Documentary project in W.Va. involves residents in hopes of helping McDowell County turn itself around

A documentary project focused on the McDowell County in southern West Virginia is asking residents to use various forms of technology to discuss the many stereotypes associated with the Appalachian coalfield community, including population loss and its potential for the future.

Then-Sens. John F. Kennedy
and Jennings Randolph with
coal miners. (State archives photo)

Hollow, An Interactive Documentary, combines personal documentary video portraits, user-generated content, photography, soundscapes, interactive data and grassroots mapping on an HTML5 website and will consist of 20 to 50 community-made short documentaries in efforts to build engagement and social trust and empower the community to work together for a better future, according to the filmmakers' website.

McDowell County (Wikipedia map) has experienced a boom-and-bust economy, but its experience is similar to many rural towns, reports Brittany D. McClure of the Valdosta Daily Times. Over the past 25 years, more than 700 rural counties, from the Plains to the Texas Panhandle to Appalachia, lost 10 percent or more of their population, she writes, adding that population loss has negative effects not just on the economy, but on the overall quality of life for those residents who remain.

“There’s a lot of places across the country that have sort of been hollowed out,” Valdosta State University assistant professor Jason Brown, who contributed to the project, told McClure. “This project is really about trying to talk about how to continue these communities.” (Read more)

Congress debates fate of two programs that provide money to forested areas

Congress is debating the fate of two programs that have sent billions of federal dollars to forested parts of rural America since the 1970s and helped impoverished communities build schools, roads and provide other essential services, reports Raju Chebium of the Gannett Co. Washington Bureau.

Chebium writes that lawmakers are deciding whether to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act and Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTS) programs, under which heavily forested rural jurisdictions in every state got a total of $684 million last year - $291 million for schools and $393 million to make up for lost tax revenues. The programs affect 729 counties, mainly in the West.

"Democrats urged Congress to temporarily renew the two programs" at a Senate committee hearing yesterday, Chebium writes, "but Republicans said Congress may need to hand over the forests to state and local officials and lift federal regulations that critics claim have devastated small towns and villages across the U.S."

Secure Rural Schools ensures that counties can count on funding for schools and roads, make additional investments in projects that enhance forest ecosystems, and improve cooperative relationships, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

PILOTs are considered a means to partially offset property-tax revenue forgone because the nonprofit’s property is tax-exempt, or are thought of as contributions to cover the nonprofit’s share of the cost of public services provided by municipalities that are normally funded with property taxes, according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Journeying in search of Montana's vanished towns

Frank Hartman gazes at an old 
schoolyard. (Jeremy Lurgio photo)

When the official Montana state highway map was released in 2001, nine communities were removed, according to the website Lost and Found Montana. The main criteria for inclusion on the map was a population of at least one year-round resident.

In a story and pictorial for High Country News, freelance journalist Jeremy Lurgio details how he went in search of the nine towns. Along the way he met people who shared their thoughts about living in Montana's vanished settlements.

"Their stories, past and present, offered an unusual perspective on the fragility of place in the rural West," writes Lugio. These towns were the smallest of the small -- one family, one year-round resident, one schoolhouse or one grain elevator. Ironically, I discovered that some towns that had vanished from the map more than a decade ago had as much life in them as some that remained." (Read more)

More retirees adopt farming as a second career

The idea of farming as a second or third career, close to retirement age, may sound surprising, but many people in their 50s are taking it up. According to the President's Council of Economic Advisers' annual report, one-third of beginning farmers are over age 55, indicating that many farmers move into agriculture only after leaving another line of work. The number of farmers 55 and older rose 2.6 percent from 2010 to 2012.

Farmers tend to be older. Those 55 and older account for more than half of the total value of production and own more than half the nation's farmland, and the average age of farmers keeps rising. The average farmer is 57, reports the Stone Barns Center for Food and Alcohol.

Half of all farmers are likely to retire in the next decade, the number of entry-level farmers has fallen by 30 percent since 1987, and new farmers make up only 10 percent of farmers and ranchers, according to the Center for Rural Affairs.

The 2007 Census of Agriculture, the most recent available, reported there were 291,329 farms and ranches with a principal operator who had begun working on the operation since the previous census in 2002. An additional 361,491 principal operators had started operating their present farm within the last 10 years.

Genetically modified foods leave sour taste in one writer's mouth; Whole Foods to label all such items

Last Friday, Whole Foods Market announced its intent to label all genetically modified foods in its stores by 2018, reports Norbert O'Hare of Examiner.com. 

Whole Foods is the first major U.S. company to make such a move, reports Casey Farrar of The Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire. Study and debate over whether eating genetically modified organisms could be harmful to people has been underway for years, with little conclusive evidence in either direction, writes Farrar. More than 60 countries have required labeling of GMO foods, but for U.S. consumers who want to know whether they’re eating foods whose genes have been manipulated, the only indication currently available is that foods labeled “USDA organic” cannot undergo genetic engineering.

The decision by Whole Foods comes on the heels of the U.S. Department of Justice's closure of its three-year antitrust investigation into Monsanto, the biotech giant whose genetic traits are embedded in over 90 percent of America’s soybean crop and more than 80 percent of corn, reports Lina Kahn of Salon.

Originally a chemical company that produced plastics and pesticides, Monsanto turned to biotech in the 1980s by developing genetic traits and licensing them to companies, big and small, that conducted the actual breeding of seeds and handled sales to farmers, writes Kahn. In the mid-1990s, Monsanto adopted a new strategy and began acquiring many of the independent seed businesses that had been the prime customers for its traits. Over the next decade Monsanto spent more than $12 billion to buy at least 30 such businesses.

Kahn opines that the public will suffer the costs of Monsanto’s capture of almost total control over much of the U.S. seed business. Since 2001 the company has more than doubled the price of soybean and corn seeds, whose crops are used in foods ranging from cereal and pizza to chocolate and soda. In 2008 Monsanto officials said farmers should expect seed prices to keep rising.

We wrote about Monsanto in February when the company was involved in a Supreme Court dispute with an Indiana farmer over a claimed violation of a planting agreement between the company and farmers.

Arizona Senate passes bill allowing some staff in certain rural schools to carry handguns

Employees in rural Arizona schools could soon be armed. The Republican-heavy Arizona Senate on Monday passed a bill allowing designated employees in certain rural schools to carry handguns.

The bill, if passed by the House and signed by the governor, would allow school boards to authorize any employee to carry a concealed gun on campus if the school has fewer than 600 students, is more than 30 minutes and 20 miles away from the closest law-enforcement facility, and does not have its own school resource officer, reports Alia Beard Rau of the Arizona Republic.

The bill would allow boards to authorize any staff member who is also a retired law-enforcement officer to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds, she writes. Schools would have to provide secure gun lockers, and the bill restricts staff to carrying a concealed handgun, pistol or revolver.

Phoenix Sen. Steve Gallardo, a Democrat, said that even if the bill becomes law, rural schools likely won’t be able to pay the astronomical fee required to insure schools with gun-carrying teachers. “And if they can afford that amount of money, they can definitely afford school resource officers,” he said. 

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Rich Crandall, has said his bill is a measured response to school safety issues and is designed to provide some protection to rural schools that are far from law enforcement centers, reports Bob Christie of the Associated Press.

Earlier this month South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a bill enabling state school boards to supervise the arming of school employees or hire security personnel, Sara Gates notes on the Huffington Post. South Dakota is believed to be the first U.S. state to sign such legislation into law, writes Gates.

M. Alex Johnson reports that a study conducted in January by NBC found that more than one third of states already allow teachers and other adults to carry guns to school. In most cases, all you need is the equivalent of a note from the principal.

American Legion tries to stay relevant, small-town posts try to stay solvent amid membership decline

In Elgin, Ill., old commanders' pictures
are posted. (NYT photo by Sally Ryan)

American Legion membership nationwide is down 11 percent since 2000, to less than 2.4 million members in 2012, and "Money and members are in short supply at legion halls in many rural communities," reports Karen Ann Cullotta of The New York Times. The legion has also seen a decline in the number of operating posts, dropping from 14,700 posts in 2000 to just under 13,800 this year.

As membership continues to decline, some small-town American Legion posts fight to stay relevant and financially solvent, Cullotta reports, citing the example of Post 57 in Elgin, Ill., which has 750 members, down from 1,200 in the 1980s. Declining membership is nothing new for the American Legion, "where the enemies these days are old age, apathy and budget deficits," she writes.

“The younger veterans are so busy with work and raising their families, they don’t think they have the time to get involved with the legion,” Norman Bellows, 76, a Korean War veteran and retired truck driver, told Cullotta.

According to Joe March, a spokesman at Legion headquarters in Indianapolis, officials are confident that the membership decline can be reversed, and they have recently begun a campaign to bring the legion’s ranks back up to three million members by its 100th anniversary in 2019. (Read more)

50 years after right established, not all defendants get lawyer, and they're scanter in rural areas

Fifty years ago today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, as part of Gideon vs. Wainwright, that everyone accused of a serious crime has a constitutional right to a lawyer, whether they can afford it or not. In honor of the anniversary of the landmark decision, many news organizations looked into how the judicial system is living up to the principle, and found that many defendants are standing trial without the services of a lawyer.

Guilty pleas account for about 95 percent of all criminal convictions, writes Stephen B. Bright and Sia Sanneh of the Los Angeles Times. In many courts, poor people are processed through the courts without lawyers or moments after speaking for a few minutes with lawyers they just met and will never see again.

Most states have little incentive to provide competent lawyers to represent the people they are trying to convict, fine, imprison or execute, the Times reports. Many focus on minimizing costs, awarding the defense of poor people to the lowest bidder, compensating lawyers at meager rates and underfunding public defender programs. This facilitates pleas, speeds up cases and heightens the chances of conviction for anyone accused of a crime.

The Legal Services Corporation, the federally financed organization that provides lawyers to the poor in civil matters, says there are more than 60 million Americans — 35 percent more than in 2005 — who qualify for its services, writes Ethan Bronner of the New York Times. But it calculates that 80 percent of the legal needs of the poor go unmet. In state after state, according to a survey of trial judges, more people are now representing themselves in court and they are failing to present necessary evidence, committing procedural errors and poorly examining witnesses, all while new lawyers remain unemployed.

Georgia offers a case study on the mismatch between lawyers and clients at a time when each needs the other, Bronner notes. According to the Legal Services Corp., 70 percent of the state’s lawyers are in the Atlanta area, while 70 percent of the poor live outside it. There are six counties without a lawyer and dozens with only two or three.

The Florida Supreme Court is considering a limit to its caseload, writes Rick Hampson of USA Today. Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court authorized public defenders with unmanageable caseloads to decline new cases, and the American Bar Association urged states and counties not to fire public defenders who do. The problem is money. An explosion in the number of criminal cases has overwhelmed the indigent defense system, which represents about 80 percent of all accused.

Mississippi, tops in obesity, OKs 'anti-Bloomberg' bill

Mississippi may appear to be pushing to keep its spot as the most obese state in the U.S. The state Legislature passed a bill which says that any law that might restrict what Mississippians eat or drink has to go through them — barring federal regulations, writes Kim Severson of the New York Times.

The bill prohibits local governments from enacting rules limiting soda size, salt content, shortening in cookies, toys in fast-food meals, how a menu is written or just about any other aspect of the daily dining experience in Mississippi, writes Severson.

The bill, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Phil Byrant, is informally called the "anti-Bloomberg bill," in response to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal on food restrictions, which a judge struck down but is on appeal.

“I can’t defend what the statistics show about obesity,” said Sen. Tony Smith, who introduced the bill “But this is about personal responsibility. When I go out to eat with my three daughters they get waters. I don’t need the government to tell me to do that.”

The bill made the "Bizarre-O-Meter" of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, which opined, "The state faces dire education and health care problems. The economy’s a mess. So what’s one of the first new laws set to hit the books? A law protecting the sanctity of the Big Gulp, the Big Mac and the Twinkie."

Among Mississippians 18 and over, 68 percent are overweight and 34 percent are obese, according to a study by the federal Centers for Disease Control. The study also found that 18.3 percent of Mississippi adolescents are obese.

Obama leaning toward delay, possible change in greenhouse-gas rules for new power plants

The Obama administration is leaning toward revising its landmark proposal to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants, according to several individuals briefed on the matter, a move that would significantly delay tougher restrictions, anger many environmentalists and please the coal industry.

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reports that rewriting the proposal could allow the Environmental Protection Agency to set a separate standard for coal-fired power plants, which are roughly twice as polluting as those fueled by natural gas.

The move would be a blow to environmental groups and their supporters, Eilperin writes. EPA's current proposal would require any new plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity produced. The agency is supposed to finalize the rule by April 13 but is likely to miss that deadline, and officials are discussing with the White House how they might modify the proposal in order to ensure it can survive a legal challenge.

Hunters, anglers voice concern about impact of climate change on wildlife

Anglers in Montana. (Riverside Anglers photo)

Ten groups representing millions of anglers, hunters, scientists and conservationists sent a letter to President Obama on Monday asking that the administration “develop and implement climate-change adaptation strategies that support the resiliency of fish and wildlife populations,” reports the Environment News Service.

The hunting and angling economy is worth roughly $120 billion a year, writes ENS. The groups are asking Obama to follow through on his promises to act against warming temperatures, given in his inaugural address in January and in his State of the Union speech in February.

"This past year alone, we saw iconic rivers such as the Yampa in Colorado and Madison in Montana closed to fishing due to high water temperatures," the groups said. "Likewise, we saw droughts in the Midwest dry up duck marshes, and wildfires of uncommon intensity burn more than 9 million acres of game habitat."

Underground water levels in high plains shrinking

Threatened by another summer of crop-shriveling drought, Kansans have agreed to across-the-board cuts in water use. In the 100 square-mile “high priority” (meaning particularly parched) zone of Northwest Kansas, Groundwater District 4 reached a consensus to reduce groundwater pumping by 20 percent over the next five years, writes Jim Malewitz of Stateline.

He writes that Kansans are gambling on short-term wants for a longer-term need — to preserve the aquifer their lives depend upon. The plan is just one of many major efforts to fend off a slow-moving disaster with national implications: The High Plains Aquifer, which feeds some of the world’s most productive croplands, is running dry.

The aquifer, also called the Ogallala, is one of the world’s largest underground sources of freshwater, he writes. It stretches 174,000 square miles through the middle of the country from South Dakota to northwest Texas, touching six states, watering more than one-quarter of all irrigated acreage in the U.S. and some of world’s largest grain cattle feedlots. The Ogallala also provides drinking water to four of every five people living above it.

Since Americans first began to seriously irrigate the Great Plains, beginning in the 1940s, water levels across most of the Ogallala have fallen at least five feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Almost one-fifth of the area has dropped at least 25 feet, while 11 percent has lost 50 feet or more. In some of the worst-off areas of Kansas and Texas, the water table has declined as much as 200 feet. The most recent drought has compounded the problem, drying up riverbeds and forcing farmers to rely even more heavily on groundwater.

Technology spreads bad news, rumors at rapid pace

Advances in technology have made it easier to spread information faster, even if that information is sensitive or untrue.

The long-standing practice of waiting until kin has been notified of a death by officials before releasing information is being trampled by text messages and Twitter tweets that are often incomplete, inaccurate or false, reports Stephanie Collins of the Advocate-Messenger in Danville, Ky. Collins writes that when a local teenager died in a recent car crash, her younger sister, who was home alone, learned of the death through a text message before officials could notify the family.

Coroner Daryl Hodge of adjoining Garrard County told Collins: “I think the hardest thing is that people don’t take into consideration that the person might not know yet. And the other thing is they need to wait until they have the facts. So many things are said on Facebook and Twitter and they just aren’t true. And that frustrates me.”

Technology has also made it easier to spread false information, writes Todd Leopold of CNN. "There's never been such pressure to speak before one knows," science writer Jamie Gleick told Leopold. There's always been a desire to gather and disseminate news, he points out, "but never until now has it been global and instantaneous."

Rural households spend less than urban ones, but more on animals and recreational vehicles

Rural households spend less overall than urban ones, according to information from 2011, the last year data was available. On average urban households spent $50,348 in 2011, 18 percent more than the $42,540 spent by rural ones, reports Phil Izzo of the Wall Street Journal.

Urban households spend more on housing, but rural consumers spend more on health care and transportation, writes Izzo. Rural residents tend to be older, which explains the health-care costs, and tend to have to drive more, which explains bigger outlays for gasoline and automotive maintenance.

Rural households spent $2,652 on entertainment in 2011, $86 more than those in urban regions. Rural consumers spent more on expenditures such as boats and all-terrain vehicles. They also spent more on pets. Urban households spent an average $484 on pet food; pet purchase, supplies, medicine; pet services; and vet services in 2011, compared to $716 for rural households. Izzo attributes that to horses, which are hard to keep in urban areas.

Grady Clay, a journalist and urbanist who appreciated rural, dies at 96

By Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural Journalism & Community Issues

The Rural Blog might not be expected to note the passing of a "noted urbanist," as one obituary headline put it, but we're also about journalism and the connections between rural and urban areas, and my friend Grady Clay, left, cared a great deal about those things as well as the urban landscape.

Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation Friends told The Courier-Journal of Louisville that Clay alerted professionals to such issues as “sprawl, historic preservation, watershed management and ecological design. These are things we deal with as second nature today, but they were pretty revolutionary stuff” when he took over as editor of Landscape Architecture.after serving as C-J real estate editor. (Read more)

"Clay was an authority on urban design," Gabe Bullard writes for Louisville's WFPL.  He was president of the National Association of Real Estate Editors, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University; a research associate to the Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a Guggenheim Fellow. He was a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, where he grew up, and lectured extensively was a visiting professor at universities in U.S. and abroad.

He was married to an architect, Judith McCandless, and was chair of the jury that chose Maya Lin's then-controversial design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and "I’m sure at some level, guided" its final design and execution, "which transformed memorial architecture and the way we commemorate events of historical significance," Alan Brake, executive editor of the Architect’s Newspaper, told Bullard. His books included Real Places: An Unconventional Guide to America's Generic Landscape.

Clay at his Louisville springhouse. (Photo by
Spcsnvsnjmc / Wikimedia Commons)

Grady Clay kept track of how journalists described the landscape, urban and rural. In 1990, when I wrote that a Kentucky bond issue would build roads in "the far reaches of the state," he was taken with the phrase. Our correspondence then is lost in the electronic ether, but we kept in touch, last seeing each other in 2008 when he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Urban Communication Foundation.

In the 1990s, he recorded a series of timeless, insightful commentaries for WFPL, titled "Crossing the American Grain" and collected in a book by that title. For rural listeners I recommend No. 5, about a summer night on a Michigan beach; No. 7, about a sawmill, a cotton gin and hard work on his grandparents' farm at Walnut Grove, Ga.; No. 8, about building the Alaska Highway; and No. 10, about moving.

High corn prices, decline in fuel consumption spell trouble for ethanol plants and their communities

Grain bins at closed ethanol plant in
Macon, Mo. (NYT photo by Daniel Acker)

The ethanol bubble has burst, John Eligon and Matthew Wald report for The New York Times from Macon, Mo.: "Five years ago, rural America was giddy for ethanol. Backed by government subsidies and mandates, hundreds of ethanol plants rose among the golden fields of the Corn Belt, bringing jobs and business to small towns, providing farmers with a new market for their crops and generating billions of dollars in revenue for the producers of this corn-based fuel blend. Those days of promise and prosperity are vanishing.

"Nearly 10 percent of the nation’s ethanol plants have stopped production over the past year, in part because the drought that has ravaged much of the nation’s crops pushed commodity prices so high that ethanol has become too expensive to produce. A dip in gasoline consumption has compounded the industry’s problem by reducing the demand for ethanol. The situation has left the fate of dozens of ethanol plants hanging in the balance and has unsettled communities that once prospered from this biofuel." (Read more)

Because most vehicles are supposed to burn fuel with no more than 10 percent ethanol, and few service stations are set up to sell a 15 percent blend, much ethanol remains in storage. The federal Renewable Fuels Standard requires them to blend a certain amount of ethanol, and because they can't do that, they are buying and driving up the price of ethanol credits, which threatens to raise fuel prices, Wald reports: "The ethanol lobby accuses the oil companies of ratcheting up the demand for fuel credits as a way of applying pressure on lawmakers to reduce the alternative fuel mandates." (Read more)

Southerners have misled nation for a century about cause of Civil War; time to set record straight

By Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Friday The Rural Blog picked up an excerpt from Tracy Thompson's new book, The New Mind of the South, about a Clarksdale, Miss., tourist court comprising plantation shacks. Another part of the book is much more important. It explains why more Americans believe the Southern-generated myth that the concept of states' rights was the cause of the Civil War, rather than slavery. "Thompson’s analysis is most incisive and heartfelt" on this point, J. Bryan Lowder writes in Slate.

This is not an arcane, academic argument. It is about facing the fundamental facts about our country, and its fundamental divider, race. And those facts are especially important to confront right now because we have a black president and are going through the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, a term some in the South still refuse to use. "To call it a Civil War was to concede that secession was impossible and/or unconstitutional," Thompson (above), who was raised in Georgia, writes in the book. (Photo by Dayna Smith)

The 3,940-word book excerpt in Salon carries an extreme headline, "The South still lies about the Civil War," but as someone who was born, raised and lived all my life in slave states, I find it a compelling account of how Confederate veterans, their descendants and their allies perpetuated the myth, often with the help of Northerners who thought it would encourage regional reconciliation, and how it invaded textbooks and the public mind. To read it, click here.

Census data on rural population gets into the news

Many local news media are picking up on the Census Bureau report we noted yesterday showing that more than a third of U.S. counties, mostly rural, are losing population.

In Nebraska 64 of 93 counties experienced a decline of population, reports Brent Martin of Nebraska Radio Network. Forty-two counties experienced more deaths than births in 2012. While rural Nebraska keeps shrinking, urban Nebraska is growing, he writes.

Oregon has seen similar results, reports Elliot Njus of The Oregonian. The Portland metro area population grew 1.3 percent from 2011 and 2.9 percent since the 2010 census. Njus writes that five rural counties of each lost more than 1 percent of population and all recorded more deaths than births, and more people moving out than moving in.

Michael H. O'Donnell of the Idaho State Journal reports that over 5,600 more people moved out of the state's 33 rural counties than moved in. He writes that 28 of them experienced net domestic outmigration.

The Census Bureau report is available on the agency website.

Tourists in Miss. can sleep in plantation shacks

Photo: P.F. Edwards, Garden & Gun

Entrepreneurs in Clarksdale, Miss., have found a way to market rural poverty with the Shack Up Inn, a collection of authentic sharecropper shacks, Tracy Thompson writes in her book, The New Mind of the South.

In a book excerpt in the Daily Yonder, Thompson says the inn is on "the site of the old Hopson Plantation a few miles outside of town, retrofitted with some modern necessities like indoor plumbing, heat and air conditioning, and then rented to tourists traveling down Highway 61 on the Mississippi Blues Trail."

The Shack Up Inn website says that visitors can "immerse yourself in the living history you will find at Hopson. Virtually unchanged from when it was a working plantation, you will find authentic sharecropper shacks, the original cotton gin and seed houses and other outbuildings. You will glimpse plantation life, as it existed only a few short years ago. In addition, you will find one of the first mechanized cotton pickers."

The inn is a hit with the musical and literary set, but there have been few African American visitors, writes Thompson. More than 40 percent of Clarksdale residents lived below the poverty level in 2007-11, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report. The population is 79 percent black.

Virginia farmers exploring hops as new crop

Gannett News Service photo

When rural communities in Virginia and West Virginia held a forum on regional innovation recently, one of the main topics was a new product that is growing in interest in Virginia: hops, reports Andrew Sharbel of the Loudoun Times-Mirror in Leesburg.

Sharbel writes that according to Kellie Boles, agricultural development officer for the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development, there are few hops growers on the East Coast. Most hops are raised in the Pacific Northwest. Boles said she thinks hops could be the key to fulfilling the county's rural economic development plan.

For more on production of hops, an essential ingredient in beer, here's a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Washington produces 79 percent of the U.S. crop.

Candidate for governor in Maine says 108 towns in the state are ‘basically insolvent’

Maine gubernatorial candidate Steve Woods unveiled an economic strategy that could result in the closure of more than 100 small towns and redirect their state dollars — and potentially their residents — toward more urban centers, reports Seth Koenig of the Bangor Daily News. Woods contends the state’s “underlying problem” can be summed up as “more than 100 Maine communities that cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to sustain while making very little contribution to the wealth and capacity of our state," writes Koenig.

Woods (BDN photo)

The study by Woods was developed using data culled from thousands of pages of statewide municipal budgets going back at least a decade. “If your expenses continue to exceed your revenues, you become insolvent," Woods said. "You can delay that by taking on debt, and you can mask it by seeking out more in grants and other subsidies. But I’ve found that there are 108 towns which — by no fault of the leaders there and by no fault of the people who have lived there, sometimes for generations — are basically insolvent.”

Woods is running as a Democrat; he ran as an independent for the U.S. Senate last year, getting 1.48 percent of the vote in a race won by Gov. Angus King, also an independent. He is chairman of the council in the Town of Yarmouth. In New England, all places are in a town. Under Woods' proposal, towns would be consolidated. Maine recently consolidated many of its small school districts.

In an editorial titled "Bridging the Rural-Urban Divide," the Daily News writes "The solution, though, lies not in talking about getting rid of rural communities, but building on the opportunities those communities provide. The solution lies also in recognizing that one statewide approach to economic development is unfair, as each region, whether urban or rural, has different strengths."

Big Tenn. paper mill idles its last newsprint machine

Resolute Forest Products is shutting down its last newsprint machine in Calhoun, Tenn., after decades of shedding forest lands and mill jobs in response to the shrinking size and circulation of the newspapers that buy newsprint, reports Dave Flessner for the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Flessner writes that "indefinite idling" of the newsprint machines will cost another 150 mill jobs, cutting the remaining staff at the Calhoun plant below 500 by the end of the month. The Calhoun mill produced 215,000 metric tons per year and supplied newsprint for dozens of newspapers in the Southeast, including the Times Free Press. A plant in Augusta, Ga., will pick up its newsprint customers.

The plant was once owned by the old Bowater Corp. David Davis of the Cleveland Daily Banner writes that in 1954 the mill had 750 employees who produced 180,000 tons of newsprint and market pulp annually. In 2004, it had 900 employees who produced 990,000 tons. The company paid $89 million annually in wages and salaries.

In 2010 151 newspapers closed and 152 in 2011, reports Katrina M. Mendolera of inVocus, a media news center. But the main reason for declining newsprint sales is the shrinking size of newspapers, both in number of pages and page dimensions. 

Senators attempting to stave off cuts in rural air control, furloughs and closures in meatpacking

Some proposed amendments to the bill to keep the government running would keep rural air-traffic control towers open and avoid furloughs of meat inspectors (and thus temporary plant closures), but "There is a fear that if too many accommodations are made by the Senate, it risks a blowup with the House and exactly the sort of shutdown fight both parties want to avoid on March 27 when funding runs out," David Rogers reports for Politico. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the list of 100 amendments to the continuing resolution needs to be substantially reduced to get a vote on the bill Monday.

Blunt, Pryor (Bill Clark, Getty Images)

Republicans have been most prominent in seeking relief. Sen. Jerry Moran wants to shift $50 million to protect contract air-traffic control towers important to rural states like his own Kansas," Rogers writes. "And with major meatpacking houses in both states, Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas has teamed with his Republican neighbor, Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, to try to add $55 million to the current Senate bill to shore up the Food Safety and Inspection Service." They would get $30 million of the money by deferring maintenance on Agriculture Department buildings, and $25 million "from a new grant program favored by the White House to help schools buy equipment for school breakfast programs."

Rogers gives details on the FSIS budget and mentions two other rural issues: "The House adds significantly more than the Senate for wildland fire management in the Interior Department and Forest Service. The Senate does more than the House for the Indian Health Service. (Read more)

Methadone series wins community journalism prize

Brandon Stahl, right, has won the 2012 Scripps Howard Foundation award for community journalism for his series "Methadone: A Costly Fix" in the Duluth News Tribune, which prompted calls for reform in the treatment of drug addiction in Minnesota. Stahl, now a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

News Tribune Editor Robin Washington said the series exposed outrages and prompted change, "with one of the quickest responses by authorities I’ve seen in decades as an editor." The award carries a $10,000 prize. For the opening story in the series, click here. For the foundation's list of winners and links for each of their entries, go here.

In 36 percent of counties, many if not most rural, more people are dying than are being born

The Associated Press reports, with an atypically overheated verb: "A record number of U.S. counties, more than one in three, are now dying off, hit by an aging population and weakened local economies that are spurring young adults to seek jobs and build families elsewhere. New 2012 census estimates released Thursday highlight the population shifts as the U.S. encounters its most sluggish growth levels since the Great Depression."

From July 2011 through June 2012, deaths exceeded births in 36 percent of counties (1,135 of 3,143), a sizeable jump from the 28 percent reporting "natural decrease" in 2009, the Bureau of the Census reported. Maine, the most rural state, joined West Virginia as states in that category. Slicing up population by county lines shows the data through a rural lens, since most counties are rural but only 16 percent of the population is. The story doesn't say whether most of these counties are rural, but they probably are. It says "Roughly 46 percent of rural counties just beyond the edge of metropolitan areas experienced natural decrease, compared to 17 percent of urban counties."

“These counties are in a pretty steep downward spiral,” Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer and sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire, told AP. “The young people leave and the older adults stay in place and age. Unless something dramatic changes — for instance, new development such as a meatpacking plant to attract young Hispanics — these areas are likely to have more and more natural decrease.”

As we have reported here, here and most recently here, the Census Bureau says more counties, urban and rural, would have lost population if not for immigration. "The growing attention on immigrants is coming mostly from areas of the Midwest and Northeast, which are seeing many of their residents leave after years of staying put during the downturn," AP reports. "With a slowly improving U.S. economy, young adults are now back on the move, departing traditional big cities to test the job market mostly in the South and West, which had sustained the biggest hits in the housing bust." (Read more)

Ohio judges seal many misdemeanor records of small-town college students, court records show

Are college students getting away with not having to face public scrutiny for misdemeanor crimes? Over the past five years and last year, 40 percent of misdemeanor cases in the county that is home to Miami University in Ohio were sealed by Judge Rob Lyons, left, reports Sheila McLaughlin of the Cincinnati Enquirer. (Enquirer photo by Tony Tribble)

McLaughlin reports that in 2012, nearly 32 percent of cases were sealed in the county that is home to Ohio University, 22 percent in the one that's home to Kent State University, almost 17 percent in the one where Bowling Green State University is located, but only 3.5 percent in the larger, more urban county that is home to the University of Dayton.

Christo Lassiter, a law professor at the University of Cincinnati, questions whether students in towns dominated by a college are getting preferential treatment. “To some extent, Miami students have a pipeline. You find out what works and you do it. They’ve figured it out. It could be just the pipeline, or it could be the fact that these people do have the money to go to a lawyer.”

Lyons, on the bench for 14 years, said in a sworn deposition that he routinely seals cases for Miami students: “You’ve got kids with indiscretions that want their records sealed before they start applying for graduate school or go to the job market.”

Bat-killing syndrome spreads to its 22nd state

A fungus that has killed millions of bats since it was first observed in 2006 has now reached 22 states, after bats in South Carolina and Georgia tested positive for the deadly fungus. Bat populations that contract white-nose syndrome -- named because the fungus manifests as a fuzzy white patch on bats’ noses, wings and other hairless parts of their body -- have a mortality rate of 70 to 100 percent, writes John R. Platt writes for Scientific American.

We reported in September about conservationists who built an artificial cave in Tennessee in an effort to save bats. At that time more than 5.7 million bats had died from the fungus. (Photo: A little brown bat showing symptoms of white-nose syndrome in Greeley Mine, Vermont, in March 2009 by Marvin Moriarty, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Bats have an important role in regulating insect populations, a function that is vital to successful agriculture. A recent study found that the loss of North American bats could lead to agricultural losses of more than $3.7 billion per year, writes Platt.

The National Wildlife Health Center says bats affected by white-nose syndrome often display abnormal behaviors in their hibernation sites, such as movement toward the mouth of caves and daytime flights during winter. These abnormal behaviors may contribute to the untimely consumption of stored fat reserves causing emaciation.

Syndrome spread shown by recent years in warmer colors (Click map for larger image)

Information-technology jobs growing in rural areas

Large corporations looking to outsource their information technology or software development services increasingly pass over India and the Philippines to find help in places like Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa, Barbara Soderlin of the Omaha World-Herald notes in reporting the latest example of the concept, known as "rural sourcing."

Rural Sourcing Inc.,which provides information technology services, has grown an average of 150 percent annually over the last four years by developing software and supporting clients' technology at centers in Jonesboro, Ark., and Augusta, Ga., reports Dinah Wisenberg Brin of CNBC. Monty Hamilton, chief executive since 2009, sees a surge of interest in the U.S. as a destination point for IT outsourcing, she writes. RSI is one of several American companies offering outsourced software development services in small U.S. cities or rural areas.

Soderlin writes that on Wednesday Minneapolis-based rural sourcing firm Eagle Creek Software Services announced it would open a $10 million information-technology center in Vermillion, S.D. and will employ 200 IT consultants. Eagle Creek has pledged to add 1,000 jobs in South Dakota in the next three to five years, reports Dave Dreeszen of the Sioux City Journal. State and local officials said the initiative will provide students with the skills to compete for high-paying jobs in the world's growing technology sector.

An Atlanta-based firm, Xpanxion Technologies, now employs six in Loup City, Neb., 85 in Kearney, Neb. and 25 in Ames, Iowa, and has plans to open a Kansas office, Soderlin reports. The Rural Futures Institute, launched last fall by University of Nebraska President J.B. Milliken, earlier this year awarded a $125,000 grant to a group to build on the successes and strategies of rural sourcing to recruit University of Nebraska alumni back to the state in high-tech and other professional fields.

Ohio drivers may soon be able to put the pedal a bit more to the metal on rural highways

Speed limits may be going up on rural highways in Ohio. Senators signed off on a proposal to increase the speed limit to 70 m.p.h. on rural interstate highways. The measure was added to a highway funding bill, reports Tom Breckenridge of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.

The higher speed limit would apply to interstate freeways outside of urban areas, such as parts of Interstates 75, 70 and 71, writes Laura A. Bischoff of the Dayton Daily News. The limit on outerbelts in urban areas would be 65 and the speed limit would be 55 on interstates deemed congested by the state Department of Transportation.

Thirty-four states have raised limits to 70 or higher on some roads since 1995, writes Bischoff. We reported in 2011 that Kansas has raised speed limits to 75 on some roads. Texas has speed limits of 85 on certain roads and Utah has some with 80, according to the National Motorists Association.

Ohio lawmakers have pushed for the higher limits for years, but the idea faces opposition from environmental groups that say higher speeds reduce fuel efficiency and insurance groups that say it’ll increase danger on the roadways, reports Bischoff. A map from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows maximum posted daytime speed limits on rural interstates.

Plan would strengthen Freedom of Information Act

Democratic and Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unveiled a new proposal to reform the Freedom of Information Act this week.

John McArdle of Environment & Energy Daily reports that the proposal includes a review and expansion of the online portal that allows the public to make FOIA requests; a requirement for agencies to put online all releasable information requested three or more times; a streamlining of the FOIA dispute-resolution process, with more specific timelines; and increased independence for the Office of Government Information Services, which would report directly to Congress without review by other agencies.

McArdle writes that the discussion draft would expand on the principle that, when in doubt, openness should prevail. Instead of requiring the public to justify the release of information, the burden on agencies to demonstrate why information should be withheld. When you lose the public's trust, you lose the ability to lead," said. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), who is also a co-chairman of the Transparency Caucus in Congress.

The proposal comes during Sunshine Week, the annual observance to promote dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. We wrote about the importance of Sunshine Week and said people should speak out on the topic during this important time.

Illinois expands effort to reduce highway accidents involving farm machinery

Mississippi State University photo

Illinois hopes to cut down the number of rural-road deaths involving farm machinery by simply reminding drivers to slow down on rural roads. The Illinois Farm Bureau, Illinois Department of Transportation and Illinois State Police are using banners on rural roads that read “Caution, Slow Down, Share the Road,” to remind drivers and farmers to look out for each other, writes Karina Gonzalez of The Pantagraph in Bloomington.

Since 2008, 29 Illinois residents have died in highway accidents involving farm machinery, writes Gonzalez. Crashes involving large farm machinery such as tractors and combines are the second leading cause of death on rural roads in the state.

The banner program began last year in several counties in Western Illinois, Gonzalez reports. Counties are responsible for the cost and placement of the 3-by-20 foot banners.

Osteopathic medical schools, becoming common in rural areas, steer graduates to practice there

Dr. Valerie Goodman, an osteopath,
examines Mary Elizabeth Gardner at
Goodman's office in Centreville, Md.

Many osteopathic medical schools are springing up in rural locations, usually to recruit applicants from rural areas and then hope those doctors practice in the region. Osteopathy emphasizes total body health through muscles and bones and de-emphasizes the use of drugs.

Since 2000, the number of U.S. osteopathic schools has increased from 19 to 34, offering about 1,900 new training slots, writes Ankita Rao of Kaiser Health News. In 2011, there were about 74,000 osteopathic physicians, compared with about 29,500 in 1990.

Osteopathic physicians constitute seven percent of all U.S. physicians, but are responsible for 16 percent of patient visits in communities with populations of fewer than 2,500, according to a report from the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. Eighteen percent of osteopathic medical school graduates, a toital 2,045 doctors, practice in rural areas, according to a 2010 study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. America's population is only 16 percent rural, and only 9 percent of traditional doctors practice in rural areas.

The Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, Va., founded in 2003, has 1,100 students. James Wolfe, president of Edward Via, told Rao, "Our philosophy is 'Recruit from, educate in, return to.'"

Founded in 1997, the osteopathic college at the University of Pikeville in far Eastern Kentucky has graduated more than 700 physicians, 62 percent of whom practice in Appalachia, according to from the school. Part of its mission statement is to have a program that "produces graduates who are committed to serving the health care needs of communities in rural Kentucky and other Appalachian regions." The graphic below shows the osteopathic medical schools in the U.S.

Telephone company that failed to serve rural customers agrees to pay $975,000 civil penalty

In February we reported that The Federal Communications Commission said it wants to do something about telephone companies' failure to complete long-distance calls in rural areas. In a notice seeking comment on its proposed rulemaking, the FCC said rural long-distance callers get false busy signals, can't hear each other or simply have long periods of "dead air."

Level 3 Communications said Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $975,000 to the U.S. Treasury as part of a consent decree to resolve a probe by the FCC, reports Hayley Tsukayama of The Washington Post. The company said it will pay an additional $1 million if it fails to meet benchmarks to improve connection rates by 5 percent each quarter.

Tsukayama writes that according to the investigation, the company was not reliably connecting long-distance calls from rural areas, a practice the FCC said is caused when long-distance carriers and intermediate providers use third-party routers to complete the calls at a low cost.

Climate-denial books will soon flood the market

Climate-change-denial books are hitting the bookshelves in large numbers, with nearly 90 percent of the books having ties to conservative think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Marshall Institute, according to a study by Riley E. Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and Peter J. Jacques of the University of Central Florida.

Dunlap told Cristine Russell of the Columbia Journalism Review that the books help think tanks and others promote conservative causes, raise uncertainty about the threat of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, downplay the need for reducing carbon emissions, and help conservative think tanks in the U.S. spread the seeds of climate denial to other countries, including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and a number of European nations.

Russell writes that 72 percent of the 108 books had "a verifiable link" to a conservative think tank, and virtually all of them espoused conservative ideology, according to information from Dunlap and Jacques. The books "confer a sense of legitimacy on their authors and provide an effective tool for combating the findings of climate scientists that are published primarily in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. Regardless of whether or not they have scientific credentials, the authors, in turn, are often treated as 'climate experts' who may be interviewed on television and radio and quoted by sympathetic columnists, bloggers, and conservative politicians."

Telephone companies' lobbying to be free of state rules prompts much concern among rural customers

Many states have deregulated land-line service, allowing them to drop the service, and more states are being lobbied hard top join the list. Some rural customers fear they will be left with substandard service. We have reported on the long-running debate; this is an update.

For example, a bill in Kansas would relieve phone companies of having to follow state rules protecting consumers from fraud and abusive billing practices, reports Dion Lefler of The Kansas City Star. It would also relieve AT&T of having to provide phone service to poor people on Lifeline subsidies or difficult-to-serve rural customers.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/09/4110718/kansas-senate-to-debate-att-bill.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/09/4110718/kansas-senate-to-debate-att-bill.html#storylink=cpyto provide phone service to poor people on Lifeline subsidies or difficult-to-serve rural customers, writes Dion Lefler of The Kansas City Star.

A bill in Kentucky would allow telephone companies to stop offering land-line service to new customers in unprofitable parts of the state, especially in rural areas, reports Jack Brammer of the Lexington Herald-Leader. The bill would also allow companies to drop land-line services if there were comparable telephone services — such as cellular service — in an area. 

Kentucky House Speaker Pro Tem Larry Clark even went so far as to say AT&T was using automated phone calls to threaten lawmakers who vote against the bill. AT&T denied making automated calls.

The bill has provoked much ire in rural areas, and stories from AT&T customers about poor wireless service. Michael Caudill of Whitesburg, Ky., wrote: "We went to a local AT&T wireless store to replace my wife's cell phone. The clerk suggested we try their wireless receiver system for our home phone. Of course, it was supposed to be fantastic and give a 60 percent savings. It took 10 minutes to switch our land line to the wireless system, but when it proved to be unsuitable for us, it took over two weeks to reactivate our land line, and almost three months to straighten out the bill." (Read more)

You're a lot more likely to die on a rural road

Rural drivers are more likely to be killed on the road than drivers in suburban or urban areas. In 2010 only 19 percent of the U.S. population lived in rural areas, but 55 percent of traffic fatalities occurred in those areas, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Reasons for the higher numbers include safety issues on rural roads, low rates of seat belt use among rural people, a high percentage of deaths caused by drunk drivers, and a high number of fatal accidents involving speed, writes Daniel C. Vock for Stateline.

American Automobile Association safety chief Jacob Nelson told Vock that people drive faster in rural areas, crashes are more deadly. there are fewer people to call for help after an accident, and help is likely to be farther away."The hospitals are also often farther away and may not have the capacity to handle severe traumas," Nelson said. "All of that makes it less likely that crash victims will get the medical care they need as crucial minutes tick by. Drivers in rural areas also tend to be older and they are more likely to have been drinking, adds Nelson. Finally, fewer police officers spread out across rural areas are less likely to catch drivers for driving drunk, speeding or not wearing a seat belt."

The Transportation Department report says 96 percent of traffic deaths in Maine (the most rural state in population) and 94 percent in Montana happened in rural areas. Numbers were also high in South Dakota (91%), North Dakota (89%), Wyoming (86%), Nebraska (84%), Kansas (80%), Mississippi (79%), Arkansas (79%), Idaho (79%), Iowa (78%), Vermont (76%), South Carolina (76%), New Mexico (76%), Kentucky (73%) and West Virginia (72%).

Feds let Ark. expand Medicaid with private insurance; Fla., rejecting public option, may follow

Arkansas has turned heads nationally with its preliminary plan to expand Medicaid using the private insurance market, showing that the Obama administration is willing to give states more flexibility than expected in expanding the program.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has agreed to a proposal by Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe to reject the Medicaid expansion but use federal money to buy private health insurance for the 200,000 people who would have been covered under ordinary expansion, reports Sandhya Somashekhar of The Washington Post.

States that have come down on either sides of the Medicaid-expansion issue may reconsider their decision in light of the Arkansas proposal, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law professor at George Washington University. "If Arkansas is allowed to do this, I expect it to spread like wildfire," Rosenbaum told the Post.

The first place could be Florida, where a state Senate committee rejected Republican Gov. Rick Scott's expansion plan and proposed a privatization plan like that in Arkansas. Last week, a House committee voted to reject any expansion of the program. Scott "made it clear he was not going to lobby the Legislature on Medicaid," preferring to emphasize other issues, The New York Times' Lizette Alvarez reports. For coverage from the Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald, click here.

A more flexibile arrangement could be a game changer because it makes expansion more appealing, especially for states where expanding Medicaid has been politically unpopular and polarizing. in Arkansas, which has a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, officials say that from an ideological standpoint, using private insurance appeals to lawmakers from both parties, reports Somashekhar.  She reports that even Democratic-led states might prefer this arrangement because it gets rid of some bureaucratic hurdles.

However, there are questions about cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that private insurance plans cost $3,000 more per person than Medicaid, reports Somashekhar. On the other hand, Arkansas officials say the move could ultimately save money in administrative charges along with other cost-control measures.

Although the Arkansas proposal is not concrete, it provides proof that the Department for Health and Human Services encourages innovative, state-based approaches to promote expansion. Many states may develop a new route best suited to their specific needs, without having to leave federal money on the table. (Read more)

House Republicans give USPS green light for 6-day delivery, pooh-poohing language they passed

Republicans in the House contend that the U.S. Postal Service can proceed with its plan to deliver only packages on Saturdays even if Congress passes legislation that keeps decades-old language saying “Six-day delivery and rural delivery of mail shall continue, at not less than the 1983 level.”

“USPS has the authority to implement the modified Saturday delivery plan under current law and retains that authority if this provision were to be continued in its current form,” Ali Ahmad, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Russell Berman and Bernie Becker of The Hill. He called the language "vague" and said USPS would not be eliminating a service day but “altering what products are delivered on that day.”

“The interpretation by the House GOP could set up a showdown with Senate Democratic leaders, who have argued that the legislative language prohibits the cash-strapped agency from limiting letter delivery to five days a week,” the reporters write. It could also set up a court fight, but The Hill notes that USPS "could simply forgo the roughly $100 million in appropriated federal funds" that gives Congress the power to tell it what to do.

The issue could also be addressed in "a broad overhaul of postal operations," the reporters note. Last year the Senate passed a postal reform bill but Issa's committee never acted on it. However, he and Senate negotiators "came close to finishing off a postal deal at the end of last year," The Hill reports.

Fracking in Pa. raises concerns about 'revolving door' regulators and environmental impacts

A recent report found that many of Pennsylvania's policymakers, regulators and enforcement workers have come from the oil and gas industry they oversee, or they leave state jobs for industry jobs, writes Don Hopey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The report by the Public Accountability Initiative found that the last four governors and 45 current or state officials had ties to the gas industry.

The report questions the impacts of such a "revolving door" on public policy decisions, writes Hopey. "There's a concern about people in state government providing favors to industries that might hire them, in effect helping to feather the nest they land in," said Jeff Schmidt, executive director of the Sierra Club in Pennsylvania. Schmidt also has concerns about former industry executives coming to government and being in positions to weaken or reduce enforcement. The phenomenon is present in many states and to some extent in the federal government.

The natural-gas boom and the hydraulic fracturing that has enabled it have brought prosperity and conflict to rural Pennsylvania. In the town of Dimock, the Linde Corp. has seen its workforce nearly triple over the past five years as it switched from constructing buildings to laying miles of gas pipelines connecting hundreds of wells drilled in the rolling rural terrain in Susquehanna County, writes Timothy B. Wheeler of The Baltimore Sun. 

Some local residents aren't so happy about the company. Matt and Tammy Manning say that more than a year ago, the water coming out of their household well turned dark gray, Wheeler writes. Tests by the state found dangerous levels of methane in it, and regulators are investigating the cause. The couple must buy bottled water to drink, while a gas company that drilled in the area furnishes non-potable water for showers and washing clothes. Homeowners in other Pennsylvania communities also have complained that their wells were fouled and their health endangered. The allegations — disputed by the industry and only rarely upheld by state authorities — have caused bitter divides, pitting neighbors and even family members against one another.

Roadside diner: Roadkill bill is on the legislative menu in Montana

UPDATE, March 21: The Senate passed the bill. The bill now goes to Governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat, who has not yet indicated whether he will sign it, reports Dan Boyce of Reuters.

Montana residents may soon be able to find their dinner on the side of the road, legally. The state is considering a bill that would allow people to eat roadkill. The bill passed the House 95 to 3 and is awaiting action in the Senate’s Fish and Game Committee.

In 2011 about 6,568 animals died after colliding with a vehicle on Montana roads, including 6,069 deer, 171 elk, 63 antelope, 33 black bears, six mountain lions and two grizzly bears, writes Jennifer Oldham of Bloomberg.

"Roadkill carries health risks," Lawrence Goodridge, associate professor of food safety at Colorado State University, told Oldham. "For those who handle it, they include exposure to bacteria or infectious diseases, and those who eat it may be exposed to food-borne illnesses if the meat isn’t cooked properly at the right temperature. Personally, I would not support any such legislation."

Coincidence? The head of the panel that sets Montana's hunting regulations was cited for illegally salvaging a deer hit by his car in late 2011. (Read more)

Rural Kansas school districts have difficulty attracting candidates for board seats

Rural school districts in Kansas are struggling to fill school board seats and with declining enrollment, schools are closing or being consolidated, according to a story by Andra Bryan Stefanoni in the Joplin Globe, published near the conjunction of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

She notes one school district has three openings for its upcoming board elections, and only one person has filed to run. The district, which has 694 students spread out across 326 square miles, has an average property valuation of $28,000 — the lowest in the state. The district’s cash reserves are $300,000 to $500,000 in a given year, at a time when other districts measure their reserves in the millions.

Two years ago, the board combined students from three schools to form a centralized junior high. The district lost nine students, which at $7,900 per student translated into a loss of more than $71,000. Four teachers also lost their jobs.

Finding people to fill board seats has been another problem. In 2001, there were 51 seats for which no candidates filed. The number rose to 54 in 2003, 59 in 2005, 72 in 2007,  and in 2011, there were 62 positions for which no one filed. (Read more)