliefnet.com," Associated Press technology writer Joelle Tessler reports.

Agricultural scientists link global warming to human activity, say trouble for farming has already begun

Three allied agricultural-science groups, with a total of more than 10,000 members, say the Earth is warming, and partly because of human activity. In other words, they believe in anthropogenic climate change.

The American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America and the Soil Science Society of America said “A comprehensive body of scientific evidence indicates beyond reasonable doubt that global climat change is now occurring,” and “Increases in ambient temperatures and changes in related processes are directly linked to rising anthropogenic greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere.”

The groups warn that climate change could have big impacts on agriculture and “ecosystem services” such as pollination, erosion control and natural pest management. "In fact, the groups say, changes in temperature have already begun to affect crops, water availability, and pests in some areas," the Washington newsletter Agri-Pulse reports. Agri-Pulse is subscription-only, but offers a four-issue trial subscription.

The Economist, which calls itself a newspaper but is arguably the world's best magazine, had a cover story, multimedia presentation and lead editorial last week welcoming readers to the Anthropocene Epoch, a new geologic age of man. "It is one of those moments where a scientific realisation, like Copernicus grasping that the Earth goes round the sun, could fundamentally change people’s view of things far beyond science," the editortial says. "It means more than rewriting some textbooks. It means thinking afresh about the relationship between people and their world and acting accordingly." The package generated a lot of letters.

Without risking tax dollars, rural Wyo. town creates a fiber broadband network that makes money

A town of 5,000 people in a county with only four people per square mile might seem to be one of the last places to get fiber-optic broadband to everyone who wants it. But "a team of community planners, IT pros and financial experts helped put together a locally owned broadband fiber network" for Powell, Wyo., just east of Yellowstone National Park, the Daily Yonder reports.

"Powell’s network broke even in 18 months and has operated profitably ever since," Craig Settles reports. "Two service providers, including the town’s partner, Tri-County Telecom, compete for subscribers of data, voice and video services. And most stunningly, this $5 million project put no taxpayer dollars at risk."

How Powell did it "is relatively easy to describe," Settles writes. "The devil, of course, is in the details. Every community is different and each will need to tailor the approach." (Read more)

Cable channels, especially Fox's, emphasize criticism of EPA's greenhouse-gas regulations

A study by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters says cable-TV news audiences got "a steady stream of attacks" on the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse-gas regulations but "relatively few arguments for the greenhouse-gas regulations," Gabriel Nelson of Environment & Energy News reports.

The group says critics outnumbered supporters by four to one on the nine cable channels it studied beginning in December 2009, when EPA issued a finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a threat to human health and welfare. The study concluded in April.

"Leading the way were the three stations owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- Fox, Fox News and Fox Business -- which featured 129 critics and 19 supporters over the past 18 months," Nelson writes. "The only stations with more supporters than critics were MSNBC and NBC, which had a combined nine guests supporting EPA and two critics. (Read more, subscription required)

Media Matters is campaigning to have advertisers drop Fox, but former TV executive Norman Horowitz, "a raging liberal," writes in Fox's defense on TVWeek.com that the group "has crossed a line by trying to stifle a voice of which they don’t approve. They suggest, in a manner of speaking, that the public destroy the Fox presses by removing the financial support of Fox News that comes from Madison Avenue. . . . their shouting emits a foul odor when they are advocating the suppression of views expressed on Fox News along with the suppression of Fox News itself." (Read more)

EPA offers resources for environmental reporters

The Environmental Protection Agency has made several online resources available for reporters to "help generate or confirm stories" and save time, the Society of Environmental Journalists reports.

Cleanups in My Community: Through a street address or ZIP code search, reporters can learn which facilities in their community are subject to EPA's Superfund, Brownfields or Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA, solid or hazardous waste) cleanup programs, SEJ reports.

RadNet: Reporters can access the national network of over 200 radiation monitoring stations across the U.S.

Discharge Monitoring Report Pollutant Loading Tool: This tool gives reporters "better estimates of the pollutant load on a particular body of water" and "makes it easier . . . to assess whether current pollution restrictions will actually result in water quality improvements," SEJ reports.

AirNow: This tool provides "copyright-free daily local forecasts, maps, and air pollution measurements that work really well online," SEJ reports.

Southern Ky. county's Extension Service working closely with Hispanic population

In Russell County, Kentucky, population 17,565, the Cooperative Extension Service is working "with the county's Hispanic population . . . to improve their homes, families and food" through its 'Las Latinas' club, Katie Pratt reports for University of Kentucky Ag News. 'Las Latinas', an all-Hispanic Extension Homemaker Club, started in August 2010 after many Hispanic women participated in the service's community garden in the rural county on Lake Cumberland. (CES photo)

The members have participate in workshops on financial literacy, food safety, cooking and food preservation. Pamela York, Russell County's family and consumer sciences extension agent, shares Spanish-translated university publications with the group. She had the UK canning publications translated into Spanish with the help of a retired school teacher.

"Because many of their families have seasonal jobs, learning how to preserve food really makes a difference in them having food to eat in the wintertime," York told Pratt. "I think they've been able to prepare more nutritious food for themselves and their families."

Margie Hernandez, the extension assistant for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education, told Pratt, "You have a sense that you can help them. You can help them fit into the community, save money, teach them how to budget and make healthier meals for their families."

Yazmin Chavez, who has participated in the program since 2009, told Pratt, "I've stayed with Extension, because they help us and we save money. We save more money every year." (Read more)

Small-town foundation chief says we need a real rural policy, and offers some ideas for it

As America becomes less rural, it needs a real, effective rural policy, for the good of the nation, not just for rural people, Karl Stauber writes in a two-part series concluding today in the Daily Yonder. (Yonder photo from Howard, S.D., pop. 1,156)

Stauber, president of the Danville Regional Foundation in southern Virginia, says rural America has three basic challenges besides population loss: "It is highly diverse, so 'big, top-down' solutions rarely work. ... Much of Rural America is defined by what it used to be, rather than what it hopes to be," and "Rural areas often see themselves as separate from each other and urban centers rather than being parts of regional economic and ecological systems."

He lays out some core principles for a rural policy: equal access to government services, universal high-speed Internet accessm and the ability to create competitive advantage as sitiutations change, which often requires the help of universities. (Read more)

In the first part of his series, Stauber asks a question that will need good answers if we are to have good rural policy: "Why should urban people should want rural people and areas to succeed?" He answers:
• "Almost all of America’s water and much of its food and fiber come from rural regions of the U.S. For rural regions to produce what America needs, America must support rural opportunities. But in the future, those opportunities must be different, focused on constantly creating competitive advantage, rather than simply protecting old advantages. [See below.]
• "America’s exceptionalism is based, in part, on the concept of equal access to opportunity.
• "There is an old rural saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
• "Do we wish to curse rural people with poverty and poor education? That is starting to happen in some rural (and urban) parts of America.
• "Do you want to live with the population concentration or sprawl" suggested by experts who love megacities and say that's where public investment should go?
 
Regarding the first bullet, Stauber calls for investment in "New Ag" as opposed to "Old Ag," which he says "is largely about protecting the status quo supported by many of the major farm groups and commodity organizations.  New Ag is a combination of grassroots farmer and food organizations and environmental groups that challenge the status quo with a vision of agriculture as producing positive environmental benefits and healthier diets."
 
And Stauber reminds us that farming provides only about 5 percent of the jobs in rural America, and that 82 percent of farm-family farm income comes from off the farm. "There are parts of the U.S. where agriculture is dominant, but much less than 50 years ago.  Focusing on agriculture, especially Old Ag, ignores the vast majority of rural people and communities."
 
Given that, Stauber says, we should realize the differences in "Old Rural and "New Rural," as he calls them: "Old Rural is largely about protecting regionally dominant enterprises that produce single commodities, often with federal and state government support and protection (coal, timber, commodity crops, low-skill, low-wage manufacturing, etc.), while increasing the amount, but often not the distribution of wealth. . . . New Rural is about helping regional efforts to build diverse, evolving competitive advantage that grows the amount and distribution of wealth. ... Recruit entrepreneurs and immigrants, not low-wage manufacturing. Quality of life is critical. Environmental quality an asset to be protected, not expended." (Read more)

Park Service may survive cuts, thanks to GOP

"Budget-strapped state parks" are charging fees and relying more on volunteers, The New York Times reports, but the National Park Service may be positioned to avoid large budget cuts, with support from several Republicans. "Some fiscal conservatives" such as Rep. Cynthia Lummins of Wyoming, "are even making the agency a top funding priority," Phil Taylor of Environment & Energy News reports.

As a member of the House Interior, Forest Service and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, Lummis "said her first concern for fiscal 2012 is maintaining level funding for the agency's operations budget, which ensures adequate staffing, visitors services and routine maintenance across nearly 400 unites," Taylor reports.

Another Republican, Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, has concerns about the proposed drop in park construction funding, since President Obama's "Great Outdoors" initiative requires significant increases in land acquisitions, Taylor reports. (Read more, subscription required)

Voluntary ban on stream disposal of drilling wastewater in Pennsylvania seems to be working

Last Thursday, Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer announced to officials in Washington D.C., "that drilling wastewater is no longer being discharged to rivers or streams in Pennsylvania without full treatment," Donald Gilliland of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg reports. The announcement came after Krancer asked drillers to voluntarily stop the practice.

"We've gone from millions and millions of gallons being discharged to virtually none," DEP spokeswoman Katy Gresh told Gilliland, but said the agency could not confirm complete compliance with the request. "The agency has reports of a few trucks delivering what may or may not be drilling waste," she said. "We're tracking down those leads to ensure we have complete compliance all of the time."

Can the DEP enforce compliance of a voluntary ban? Gresh said the DEP will "take whatever next step is necessary" when violators are discovered. Four environmental groups on the governor's Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission suggest making the voluntary ban "a legally enforceable requirement," Gilliland reports.

Coal strippers' compliance down in Ky., up in W.Va.

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement reported a drop in coal strip miners' compliance with federal laws and regulations in Kentucky in the last three years. The compliance rate in the state "dropped from 87 percent of surveyed mining sites in 2007 and 2008 to 65 percent in 2010," James Bruggers of The Courier-Journal writes.

The report identified water quality, permit administration, and backfilling and grading as the most common violations at 325 randomly selected sites, including former mines being reclaimed. "These are not minor violations," Joseph Blackburn, the top OSM official in Kentucky, told Bruggers. "I think there is a degree of seriousness we cannot ignore, and we aren't."

Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, defended the industry's record: "We need to continue to work toward a goal of 100 percent compliance, but this information released by OSM needs to be reviewed in the context of a changing regulatory climate." Bissett did not specify which rules he believed were responsible, but said there had been "change in the way the rules have been interpreted."

State officials suggested that their inspections have been more rigorous than they were under Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who left office in December 2007. “We are seeing a compliance issue because we are doing a much more rigorous job of enforcement,” Jim Dickinson, director of the Division of Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, told Bruggers. He said all inspectors have been told: “If you see a violation, you write it.”

"At the same time the state has stepped up its enforcement, state officials see mines doing less," Bruggers writes, citing Department for Natural Resources Commissioner Carl Campbell, a former head of the strip-mine agency he now oversees. (Read more) Appendix E of the OSM report includes a list of all companies cited, by number of violations.

Kentucky lies in two coalfields, the Central Appalachian and the Illinois Basin, In the other big Eastern strip-mine state, West Virgina's OSM field office reports "that violations of the state program were observed on 24 percent of the inspections" by federal inspectors, compared to 31 percent last year. Thus, the West Virginia compliance rates rose from 69 percent to 75 percent.

Solar projects divide environmentalists

Proposed solar-energy projects on undeveloped public land in the southwestern deserts have environmentalists at odds, Keith Matheny of USA Today reports.

"The projects are supposed to generate about 4,200 megawatts of power, enough electricity to power nearly 2.8 million homes, and nearly 7,000 jobs, according to federal estimates. Does that outweight the impact on rare animals and plants on public lands?

No, says Janine Blaeloch, supporter of renewable resources and executive director of Western Lands, a non-profit group that examines the impacts of government-land privatization. "These plants will introduce a huge amount of damage to our public land and habitat," she told Matheny.

Other environmentalists like Johanna Wald, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, support the solar projects and their potential to slow or halt climate change. "There's no free lunch when it comes to meeting our energy needs," she told Matheny. "To get energy, we need to do things that will have impacts."

With 11 major solar projects approved in California and Nevada last year and a dozen utility-scale solar projects already in the permitting pipeline in California, Nevada and Arizona, federal agencies could "open up 21.5 million more public acres to solar development in six Western states," Matheny reports, threatening wildlife, like the endangered desert tortoise, in the open deserts. The solution, some critics say, is to use "already-disturbed lands such as brownfield sites or former agricultural fields or even residential and commercial rooftops. (Read more)

GOP hopefuls 'all over the map' on ethanol

National Public Radio reported several days ago that former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's support for phasing out federal energy subsidies suggested a sea change in attiudes toward the tax break for ethanol, a big topic in Iowa, where Pawlenty and other Republicans seek the first presidential votes. But now Politico reports, "The declared and potential presidential candidates are all over the map — and by no means fleeing en masse from their traditional support for subsidies."

Ethanol is “kind of a marker for a broader assessment of somebody’s view of the type of role governments should play,” Michael Franc, vice president for government studies at the Heritage Foundation, told reporter Darren Goode. “Every state has its version of ethanol.” Several GOP candidates, incuding supposed front-runner Mitt Romney, say they still support the ethanol tax credit; former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who plans to enter the race soon, says he won't compete for Iowa caucus votes because "he doesn't believe in 'subsidies that prop up corn, soybeans and ethanol'," Goode reports.

Retired Kentucky publisher, still a public servant, gets first journalism award named for him

The first Al Smith Award for public service through rural or community journalism by a Kentuckian was presented Thursday night to its namesake, Albert P. Smith Jr. Making the presentation was Al Cross, right, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism & Community Issues, which co-sponsors the award with the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Smith owned weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee, was founding host of Kentucky Educational Television’s “Comment on Kentucky” and main founder of the Institute, whose advisory board he chairs.

"Paul Harvey said, ‘I’ve never seen a monument erected to a pessimist,’ and can assure you I’ve never met a person like Al Smith, the eternal optimist," Lexington entrepreneur Jim Host told the crowd of nearly 200. "No one in my lifetime has meant more to Kentucky, in terms of how he's communicated, than Al Smith."

"Comment" host Ferrell Wellman said, "No one has demonstrated how a rural journalist can influence a state more than Al. ... When I think of Al, the first thought that comes to me isn’t of a journalist, it’s of someone who loves life -- and that love is contagious." For Wellman's remarks as prepared for delivery, click here.

Smith's last "Comment" producer, Renee Shaw, reflected on a last visit with Smith to the town where he began his Kentucky career: "When Al walked the streets of Russellville that overcast October day, he was a rock star, but his swagger was humble and introspective. You could see the years of reflection flashing before his eyes. It was moving for me, and I realized in a new way, a more appreciative way – of the treasure Al is to Kentucky. A man dedicated to his craft in all its incarnations; to telling the truth and putting up a fight for it; and guiding generations of Kentucky journalists and public servants." For the rest of Shaw's speech, click here.

David Holwerk, a frequent "Comment" panelist as editorial-page editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, and now communications director for the Kettering Foundation, said Smith is known for talking a lot, but "Talking and listening, the gift of conversation, is always at the heart of Al’s work as a journalist. ... Inspiring, provoking and providing occasions for conversations like that is the job that Al Smith has assigned himself in this state. For more than 40 years, Al has been finding ways to get Kentuckians to talk and to listen to each other – to engage in the kind of conversations that will inform them before they act to deal with shared problems. He has done this while working as a journalist, but it sells Al short, I think, to call him just a journalist, or even a community journalist. That is not his true calling, nor really why we honor him tonight as the first recipient of the award that bears his name. We honor him for his dedication to a higher and more important role in the public life of this state and its communities." For Holwerk's remarks, click here.

In accepting the award, Smith said community journalism is "the canary in the mineshaft, the signal that things are wrong at the roots of our society, that air has gone stale and democracy is smothered." He said the Institute "turned on as the big city papers were turning off – closing their rural bureaus, firing reporters, and killing their state pages, all while claiming nothing was lost. Yeah, yeah, nothing lost but the news, the signals between city and countryside. If the canary dies, who would know it? Sixty million rural Americans, only 2 percent of whom are farmers, are really too important to be blacked out by modern media from the real world of the 21st Century." For his prepared remarks, which were about the last third of his speech, click here.

Smith is the first recipient of the award because he is a great example of public service through community journalism. His six weekly newspapers helped bring about school consolidation, new public libraries and community arts programs; create thousands of jobs; and keep rural hospitals open and independent. But unlike most weekly editors and publishers, he went beyond the county lines to play a major role in the public life of his state and region. For more on the award and Smith, click here. To download an 18 MB PowerPoint presentation on his career in journalism and public service go here.