In front-page editorial, rural weekly demands that board members of county-owned hospital resign

In our experience, most weekly newspapers don't have editorial pages, much less editorials, so when one puts an editorial on the front page and also runs an editorial about the decision, and the work is well-written and well-argued, it's worth noting.

The Adair County Community Voice in Columbia, Ky., noted county government's bailout of the "collapsing" county-owned hospital; elected officials' request that they have "a say in any final decision to sell the hospital" and that "the hospital administration will try just as hard to keep the hospital independent as they will to sell it;" and some appointed board members' dislike of the requests.

"It seems like little to ask of someone who is $13 million in debt and asking you for $1.7 million," the editorial said, noting that one member said the board had been "a rubber stamp" for agents who secured the bonded debt. That admission "saves us the trouble of trying to prove that board members acted irresponsibly in overseeing the hospital’s business," the editorial said. "Now the question has to be, 'Why are they still on the board?'" It said the board not only "ran the hospital into the ground" but is "in control of a document that will show if any criminal activity took place," a forensic audit that gives board members "a personal stake in any damaging evidence that may come out."

In her explanatory editorial, Editor-Publisher Sharon Burton said she put the editorial out front because "We believe this is a critical time for our community, and we believe bad decisions will continue if the board is left as it is. We believe it’s our job to bring the issue to the forefront, and there is no better place to do that than on the front page of the Community Voice." The explanatory editorial also included useful background and perspective, including: "At small newspapers we don’t have the luxury of separating the people who cover the news from the people who write opinion pieces. Instead, we work hard to provide fair and unbiased coverage of local news. Then, we look at how that news impacts the people in our community and take a stand as needed on our editorial page."

Burton told us in an email that the editorial generated responses by phone, emails, Facebook messages "and of course being stopped at church and the grocery store," all of them positive except a letter from the daughter of a board member, which is running this week. The Community Voice doesn't put editorials or most news on its website, but PDFs of the pages with the editorials are available on the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues website. The front page, with color, is 3.5 MB; the inside page is 682 KB.

Poverty, diversity, enrollment up in rural schools

Almost one in four children attend rural public schools and enrollment in these schools is increasing at a faster rate than in suburbs and cities combined, according to a biennial report released by the Rural School and Community Trust, a national nonprofit organization addressing relationships between schools and communities. The report, "Why Rural Matters 2011-12," also reveals increasing rates of poverty, diversity and students with special needs in rural schools. These trends are most prevalent in the South, Southwest and Appalachia.

In a press release, co-author Jerry Johnson said the data show "It is becoming impossible to ignore in the quest to improve achievement and narrow achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. The day of closing our eyes and hoping rural education will just go away are ending." In total, 11.4 million children attend rural public schools, making up more than 23 percent of all public-school students. From 1999 to 2009, rural enrollment increased by 22 percent, or 1.7 million students. The top five states with the largest numerical increases are Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arizona. Comparatively, non-rural enrollment only increased by 1.7 percent, or 673,000, over the same period. (Read more)

USDA to close hundreds of offices in rural areas in response to budget cuts

The Department of Agriculture will close 131 Farm Service Agency offices and another 118 other offices, facilities or labs to save more than $150 million, in response to more than $3 billion in cuts to USDA's discretionary budget since 2010, Secretary Tom Vilsack announced during the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual meeting in Hawaii. Most of the offices that will close are located in rural areas; this list indicates that Arkansas will take the biggest hit.

Vilsack said the cuts would make USDA more efficient. He admitted the closure of FSA offices will cause inconvenience for farmers, but wouldn't result in a loss of services, reports Chris Clayton of DTN/Progressive Farmer. "They may have to drive five or 10 extra miles from where they once drove. They’re still going to see the same people behind the counter," Vilsack told Julie Harker of Brownfield Network. The FSA closures include 35 offices that have no employees primarily assigned to them, and the others have no more than two employees and are located within 20 miles of another FSA office.

Also slated for closure are offices in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Food Safety Inspection Service, making some concerned about effects on food safety. The Associated Press reports the FSIS office that inspects all meat, poultry and egg products for Minnesota, Montana, North and South Dakota and Wyoming will be closed, and it's not clear if operations will be shifted to another office. However, Elisabeth Hagen, undersecretary for food safety, told AP "there wouldn’t be a reduction in inspectors or inspection work." (Read more)

Other USDA agencies facing office closures are the Agricultural Research Service, the Foreign Agricultural Service, the Food Nutrition and Consumer Services, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Rural Development. A press release of Vilsack's statement is here. There's also a USDA map showing where offices will be closed.

Wild hogs could damage Vicksburg Civil War site

The Mississippi River flooded last spring, but didn't do any damage to the Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Miss., site of a pivotal 1863 Civil War battle. However, a pack of wild hogs that has taken up residence in the park since the flood are rooting up the landscape, and could damage monuments, the national cemetery, trenches and earthworks on park grounds, and could also startle or injure the park's 1 million annual visitors, Mary Foster of The Associated Press reports.

Wild hogs are an issue across the Southeast, especially in Mississippi, Jim Walker, spokesman for the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and Parks, told Foster. When the river crested in Vicksburg in May, it forced the hogs to seek higher ground in the northern third of the park, in dense brush. Park superintendent Mike Madell told Foster "it looks like the world's biggest Rototiller has gone through some areas." Eleven hogs have been removed since May, but another dozen are believed to be on the lose. They are not dangerous to humans, though, unless cornered.

The federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is helping park officials "deal with the hogs," which Madell said usually means killing them and discreetly burying them since Mississippi law doesn't allow them to be transported live. (Read more)

The farmland boom is centered in rural Iowa

Sioux County, Iowa, where land prices have more than tripled since 2000, is the epicenter of the farmland boom. Many look to the county as a benchmark because record-setting deals there become the new mark to reach elsewherereports P.J. Huffstutter of Reuters. However, residents fear the boom may turn to bust and that people will trace the downfall to the 768-square-mile county, blaming farmers and investors for it.

Auction bidders in Sioux County (Wikipedia map) shelled out $13,000 an acre two years ago; this year, they hit $20,000 an acre. It may take farmers years to recoup that money because future estimates of crop prices don't match up to land prices. In neighboring states the phenomenon in which land values are influenced by a single auction is known as the "Iowa effect." Huffstutter reports values can "fluctuate wildly depending on who is doing the math and what income and expense factors are used."

There's also a human factor driving prices up, experts tell Huffstutter: "Extreme high-priced deals are often driven by a regional culture of competitiveness." Still, many think there's "life left in the local boom." The town of Hull, population 2,200, recently bought an 80-acre piece of land for $1 million. Now, dairy farmers are renting the land after a cheese plant announced it would double its milk production. Huffstutter reports local real-estate agents estimated the parcel is now worth $19,000 an acre. (Read more)

Former public-school buildings in rural areas providing venues for new charter schools

Some rural communities are opening charter schools in former public school buildings as a way to preserve the sites and retain a school for local kids, reports Diette Courrege of Education Week. The number of rural charter schools has increased from 273 to 785 since 2000, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The total number of charter schools has increased 39 percent since 2000, with rural charters increasing 34 percent and non-rural 41 percent.

Courrege reports the 90 residents of Canaan, Ind. (red dot on Wikipedia map), lost their school when it closed because of low enrollment, losing a third of its students since 2006, reports Ben Skirvin of StateImpact, reflecting a trend felt in many rural places across America. But the school was a community center for the small town, and when residents learned about the Rural Community Academy in Sullivan, Ind., they decided to turn their shuttered community school into a charter. Canaan Community Academy will open in the former public-school building in August.

Overall, rural charter schools make up only 16 percent of all charter schools, remain relatively scarce, and their benefits are debated. (Read more)

Data show employment patterns in rural America

Reflecting national trends, the unemployment rate in rural counties is at its lowest since 2008, with two out of three counties gaining jobs since November 2010, Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder reports. Through an analysis of federal unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bishop found rural counties added almost 300,000 jobs in 2011, gaining jobs on pace with the rest of the country. The unemployment rate for rural America is now 8.1 percent. (Yonder map; click for larger version; green counties saw job gains, pink and magenta saw job losses; white counties were stable or are metropolitan)
Two rural counties in Mississippi, Warren and Jones, lost the most jobs during the period. Great Plains states, which had the lowest unemployment rate through the recession, lost jobs last year, often in counties with low unemployment rates. Job gains in the Midwest are a reflection of the oil and natural gas drilling boom, Bishop reports. The Southeast gained the most jobs, and data shows counties hit hard by the recession also had job growth last year. California has the highest rural unemployment rate in the country at 12 percent; South Carolina had the second-highest at 11.6 percent. (Read more)

Database of toxic-chemical releases is a good starting point or background for news stories

The Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory is a database on the "disposal or release of 650 potentially dangerous chemicals used by almost 21,000 facilities," as easy to use as typing in your ZIP code to get the names and addresses of polluters, but the data don't capture all the pollution and come partly from reporting by industries, which often provide estimates, not actual figures, reports Corbin Hiar of iWatch, published by the Center for Public Integrity.

"These estimates in some cases dramatically understate the extent of pollution," as the center and National Public Radio reported recently, Hiar reports. Still, the data are a good starting point for stories about the issue, or good background for stories on facilities that handle toxic materials. For EPA's latest analysis of the database, just released, click here.

Supreme Court not happy with landowners' inability to get a hearing on EPA's threat of fines

In the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, "Justices from both ends of the political spectrum seemed to think that property owners should be able to contest administrative compliance orders" from the Environmental Protection Agency, Lawrence Hurley of Greenwire reports. A court decision siding with an Idaho couple accused of polluting a wetland could affect how other federal agencies enforce regulations.

When the landowners received a notice that they could be fined $37,500 a day if they didn't remove gravel and fill dirt from their planned homesite, they sought a hearing. EPA and lower courts ruled that a hearing is required only when fines are actually levied, but justices at yesterday's oral argument were clearly not sympathetic with that position. The case raises the constitutional issue of due process, but "It may be that the justices do not have to reach the constitutional question in order for" the couple to get a hearing, Hurley writes.

"Environmentalists worry that a strong ruling in favor of the Sacketts could undermine the agency’s authority to stop polluters. But the justices sounded inclined to rule that an early hearing is called for," David Savage of the Los Angeles Times reports.

'Honest Appalachia' website created as publication outlet for whistleblowers on businesses, officials

Appalachia will soon have its "own version of WikiLeaks," according to the creators of the blog Honest Appalachia, which allows government and corporate whistle blowers to anonymously share documents for public viewing. The website launches today and will be a place where co-founder Jim Tobias said people can share information without fear of retaliation. Initially, the website will focus its efforts on West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Tobias, a 24-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate, told Vicki Smith of The Associated Press' West Virginia staff that users will download software that makes their computer anonymous. The Honest Appalachia team removes any other identifying data that could make the document traceable. It will only use documents that are "sensitive, exclusive and authentic." Before anything is posted, staff will work with journalists to verify the legitimacy of information before publication. Tobias said the team will target "people who work for regulatory and other government agencies to build awareness about the site."

Tobias said he and lead technical developer Garrett Robinson, 22-year-old Oberlin College graduate, are "trying to fill a hole as the mainstream news industry evolves." They chose to focus on Appalachia because it's a rural area with little media scrutiny because newsrooms have been closed increasing chances of unchecked corruption. (We would add that AP and Kentucky newspapers no longer have correspondents in Eastern Kentucky.)

"We believe our country desperately needs watchdogs at the local, state and regional level," Tobias said. Other members of the team are from Ohio and West Virginia. (Read more)

Female soldiers and veterans don't get the same scope of medical care as their male counterparts

Though women now account for almost 15 percent of active-duty troops in the U.S. military, the medical care they receive is often not on par with that of their male counterparts. That's a concern for rural areas, which generate more than their share of military recruits.

A 2007 Department of Defense report showed that "In half of focus groups, women expressed concerns about a lack of female-specific facilities and equipment, such as machinery to perform mammograms, in field hospitals," The Courier-Journal's Laura Ungar reports. Department of Veterans Affairs "hospitals don't provide obstetrics, for example, and most don't offer mammograms on-site."

Military officials acknowledge more needs to be done, but progress is being made. "Are we perfect? No. But we work our hardest to be," said Laura Boyd, public affairs officers for Fort Campbell's Blanchfield Hospital.

Efforts are being made to boost privacy for women and improve training. The VA has also hired managers to handle women's care and has launched an awareness program in which employers are reminded to assume that any woman who walks in is a veteran. Spending has also gone up, with the VA asking for $270 million in 2012, up $28 million from last year.

Still, the 2007 report found medical care was wanting in field centers. Women complained "about limits on access to gynecological exams, procedures and lab tests; and too few birth-control options in field pharmacies," Ungar reports. "In nearly half the focus groups, women said there was too little privacy in field facilities, and many felt they were seen as whiners for seeking care."

Officials at Blanchfield admit they can't provide all the care women need and do rely on outside providers, such as Vanderbilt University, for complicated cases and for routine wellness services. Most outside providers are within an hour's drive of a VA facility, which Patty Hayes, the VA's director of women's health, acknowledged is "not ideal." Still, there are no plans to provide obstetrics or other specialty care for women at VA hospitals. (Read more)

TV station goes to the wall in fight for public records

In 2011, a National Freedom of Information Coalition study revealed the public has a growing interest in government transparency, but media companies are shying away from open government lawsuits mostly because carrying these lawsuits forward takes time and money news organizations don't have, reports Al Tompkins of The Poynter Institute. Exceptions to this trend matter, though, as Tompkins points out in a case study about TV station WGAL in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which serves a mostly rural area.

News Director Daniel O'Donnell told Tompkins the station has been in a two-year legal battle to retrieve autopsy records about a local college student. When the station asked for the records, the coroner "imposed an old Coroner’s Act statute that said he would not release the cause of death in a case until 30 days after the new year." WGAL appealed the case to the state's open-records office and lost. The Hurst Television Group owns the station and when O'Donnell approached its legal team, they told him to "press on, even though it would be costly and time consuming."

The cause of death has long since been discovered, but the legal battle continues because, as O'Donnell told Tompkins, "We simply cannot allow public officials to dictate the timing of the release of details of something as important as the cause of a person’s death. ... This is purely about legal access to vital and we believe, public, information." He said the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. (Read more)

Eastern Ky. radio station gets community reaction to county's nine proposed post office closures

Response to the prospect that the U.S. Postal Service might close thousands of rural post offices and processing centers keeps popping up across the nation. Mimi Pickering and Sylvia Ryerson of community radio station WMMT in Whitesburg, Ky., spoke with residents, postal employees and American Postal Workers Union leaders to ascertain the reasons for closures and the feelings attached to rural post offices. WMMT also started a "Post Office Stories" blog on PlaceStories.com on which people from the community can share their stories about local post offices.

Nine post offices in Letcher County (Wikipedia map), where Whitesburg is the county seat, have been slated for closure. The post office in Burdine was opened in 1898, and residents told Ryerson and Pickering it is woven into the fabric of the community. "The post office is really the only identity we've got. I'm afraid the community won't exist when post office closes," Wayne Flemming, the district's representative in county government, told Ryerson and Pickering. "When they talk about shutting our post office down, it's like shutting down our whole community."

The concerns with closure are the same in Letcher County as they are in other rural places where post offices face a similar fate: longer drives to pick up mail, disabled coal miners and veterans fear they won't receive medication on time and fears about the loss of a sense of community.

Tim Reynolds, Postal Service post-office review coordinator in Kentucky, is overseeing consolidation plans in the state. He told Ryerson and Pickering the service has been in business for over 200 years and he expects it to remain in business, but it has to change the way it does business. The agency blames the economic downturn and a societal shift toward electronic media for its dire financial situation. However, Postal Workers Union Communications Director Sally Davidow told Ryerson and Pickering this is a manufactured crisis and closures could be avoided through congressional action. All the agency's financial problems stem from the enactment of the the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, she said. The act requires pre-funding of healthcare benefits of retirees. Ryerson and Pickering report the Postal Service has been running at a loss since that law passed in 2006. To hear the WMMT report, click here.

Va. coal town turns to higher education for growth, puts a Walmart on top of downtown parking garage

After decades of decline in the local coal industry, Grundy, Va., has become home to a redeveloped and flood-protected downtown and, most notably, two professional schools -- and is about to get another, Brad Parke reports for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and The Rural Blog. (Yahoo! map)

"Suffering a substantial outmigration, especially of young adults, local leaders are looking elsewhere for ways to establish sustainable economic development," Parke writes. "The steep topography and narrow valleys have contributed to several detrimental floods that devastated its downtown. Leaders knew they had to tame these waters for the downtown to remain viable and realize its potential, but realized they ultimately had to take a new approach: higher education."

In 1997, the Appalachian School of Law opened in Grundy. In 2005 came the Appalachian College of Pharmacy. And in 2013 the Appalachian College of Optometry is scheduled to open.

Recent improvements include "a floodwall topped by a four-lane highway bypass replacing a winding, two-lane road," Parke reports, and across the river is "the Grundy Town Center, which includes a new Walmart. The steep topography forced an innovative approach. The Walmart, which opened in September 2011, sits atop a two-level parking garage, enabling developers to avoid using the limited available flat land for a conventional parking lot."

"Similar rural communities should take note of this town’s innovative approach to development," writs Parke, a student at the law school. "If ultimately successful, Grundy may become not only a model for strategic economic diversification in Appalachia, but rural America." (Read more)

White evangelicals in urban areas show less aversion to voting for a Mormon, Mitt Romney

This week's Republican caucuses in Iowa, in which former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, right, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum finished in a virtual dead heat, showed that "White evangelical voters just aren’t as predictable as they used to be," Lisa Miller reports for The Washington Post. "It’s bound to be reflected in Republican primary results all over the country." (Photo by Charles Krupa, The Associated Press)

Romney won in urban areas, Santorum in rural, as detailed by Bill Bishop in the Daily Yonder. "In Iowa, where the vast majority of voters qualify as 'white evangelicals,' these results can only mean one thing," Miller writes. "Conservative Christians who reside in urban areas may have been taught in Sunday school that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a heretical sect, but they’re willing to look beyond those teachings and cast a vote for a Mormon who was once pro-choice. Their brothers and sisters who reside in the country are not."

Miller says that is "very good news for Romney," because about 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas, but she does not address the possibility that continued reluctance on the part of rural evangelicals to vote for a Mormon could still cost Romney a state or two and the presidency. A test of that will come in the Jan. 21 primary in South Carolina, where three polls released yesterday showed him leading.

The new Romney supporters include Shaun Richburg of Florence, S.C., an office manager who originally supported Texas Gov. Rick Perry. “I know he’s Mormon, but that doesn’t bother me,” he told Adam Beam of The State newspaper in Columbia, “I just think he’s an honest person, and I know he’s a good businessman.” (Read more) Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is also a Mormon.

Miller writes, "Following the same path as American Catholics and Jews and other once-insular groups before them, conservative Christians have joined the world," going to college more than before and going to work in cities and suburbs. "They made friends with their roommates and colleagues and neighbors who were Jews and Muslims and Mormons and atheists. . . . The result has been a growing flexibility in the political opinions of urban Christians."

Those factors were also in play in 2008, according to polls by the California-based Barna Group. “The more urban they were, the more coastal they were, the less evangelicals saw Romney’s Mormonism as a barrier,” David Kinnaman, president of the firm, told Miller. (Read more)

Increasing urban water demands concern rural residents and environmentalists in the West

Nevada is one of three Western states "debating a large-scale and polarizing water project" that could impact rural communities, Jim Malewitz of Stateline reports. The project would move up to 41 billion gallons of water from four valleys in the eastern part of the state to its "economic juggernaut," Las Vegas. Business owners in and around Las Vegas have supported the pipeline since it was proposed in 1989, but many farmers and environmentalists say the impact on rural Nevada would be too severe.

In a letter to Nevada's state engineer, Diane Chipman of Baker wrote, "If you steal our water . . . my well would run dry . . . . There are hundreds of people in peril. Do you have the right to say you are better than we are? That we are just the so-called 'Little People'?"

Jim Barbee, secretary of the Nevada Board of Agriculture, wrote in the board's public comments that the project "will unnecessarily and permanently destroy agriculture, the economy and the environment of Eastern Nevada as well as potentially create an irreversible health and safety debacle in the nature of dust particulate." A U.S. Bureau of Land Management study says water tables could be lowered between 100 and 200 feet over 75 years, resulting in the disappearance of several small springs and species, drying out of valley soil, and harm to shallow-rooted plants and irrigated agriculture.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority says it would leave plenty water for farmers and ranchers because the "withdrawals would not eclipse the rate of water recharge in the four valleys," Malewitz reports. Utah and Colorado are two other Western states considering pipelines. (Read more)

Do wolves help trees in Yellowstone flourish?

Gray wolves have caused problems for ranchers around Yellowstone National Park since their reintroduction in the mid-1990s, but their return has enabled other species to thrive in areas where they previously could not. They have curbed elk populations in the park, which has allowed aspen, willow and cottonwood trees to take root where the foraging herds once prevented their growth, Matthew Brown of The Associated Press reports.

Other factors such as changing climate and wildfires can play a role in new tree growth, but the wolf is the protagonist, says Oregon State University researcher William Ripple, who discovered the phenomenon. Ripple told AP that wolves "are more than just charismatic animals that are nice to have around. We're finding that their function in nature is very important." Wolves control the elk, trees grow in their place, and as a result there is more habitat for songbirds and more food for beavers, who in turn dam streams, creating ponds that attract fish, reptiles and amphibians.

Some scientist dispute Ripple's findings. Matthew Kauffman of the U.S. Geological Survey told Brown elk only slightly alter their behavior to avoid wolves, and herd numbers would have to drop even more for aspen populations to fully recover. Others say Ripple's work ignores factors such as drought and stream levels which also affect tree growth. (Read more)

Researchers say oil and gas industry's estimate of jobs in Ohio is overblown by a factor of 10

The claim that natural gas and oil drilling would create or support 200,000 jobs in Ohio "greatly overestimates the economic impact of the industry," according to an analysis by The Ohio State University and the Ohio Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics. Researchers say focusing on jobs and ignoring other factors related to drilling is "misguided," reports Farm and Dairy News. In reality, the industry would only add about 20,000 jobs in the state over the next four years.

Researcher Mark Partridge told Farm and Dairy the industry used a technique that is typically "not accepted best practices for such analyses" to obtain its estimate. Fellow researcher Amanda Weinstein said the energy industry is more capital-intensive than labor-intensive and Ohio shouldn't expect it to greatly impact job growth. In the analysis, employment and income growth in several Pennsylvania counties was examined. Researchers found per-capita income had increased in drilling areas, but job growth there was not always higher than in areas with no drilling.

Researchers told Farm and Dairy the most important thing to glean from the study is that oil and gas development carries "a real gold-rush mentality." It brings a sudden influx of money, but communities need long-term development that the researchers say does not come from energy booms. (Read more)

Lack of education apparently leading to rise in HIV and AIDS cases in the Navajo Nation

HIV infections drop or reamain steady in other parts of the country, but are rising sharply in the Navajo Nation, reports Stephen Ceaser of the Los Angeles Times. Poverty, poor education, alcohol abuse and a culture where talking about death causes it all combine to create an environment where the virus can spread, and where many know little about it until they contract it.

Ceaser reports the 35 new cases of HIV infection a year seems small when compared to the 173,600 people living on the reservation. However, that is three times the number of new cases recorded a decade ago. When the increase began in 2001, HIV cases were rare among Navajo, with cases coming from people contracting it in cities and returning home for treatment or to die. Then, Navajo began infecting other Navajo.

Many patients choose to mix modern medical treatment with traditional Navajo healing. Ceaser reports the Indian Health Service encourages this, out of respect for the Navajo and to make patients feel comfortable and optimistic about treatment. (Times photo by Barbara Davidson: Jerry Archuleta, left, and his partner, Emerson Scott)


HIV and AIDS are widely considered a "white man's disease," and those who contract it are often shunned in the Navajo Nation. However, a small number of Navajo are coming together to educate others about the dangers of the diseases. Emerson Scott and his partner Jerry Archuleta, both HIV positive, are two. Scott stands outside his local library handing out condoms and encouraging people to get tested, though no one has accepted his offers yet. Both volunteer with the Navajo AIDS Network and several support groups for HIV and AIDS patients, spending hours with those who consider suicide. (Read more)

Agri-tourism shows promise for local economies as more farmers show interest

Farmers across the country are hoping agri-tourism, or the combination of locally grown food and lodging or entertainment, will bring in visitors and help boost local economies. The Associated Press reports farms from Idaho to Virginia are attempting to bring in customers by making farms a tourist destination.

Some Virginia farmers hope legislation to help agri-tourism operations will pass into law, AP reports. In Arkansas, some are using agri-tourism to reverse the decline of small- and medium-sized farms. A fourth-generation rancher in Montana is trying to turn traditional farm work, like chopping wood, feeding chickens and herding cattle into a vacation. In Idaho, bed and breakfasts are drawing people in from neighboring states with locally produced wine.

The Idaho Division of Tourism is developing year-round culinary events and deals and in 2013 will launch several measures promoting agri-tourism, like an online scenic byways web page that will show where local restaurants, hotels, you-pick farms and farmers markets are located. (Read more)

FDA limits use in animals of a type of antibiotic

The Food and Drug Administration announced yesterday that farmers must restrict use of certain antibiotics in cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys because overuse may have contributed to development of bacteria strains resistant to the antibiotics, which are also used in humans. The medicines targeted by FDA are cephalosporins, and are most commonly prescribed to treat pneumonia, strep throat and skin and urinary tract infections. They are also popular among pediatricians.

The rule only restricts some uses of cephalosporins, allowing veterinarians to continue using them to treat sick animals in ways the FDA hasn't approved, reports Gardiner Harris of The New York Times. This rule only restricts direct injection of the drug into chicken eggs and large and lengthy dosing in cattle and pigs. A similar rule was proposed in 2008, but Dr. Christine Hoang, assistant director of scientific activities at the American Veterinary Medical Association, told Harris the latest rule is a "vast improvement" from the first proposal. “We thought the original order was too broad and unnecessarily prohibited uses that were not likely to cause problems for human health,” Dr. Hoang told Harris.

When antibiotics were developed, farmers were "enamored" with the effects on their cattle, chickens and pigs, and added the drug in bulk to animal feed and water, Harris reports. By the 1970s, public-health officials worried that overuse in animals was creating "killer infections resistant to treatment." Now, many microbiologists say the drugs' use in agriculture has led to thousands of human deaths because of drug resistance. Last year, the FDA banned use of fluoroquinolones, a powerful class of antibiotics. Harris reports Wednesday's announcement is another step to limit farmers' use of antibiotics. (Read more)

Postal cutbacks will delay delivery of weekly papers

For months, the U.S. Postal Service has announced post-office and processing-center closures in mostly rural communities as a way to get out of billions of dollars in debt. Much has been said about how these closures will affect rural residents' mail-order prescriptions, bills and business; however, mail processing centers closures have been less discussed and some advocates say the impact on weekly newspaper circulation would be dire.

Save the Post Office, a website owned and operated by literature professor Steve Hutkins of the Gallatin School of New York University, reports the Postal Service admits consolidation of processing centers will slow mail delivery, but aren't revealing the severity of the situation. "One thirty-year-veteran mail clerk ... said the closure of the processing center would result in 'massive mail failings,' and would be a killer for weekly newspapers, which could be delayed several days. If that happens, he said, 'You start producing a history, not a newspaper.'" The impact would be primarily on newspapers mailed outside the paper's home county, since they can deliver papers to local post offices for direct delivery.

Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg writes in the Whitefish Pilot that he's "fighting hard" against processing center closures because "timely news and announcements, and the latest sale at the local hardware store, are important to a community’s vitality..." He said he's delivered thousands of comments from Montanans to the Postal Service and spoken with the U.S. Postmaster General Pat Donahoe about how closures would negatively affect rural places. "Rural communities shouldn’t have to shoulder the majority of the burden in getting the post office back in the black," he writes. (Read more)

Alternative newspaper in Oregon goes far afield to report about rural environmental issues

Eugene Weekly readers are used to seeing news about Eugene nightlife and the University of Oregon in the alternative newspaper, but it also covers the surrounding rural area, unlike most alt-weeklies. Reporter Camilla Mortensen went 20 miles southeast of the city to rural Dexter for a three-part series about the town's struggle against an illegal gravel-mining operation. For over a year, Lost Creek Rock Products has logged and mined Parvin Butte, a natural Dexter landmark, without proper permits. Mortensen says in an e-mail that the paper is filling a hole left in rural environmental coverage after budget cuts at traditional papers forced those stories to the back burner. (Mortensen photo)

Mortensen said Eugene Weekly's owners, Art and Anita Johnson and Fred Taylor, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, "have always had a strong environmental focus and with cutbacks at other papers, both The Register Guard (Eugene's daily newspaper) and around the state, there's a lot of rural and environmental issues that aren't getting attention, like this mine." She also reported on a proposed uranium mine about 200 miles from Eugene, saying "It's in a very rural area where it just wasn't going to get newspaper coverage so we decided I should go ahead and write about it so it didn't fall through the cracks and was a done-deal before people knew about it."

Parvin Butte was slated to become a gravel mine, though residents who live within yards of it didn't know this until mining had already begun. Mortensen reports in the first part of the series that Lost Creek Rock Products obtained a logging permit from the Oregon Department of Forestry and a mining permit from the Oregon Department of Geology and Minerals but failed to go through the Lane County site review process that allows the public to comment on the proposal.

The second part of the series focused on efforts to protect Lost Creek, which "is unobstructed by dams and offers some of the last remaining habitat for spring Chinook in the Middle Fork basin," and runs through the property being mined. Finally, Mortensen wrote about the state Department of Geology and Mineral Industries permit for the site and reported that Lane County officials issued a notice of violation to mine operators, though production continues. She also reports the fines levied against the mining company. Most recently, county officials asked the state to revoke the permit.

After Mortensen's first story was published, The Register Guard reported on the mine. That article can be found here.

Lack of staff closes an rural emergency medical service; another gets grant for recruitment ads

Many rural emergency medical services, like Bagaduce Ambulance in Castine, Me., are struggling to recruit volunteers and remain open. The rural coastal community shuttered its EMS service on New Year's Day after 35 years because of "staffing challenges faced by volunteer fire and rescue crews across Maine," Kevin Miller of the Bangor Daily News reports.

A private EMS provider already serving nearby towns responds to Castine emergencies, lengthening response time by 20 to 30 minutes, but some former Bagaduce members are trying to set up a "first-responder" program to help. Miller reports, the closure is also a blow to the community because it "represents a loss of a local institution that has been part of the literal lifeblood of Castine." (Read more)

In other parts of the country, struggling emergency service providers are trying new tactics. In Minnehaha County, S.D., Jeff Rusack of KDLT-TV reports the county Fire Chiefs Association received a $200,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency grant to broadcast volunteer firefighter recruitment commercials over the next two years. FCA president Mike Harstad said fresh recruits are needed to help with increased calls to the local fire department, and hopes the commercials will bring in recruits "by the truckload." The ads will tell potential volunteers about the benefits of helping their community. (Read more) (Wikipedia maps)

Organic produce may not always be sustainable

You may believe in the ideal that organic produce is locally grown in an environmentally sustainable way, but Elisabeth Rosenthal of The New York Times reports that much of America's organic produce is imported from Mexico and Central America where crops are increasingly raised through methods that can damage water tables, empty wells and put produce into an energy-intensive global supply chain.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a long list of requirements that farms must follow to label produce as organic. The use of fertilizer, pesticides and hormones is prohibited, but there are no environmental sustainability guidelines. Experts say organic farms are less ecologically harmful than conventional farms, but sustainable-agriculture scientist Michael Bomford of Kentucky State University told Rosenthal organic agriculture is not always sustainable, as it was in the past. He notes such farming has stressed California aquifers in the same ways as those in Mexico.

Rules may soon change, because "Organic standard setters are beginning to refine their criteria so that organic products better match their natural ideals," Rosenthal reports. This includes requiring use of renewable energy for buildings and allowing milk cows to graze instead of confining them to feedlots. However, she says each narrowing of "organic" leads to a political tug-of-war between farmers, food producers, supermarkets and environmentalists. (Read more)

Louisiana editor and weekly win Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism

Stanley Nelson at The Concordia Sentinel

Stanley Nelson and the weekly newspaper he edits, the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La., are the winners of the 2011 Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism given by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. The Institute presents the award in honor of Tom and Pat Gish, 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 award's first recipients.

Nelson and the Sentinel showed courage and unusual tenacity in investigating an unsolved murder from the era of conflict over civil rights, and in January 2011 named a living suspect in the 1964 killing of African American businessman Frank Morris. A grand jury was convened and continues to investigate. A prosecutor on the case, David Oppeman, told James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times, “I told Stanley the other day he is the hub in this and everybody else is just a spoke. He did the work that needed to be done.”

The newspaper showed integrity and courage in the face of reader resistance to its dogged, detailed reporting in more than 150 stories. “The owners of the Concordia Sentinel never hesitated in following the story,” Nelson wrote in the fall edition of Nieman Reports, of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. "While most readers read the stories with interest and outrage over what happened so many years ago, many of the most vocal were those who detested the coverage and who questioned our motives," Nelson told the Institute for Rural Journalism. “We knew some would be angered to read about the parish's ugly racial past,” he wrote for Nieman Reports. “Some canceled subscriptions. We were threatened. Our office was burglarized. One irate reader called to find out my ultimate goal. ‘To solve a murder,’ I said. ‘You can't do that,’ she snapped. ‘You're just a reporter!’ She hung up. We pressed on.”

For much more on Nelson, the Sentinel and the Gish Award, click here.

Remote Kansas hospital gives employees time off for mission work to attract, keep medical staff

Ashland Health Center in a remote area of southwestern Kansas is taking an "unorthodox approach" to getting and keeping doctors, Roxana Hegeman of The Associated Press reports. The center now gives all employees eight paid weeks off annually to do missionary work in other countries. The hope is that people willing to care for others in developing nations will be "content" in a town of 855 people. (Google map)

The approach seems to be working. The hospital staff now includes a chief medical officer, a medical technologist, a nursing director, a nurse practitioner and other staff, Hegeman reports. There is still a need for nurses, a dentist and a physical therapist.

The hospital promoted its new benefit in Christian publications and at Catholic-run medical schools, but employees can use the eight weeks for any volunteer work, not just mission work, Hegeman reports. Faculty at the private Via Christi medical residency program in Wichita, part of the nonprofit Catholic health care system, helped develop the hospital's recruitment model. (AP photo by Orlin Wagner)

"Everywhere in the country we have problems with health care," Dan Shuman, left, a 43-year old family physician that moved his family from Georgetown, Tex., to Ashland for the mission opportunity, told Hegeman. "But this was a place that was really seeking to make a difference." And the program has, according to Clark County Deputy Sheriff Robert Canton, who was treated for heart problems at the emergency room. Canton used to tell friends not to send him to the local hospital but now he tells his fellow deputies, "take me there." (Read more)

Arizona community newspaper examines legal tool developers use to subsidize projects

Residential and commercial developers in Arizona rely on commercial financial districts to finance public improvements, which allows them to sell homes for less while municipalities deal with obtaining streets, water and sewer lines and other public infrastructure. In Prescott Valley, Ariz., CFDs were created during development of three subdivisions and a commercial corridor along a highway. In a three-part series, Ken Hedler of The Daily Courier in Prescott (A on Google map) "examines the residential CFDs, where bonds issued by the districts finance water and sewer lines, and other improvements," and explores the pros and cons of CDFs.

The first part of the series discusses CDFs' financing of improvements in subdivisions, for which homeowners will pay long-term through property taxes. Hedler reports two Prescott Valley subdivisions with CDFs went out of business and a third sold out to another developer. The second part explains how laws govern CFDs, and the third part is a response from Prescott Valley town officials who told Hedler they are "unlikely to approve community facilities districts for master-planned communities in the foreseeable future" because of the continuing housing slump and previous problems with CDFs.

W. Va. county hopes national pilot project will revitalize its failing schools and communities

It may take a village to raise a child, but in McDowell County, West Virginia, officials hope a nation can revitalize the school system. The American Federation of Teachers, a union that typically represents teachers in urban areas, has initiated an "unprecedented experiment" bringing together more than 40 public- and private-sector groups to develop an education plan for the county. A five-year project called Reconnecting McDowell will address issues like poverty, technology and transportation that limit educational opportunities in the county. AFT hopes the project will be a successful model for rural districts across the country. (Wikipedia map)

Poster at abandoned school in Iaeger, W.Va.
Washington Post photo by Michael Williamson

Amy Harris of The Charleston Gazette reports the state Education Department took over McDowell's schools in 2001 to fix its high rates of dropout, shortage of qualified teachers, very low reading and math scores and the "deplorable filthy, unsafe and disgusting" schools that were damaged by flooding, but are still in use. The department consolidated schools, hired new superintendents and built new facilities but failed to improve test scores. "There are issues in McDowell that go beyond the school system and get to ingrained cultural feelings about education and a number of economic problems," State Board of Education member Gayle Manchin told Harris. The wife of U.S. Sen. and former Gov. Joe Manchin sought AFT's help for such a project. (Read more)

Lyndsey Layton of The Washington Post reports the project's overall cost is unknown, but AFT has already committed staff time and $100,000 to the planning phase. Investments will directly affect schools, with companies including Cisco Systems, coal company Alpha Natural Resources and Frontier Communications pledging to improve the county's technology, Internet access and broadband service. Nonprofits have agreed to provide books, and the Rahall Appalachian Transportation Institute will work on that infrastructure. Other groups have offered to give families better access to health care, drug prevention and treatment and more recreation. Layton reports a similar initiative created the "Harlem Children's Zone" and has been very successful, but these types of services in McDowell County must be built from the ground up because they don't currently exist. (WIlliamson photo: Students at Bradshaw Elementary, which doesn't have enough computers or Internet bandwidth)

Methamphetamine use is down, but it continues to plague rural areas

Even though the use of methamphetamine has decreased nationwide, many rural areas continue to grapple with it, and police departments are losing resources they say are necessary to fight the problem. Meth use appears to be most severe in Missouri, where 1,744  meth labs were found in 2010, reports Judy Keen of USA Today. Rounding out the top 10 states were Kentucky, Indiana, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Iowa, Mississippi and Arkansas. (USA Today photo: An ephedrine test is conducted to determine if the substance in the dish is meth.)

Keen writes, "Meth continues to plague communities across the nation despite getting scant attention, says UCLA psychiatry professor Richard Rawson. 'You'd think there's no meth problem, he says, but in many economically depressed rural areas it's still used 'to cope with … difficulty and poverty.'"

Two states now require a prescription for pseudoephedrine, a key meth ingredient found in cold medication. Oregon and Mississippi report big decreases in meth lab seizures since the laws passed there. Law enforcement officials told Keen meth labs are hard to find because the drug is manufactured by individuals and isn't large-scale. There's also a network of people who buy pseudoephedrine to sell to meth "cookers," thwarting electronic tracking of buyers, and cookers now make meth in easily transportable two-liter bottles. (Read more)

Rising crop and land prices, technology are putting more land to the plow in Iowa and the Midwest

This Iowa golf course has been plowed under.

"Across much of the Midwest the sharp increase in farm earnings has driven the price of farmland to previously unimaginable — and, some say, unsustainable — levels," A.G. Sulzberger reports for The New York Times. "But in the process, to much less fanfare, the financial rewards have also encouraged farmers to put ever more land into production, including parcels that until recently were too small or too poor in quality to warrant a second glance." Those include golf courses, old family homesteads, farmland that had been idled and awaiting development, and land that had been idled or converted to pasture in return for payments from the federal Conservation Reserve Program. (Times photo by Eric Thayer)

The push to plow worries environmentalists and conservationists concerned about soil erosion and water pollution, but in Iowa, "the nation’s biggest producer of corn and soybeans, farmers insist that they are simply getting more value form their land," Sulzberger reports."The force pushing more land into production is the rise in crop prices: in the past five years corn prices tripled and those for soybeans doubled because of swelling worldwide demand, including demand for ethanol production. At the same time yields have spiked because of genetically engineered crops and improvements in farming technology, which are also allowing farmers to grow in previously inhospitable areas. In turn farmers, flush from the most profitable years in decades and looking for better places to store money than low-interest savings accounts or a turbulent stock market, are putting their money in land." (Read more)

Evidence grows that oral health is strongly linked to overall health

"The eyes may be the window to the soul, but the mouth provides an even better view of the body as a whole," The Wall Street Journal's Melinda Beck writes in her Health Journal column. "Some of the earliest signs of diabetes, cancer, pregnancy, immune disorders, hormone imbalances and drug issues show up in the gums, teeth and tongue—sometimes long before a patient knows anything is wrong. There's also growing evidence that oral health problems, particularly gum disease, can harm a patient's general health as well, raising the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, pneumonia and pregnancy complications." (WSJ graphic; click on it for larger version)

Beck adds, "Such findings are fueling a push for dentists to play a greater role in patients' overall health. Some 20 million Americans—including 6 percent of children and 9 percent of adults—saw a dentist but not a doctor in 2008, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health this month."

Beck urges her readers not to be fooled by shiny white teeth. "In fact, many dentists worry that people who whiten their teeth may have a false sense of complacency, since their teeth can still be harboring tooth decay and serious gum disease," she writs. "Even people who have no cavities can still have inflamed and infected gums." She quotes Mark Wolff, an associate dean at the New York University College of Dentistry: "Whiteness and the health of your teeth are totally unrelated." (Read more)

Earthquakes prompt cessation of injection of fracking brine into Ohio injection wells

UPDATE, Jan. 7: "Geological experts . . . expect more earthquakes to come as the industry continues to expand across the eastern United States," Eric Niiler of Discovery News reports.

Recent earthquake activity in Ohio is related to the injection of wastewater into the ground near a fault line, creating enough pressure to cause seismic activity, but "The seismic events are not a direct result of fracking," the short term for hydraulic fracturing, which produced the wastewater, state Natural Resources Director Jim Zehringer told reporters Saturday. (WKBN image: wellhead)

The day before, the department announced that the owner of the injection well near Youngstown had agreed to stop injecting the brine "so that any potential links with earthquakes can be further assessed," Ann Sanner of The Associated Press reported."Ten minor earthquakes have occurred this year within 2 miles of the well, the department said. Each registered at 2.7 magnitude or lower."

Saturday, there was a 4.0 quake, just at the threshold for causing damage. "Area residents said a loud boom accompanied the shaking. It sent some stunned residents running for cover as bookshelves shook and pictures and lamps fell from tables," the AP reported. On Sunday, state officials said four other injection wells drilled in the area would be indefinitely prohibited from being opened and taking fluid, CNN reports.

Court delays EPA rules on interstate air pollution

A federal court in Washington has delayed implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency's rules on interstate air pollution, which were supposed to take effect yesterday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled Friday, Dec. 30, on "a request by electric power producers and other challengers to delay the deadline for plants in 27 states to begin reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide while the court considers the rule’s legality," Tom Schoenberg of Bloomberg Business Week reported.

"More than three dozen lawsuits in the Washington court seek to derail the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which was issued in July and revised in October," Schoenberg wrote. "The court hasn’t scheduled a date for argument, though today’s order suggested the judges would hear the case by April." (Read more) 

Project to build houses in Ky. houseboat factories completes prototypes, looks to expand

Early last year we reported that a home-grown rural industry, houseboats in Southern Kentucky, could be revived by a project to have the idled plants turn out modular units for houses on land. Now two prototypes have been built and the next step is refining the process to reduce costs and make the approach economically feasible, reports Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader. (H-L photo: Half of a modular house was put on its foundation last month.)

The idea was conceived by Kentucky Highlands Investment Corp., a nonprofit venture-capital firm working in southwestern Kentucky, and was refined by the University of Kentucky College of Design, with help from UK's Center for Applied Energy Research. One goal is "to promote development of energy-efficient homes that could appreciate in value, as an alternative to aging houses and mobile homes in rural Kentucky that are not efficient, resulting in high electricity costs for owners," Estep reports. "Federal grants totaling $1.25 million helped finance the design and construction of the prototypes."

The modules were built at the Stardust Cruisers houseboat factory near Monticello, a town near Lake Cumberland that promotes itself as the "Houseboat Capital of the World" but has seen employment in the industry plummet during the recession. "The factory had 12 full-time and 12 contract workers in 2009 when the project started; it had 56 full-time employees in early December, Kentucky Highlands said in a news release," Estep reports. "Not all that growth resulted from the energy-efficient housing project."

As the project tries to meet its goals of $100,000 cost per house and $1 a day in energy costs, it is exploring other products such as multifamily structures, temporary classrooms, "military housing, disaster-relief housing and vacation homes," Estep reports.

Communitarian-conservative blogger goes back to small town, gets write-up from big-time pundit

"They decided to accept the limitations of small-town life in exchange for the privilege of being a part of a community." That's how conservative columnist David Brooks, a pretty good sociologist, summed up the decision of conservative blogger Rod Dreher and his wife to return to St. Francisville, La., after they witnessed its outpouring of kindness for his sister, who did of cancer this year.

"They moved in just before Christmas," Brooks notes, linking to the blog post about the decision. Dreher's sister and mother "had a tradition of going to a nearby cemetery on Christmas Eve to put candles on all the graves," but her mom "was too sad to do it," Brooks reports in The New York Times. "But, as she was driving by the cemetery that night, she noticed little flames dotting the graveyard." A neighbor had filled the vacuum.

"Dreher is a writer for The American Conservative and is part of a communitarian conservative tradition that goes back to thinkers like Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet," Brooks writes. "Forty years ago, Kirk led one of the two great poles of conservatism. It existed in creative tension with the other great pole, Milton Friedman’s free-market philosophy. In recent decades, the communitarian conservatism has become less popular while the market conservatism dominates. But that doesn’t make Kirk’s insights into small towns, traditions and community any less true, as Rod Dreher so powerfully rediscovered." For The Rural Blog, it's a nice way to end 2011. (Read more)

Oversight panel says Postal Service used unreliable data to draw up post-office closure list

The Postal Regulatory Commission, which advises the U.S. Postal Service and Congress, said today that the service used questionable data to choose more than 3,600 post offices for possible closure. The PRC opinion is pretty dense, and the press release isn't much better, but Lisa Rein of The Washington Post sums it up nicely: "In many cases the selection process ignored whether an alternate post office was nearby and which closures would reduce costs the most and lacked sufficient data and analysis to make the best decisions."

“We certainly challenge their methodology,” Commission Chairman Ruth Goldway told the Post. “They had a simple screening process, but it did not optimize the choices. They don’t have really good data that tells them which post offices will continue to grow or be on a downhill path.” The commission said in its opinion that it could not "develop reliable cost-savings estimates because the Postal Service does not collect facility-specific revenue and cost data, or separate retail costs from other operational costs. The commission found that such data should be available for use in comprehensive facility closing plans."

Rein notes, "The opinion is not binding, but it carries weight with Congress, which has questioned whether so many closures are necessary. Lawmakers are worried about leaving too many constituents without mail service, especially in rural areas. Under pressure from Congress, the Postal Service earlier this month agreed to delay the proposed closures and consolidations until the spring in hopes that pending legislation to shore up the agency’s finances will pass."

The service said it was most likely to close rural post offices "that take in less than $27,000 in revenue each year and suburban and urban ones with less than $500,000," Rein reports. "But the oversight commission consulted economists and other experts who concluded that other factors should come into play: How many miles away is the nearest post office? Would closing deny service to large groups of customers, such as seniors, who would have trouble finding alternatives?" (Read more) The same concerns have been voiced at many public meetings held by USPS about possible closures of individual offices.

'Business as usual' by big energy company, hiding its leasing, angers Mich. farmers denied bonuses

An investigation by the Reuters news service has found that Chesapeake Energy Corp., the No. 2 natural-gas driller in the U.S., used shell companies to conceal its role in a big gas play in rural Northern Michigan, and has since voided the deals, leaving farmers without the bonuses they expected.

"Chesapeake's effort to hide its involvement isn't illegal," Joshua Schneyer and Brian Grow report for Reuters. "To the contrary, the company's maneuvering exemplifies how U.S. corporations routinely can conceal financial and corporate transactions through the use of shell companies. President Barack Obama has called on other nations to improve corporate transparency, but under state laws governing corporate formation in America, privately held businesses aren't required to disclose the individuals or companies who really own them."

Grow and Schneyer note that the Chesapeake website advises landowners that their "main consideration" in leasing should be "to discover who will ultimately be producing your minerals." However, "Chesapeake's strategy made that extremely difficult for the Michigan landowners," they note.

Joshua Fershee, a contract law professor at the University of North Dakota, told Reuters that Chesapeake's tactics "raise moral and ethical questions about how entities can be used," but John Lowe, a professor of energy law at Southern Methodist University, calls it "business as usual" in the oil and gas industry. If large companies are known to be interested in leasing, that tends to drive up lease prices. (Read more)

Spokane paper has good take on troubles that may lie ahead for rural hospitals

Here's a good, localized look at the challenges facing rural hospitals all over the U.S., by John Stucke of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane: "Many of Eastern Washington’s small hospitals are bracing for cutbacks as federal and state governments look to save money.

"Consider Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Chewelah [pin on MapQuest image]: On any given day perhaps nine of its 25 patient beds are occupied. Two of those patients might have private insurance. One might not pay the medical bill. The rest will be covered by government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

"And yet the hospital has made money in four of the past five years, in part because rural hospitals receive richer payments from government than larger urban hospitals to care for proportionally higher numbers of the poor, elderly and uninsured who populate rural America.

"It’s a bottom-line boost that has kept 38 hospitals in rural Washington afloat. But that extra money from Medicare and Medicaid is drawing the attention of budget cutters. If proposals to retool and scale back the payments are adopted, up to half of these hospitals could be closed within a matter of years, say administrators and policy analysts." (Read more)

Idealistic Southern farmers and chefs find synergy in reviving, retaining old and tasty foodways

South Carolina heritage hog farmer Emile DeFelice, right, is "part of a thriving movement of idealistic Southern food producers who have a grander plan than just farm-to-table cuisine," Julia Moskin reports for The New York Times. "They want to reclaim the agrarian roots of Southern cooking, restore its lost traditions and dignity, and if all goes according to plan, completely redefine American cuisine for a global audience. Their work is being encouraged, and sponsored, by a new generation of chefs who have pushed Southern cooking into the vanguard of world cuisine — and who depend on these small producers to literally flesh out their ambitions." (Times photo by Kathryn Wagner)

Moskin says the synergy has high potential: "Like California in the 1970s — when Alice Waters collaborated with farmers, foragers and cheesemakers on the food at Chez Panisse — the South today has just the right combination of climate, culinary skill, regional chic and receptive audience." She says many Southern chefs are working along the same line as chef Sean Brock, from Wise County, Virginia, whose Charleston restaurant Husk " serves only food produced south of the Mason-Dixon line, from Georgia olive oil to Tennessee chocolate to capers made from locally foraged elderberries. . . . Perhaps most important, they are paying (and charging) big-city prices for down-home ingredients: money that is keeping food traditions, and small producers, alive."

Moskin notes, "The quest for 'real' Southern food isn’t new," citing the Southern Foodways Alliance and Slow Food USA. "Today, purists believe, Southern cooking is too often represented by its worst elements: feedlot hams, cheap fried chicken and chains like Cracker Barrel." DeFelice told her, "My mother didn’t cook like that, and my grandmother didn’t cook like that. And if you want to come down here and talk about shrimp and grits, well, we’re tired of that, too. Southern cooking is a lot more interesting than people think.” (Read more)