Reader's query answered: Big spending bill, infrastructure package have money for rural septic systems and wells

A recent post here on rural sewage problems in the Black Belt of Alabama prompted Rural Blog reader Alan DiCara ask us what federal funding is available (including in the recent omnibus spending bill) for homeowners to upgrade outdated water wells and/or septic systems. "Life is hard enough paying income taxes, state and federal, to subsidize local water and sewer systems and getting nothing for our own septic and well water systems for costs and regulations imposed by federal and state and local governments," DiCara wrote. We checked and here's what we found:

The omnibus spending bill has several earmarks for septic systems in Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine and Washington, requested by House and Senate members from those states, according to Danielle Smoot, spokeswoman for Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky's 5th District. He is expanding his PRIDE (Personal Responsibility in a Desirable Environment) program through the Environmental Protection Agency's State and Tribal Assistance Grant Program to make private septic projects eligible. The earmark will give Eastern Kentucky PRIDE $800,000 to implement a grant program to provide septic systems to households in southeastern Kentucky.

UPDATE, March 27: Rogers told Bill Bryant of Lexington's WKYT-TV that the PRIDE program has funded 7,400 septic systems in Eastern Kentucky.

Other legislators who got STAG grants for septic projects included:

• Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), $700,000 for septic tank installations in Lowndes County, in the Black Belt.
• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), $2.5 million for a sewer conversion project in Quail Valley.
• Rep. William Steube (R-Fla.), $3.2 million for a septic-to-sewer conversion project in Charlotte County.
• Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), $550,000 for a septic tank effluent pump system for the City of Presque Isle.
• Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), $185,000 for a septic system project in Clinton.
• Rep. Jack Bergman (R) and Sens. Gary Peters and Sen, Debbie Stabenow (D) of Michigan, $3.5 million for a septic-to-sewer expansion and modernization project for Tuscarora Township.
• Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) for $900,000 for a septic receiving facility upgrade for Rochester.
• Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) for $800,000 for a septic elimination program in the Clark Regional Wastewater District.

Earmarks have returned after 12 years, but must follow new guidelines aimed at preventing abuse.

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure package contains $55 billion for upgrading water infrastructure overall. Out of that, $15 billion of that goes to lead-pipe replacement, $10 billion goes to cleaning up toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (also called "forever chemicals" for their long-lasting nastiness), and $8.3 billion goes to western water infrastructure. Additionally, "decentralized households" are granted $150 million over five years to help low-income homeowners construct or repair failing septic systems.

The Agriculture Department's Rural Development has a host of water and waste infrastructure programs, funded in the omnibus bill at $653.3 million. Generally, only state or local governments, non-profit organizations, and federally recognized tribes can apply for these grants and loans. Some of those governments may solicit bids from individuals at the local or regional level, but that's not reflected on the main page. One exception is the Individual Water & Wastewater Grants program, but the only eligible households are those in areas recognized as a Colonia before 1989. Those are only located in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

New tool helps journalists more quickly sift through data dumps agencies send them in response to records requests

When journalists request documents from a government through the Freedom of Information Act or a state law, the data often arrive in huge, unorganized batches. Sorting through it can be a daunting task for any journalist, especially for smaller newspapers with fewer resources. A new tool could make the process easier, Paroma Soni reports for Columbia Journalism Review.

New York University journalism professor Hilke Schellmann teamed up with senior research scientist Mona Sloane, computer-science professor Julia Stoyanovich, and a team of graduate students at NYU’s Center for Data Science to develop Gumshoe, "an artificial-intelligence tool that uses natural language processing to sort through large caches of text documents and categorize them by relevance to the journalist’s main topic of investigation, reducing the time needed to sift through everything," Soni reports.

When users enter search terms, the tool can evaluate which documents or sections of documents are more likely to be relevant to the subject matter. "MuckRock, a nonprofit news site devoted to record requests, plans to integrate Gumshoe into its DocumentCloud platform, which is used by journalists for posting and reviewing public records," Soni reports. "The Gumshoe team developed the tool with an initial grant from the Center for Digital Humanities at NYU. A subsequent $200,000 grant, awarded last month by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, will enable the team to build out Gumshoe’s user interface and distribute the product widely. At the moment, the team is inviting journalists and newsrooms to test out the tool and help review/improve it."

MuckRock data and investigations editor Derek Kravitz told Soni that Gumshoe could be a critical resource for newsrooms: "Having this accessible when it’s needed might be the difference between some really important stories getting told and some stories never even being looked at."

Bipartisan efforts are needed to reduce the growing rural-urban gap in Covid-19 vaccinations, Oklahoma prof says

The pandemic is waning, but so are are rates of new Covid-19 vaccinations, leaving wide swaths of the country – especially rural areas – more vulnerable to the disease and acting as potential reservoirs for mutations of the coronavirus into more contagious or deadly strains.

Through January, 59% of rural residents had received a first dose of a vaccine, but 75% of urban residents had, and that gap has more than doubled since April 2021, according to a study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC graph, adapted by The Rural Blog

The divide is particularly stark among children and teenagers who need parental consent to get vaccinated," notes Angel Adegbesan of Bloomberg News. "Only about 15% of children ages 5-11 have been vaccinated in rural areas, compared with 31% in urban areas."

However, Adegbesan writes, "In President Joe Biden’s National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan there’s a glaring omission: efforts to improve on high levels of vaccine hesitancy in rural parts of the U.S. . . . While the administration says it has improved vaccine equity among adults of different races and ethnicity, particularly in rural areas, vaccination among children and adolescents remain alarmingly low.

Perhaps it’s time to consider a bipartisan approach."

So says Matt Motta, a political scientist and an assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University. He told Adegbesan, “We need more of an effort, not just from the Biden administration, but from Republicans who are sympathetic and enthusiastic about vaccinating.”

Adegbesan notes, "Partisanship remains a major contributor to vaccine hesitancy. Unvaccinated adults are now three times more likely to lean Republican than Democratic, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And those who refuse to be vaccinated are also less likely to vaccinate their children."

"Motta says people might be more amenable to getting the vaccine if someone in their community who shares the same political beliefs encourages them to do so," Adegbesan reports.

Nature Conservancy says it will build six solar power plants on old coal-mine sites it owns in southwest Virginia

Site of one of the proposed solar farms (Photo from the Nature Conservancy)

Six former surface coal mines in Southwest Virginia "are being transformed into solar installations that will be large enough to contribute renewable energy to the electric grid," Zoeann Murphy reports for The Washington Post. The sites "owned by The Nature Conservancy will be some of the first utility-scale solar farms in the region — and the nonprofit group hopes it’s creating a model that can be replicated" at other sites in Appalachia and nationwide.

Several thousand acres of old mines came with 253,000 acres of forest the Conservancy acquired in 2019, which it calls the Cumberland Forest Project. Why develop solar on an old coal mine? It's not just for the irony. Murphy reports: "Solar developers partnering with the Nature Conservancy, such as Dominion Energy and Sun Tribe, say the mine sites have vast flat areas exposed to sunlight that are a rarity in the mountains, and the sites offer advantages like being close to transmission lines." Sun Tribe and Sol Systems are partnering on the first two, the Conservancy announced last year.

Solar farms need a lot of ground, and "It would be better to build on a lot of these mine sites than some prime farmland or some areas that maybe don't want solar in their community," said Daniel Kestner, innovative reclamation manager for the Virginia Department of Energy.

Most of the project area is in Wise County, on the Kentucky border, The Coalfield Progress in Norton reported last year; some is in Dickenson County, to the northeast; some is Russell County, to the southeast. “We’re very proud to be an energy-producing community,” said Lou Wallace, chair of the Russell County Board of Supervisors. “This is helping us to reimagine how we produce the energy. So we’re still able to say we’re keeping the lights on somewhere.”

As some governments misinform, Sunshine Week is a better time than ever to advocate government openness, honesty

By Al Cross, Director and Professor

Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

This is Sunshine Week, but I fear it's dimming.

The annual observance to remind Americans of the importance of open government seems to be fading, as journalism and the news business face business-side challenges that are more pressing than government secrecy.

The observance is led by the News Leaders Association, formerly the American Society of News Editors, ad before that the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The name's evolution reflects the flattening of the editorial corps at U.S. newspapers, who have been the leading advocates of open government. Editors and other leaders are more pressed for time than ever; you can detect that in the papers' content every day.

Perhaps reflecting all that, the NLA Sunshine Week page offers no content for news outlets to share with their audiences, its Sunshine Week page on Facebook hasn't been updated since 2021, and its last tweet about the observance was March 9. That didn't even appear on the @SunshineWeek page on Twitter, which hasn't been updated since last year's Sunshine Week. NLA has not replied to my request for comment.

Thankfully, open-government activists are posting on social media about #SunshineWeek, often sharing articles and graphics posted by state newspaper associations, which seem to have taken the lead. That's great, but most of the articles I've seen from them are designed for use in their home states. We're missing a broader overview, at what seems to be an ideal time for it.

Sunshine Week is about open government. That means governments should be transparent, and transparency suggests that they should also be honest. That is especially meaningful right now, when there is a global information war about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Russian and Chinese governments are flooding the media with misinformation and disinformation, and that should make Americans appreciate the type of government we have.

We have a democratic republic that is responsive to the citizens, or is supposed to be. An open, transparent government is by nature more responsive, and thus more democratic. At a time when our nation faces powerful adversaries who use disinformation and attack the very idea of democracy, we need to remind Americans that their democratic republic requires open government.

Adams Publishing Group fires editor who warned of ads she thought sketchy, sparking an exodus of other journalists

Athens, in Athens County
(Wikipedia map)

In the past few weeks, nearly every journalist working for the two newspapers in Athens, Ohio, has been fired or resigned in protest over a conflict with owners Adams Publishing Group, Brook Endale reports for the Gannett-owned Cincinnati Enquirer.

The exodus began after Adams fired Corrine Colbert, editor of The Athens News, on Feb. 25. Colbert told Endale she and other editors repeatedly complained to management about Federated Mint collectible-coin ads that she believes to be scams (based on a Better Business Bureau 'F' rating and reader feedback), but said management told her they needed the revenue from the ads. On Feb. 23 she ran an editorial in the News and sister paper The Athens Messenger warning readers about the ads.

Two days later she was fired, allegedly for violating the company's social-media policies by posting unrelated political opinions on Twitter, Endale reports. In a Twitter thread about her firing, Colbert noted that the company had never cared about her political tweets before and believed it was an excuse to get rid of her for warning readers about the ads. Mark Cohen, president of APG Media of Ohio, told her that "our job is to protect APG" before her firing, she alleged on Twitter. But, she continued, her "first responsibility was to the people of Athens County."

Newspapers need money to function, but informing readers is the top priority, Colbert said in the Twitter thread. She said Athens readers haven't been well-served since APG, which bought the papers in 2014, drastically cut editorial and production staff, and she criticized APG for allowing people who don't live in Athens to make decisions about its papers. She said Cohen lives in Columbus, and the advertising staff for the papers is two counties away. "Local journalism thrives when the people in charge of it are personally invested in the community — and when those people understand that good journalism speaks truth to power regardless of who holds it," she wrote.

In a statement in the March 4 Messenger, Cohen defended the ads. He said Federated Mint had had an A rating with the BBB for more than five years, but it was lowered to an F last year "due to two ads that ran in a very small newspaper that contained wording not permitted in a previous agreement the company had with the BBB," Cohen wrote. "The wording was corrected and the company has had no additional occurrences since that incident on the matter." A Federated Mint spokesperson told a Messenger assistant editor that the company is experiencing longer shipping times than usual but is complying with the law on shipping dates, Cohen wrote. He protested Colbert's characterization of him as an outsider, noting that he lives only 30 minutes from the Athens County line, at a location that allows him to better reach the six newspapers he oversees.

Colbert's firing set off a chain reaction. Associate Editor Cole Behrens was the only reporter and employee left at the News after Colbert was fired; in five days, he resigned, Endale reports. Messenger Editor Alex Hulvachick resigned Feb. 24, mainly, she told Endale, because the workload was too much. But Hulvachick was one of several editors who raised concerns about the ads, according to former associate editor Dani Kington, who published a story about Colbert's firing on The New Political, a digital publication run by students of Ohio University, which is in Athens.

The departures could make local news harder to come by in the county of about 65,000, Endale reports, alluding to news deserts: "Hundreds of counties all over the country have the same issue, including Klamath County in Oregon. There, the Herald and News, another APG-owned newspaper, just lost its entire staff, according to Jefferson Public Radio."

Colbert launched a fundraiser seeking $15,000 to start a locally owned paper, tentatively called The Athens Independent. As of this writing on March 14, it had received $18,161 from 296 donors.

Rural Arizona district's senator cashes in on shift to the far right, becomes a face of her party's 'radicalized wing'

Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers of Arizona has found fundraising success in espousing extremist political views. Her trajectory shows how political and financial incentives may sway some politicians to cater to conspiracist beliefs with inflammatory populist rhetoric, The Washington Post reports.

She could also be a sign of things to come: the latest round of redistricting made many districts safer, so Republicans may increasingly get challenged from the right, The New York Times reports.

Wendy Rogers
(AP photo by Ross Franklin)

Rogers, 67, made a splash on the national scene after a speech in late February at a white nationalist conference in Orlando. She called for graphic violence against "traitors" to make examples of them and called the coronavirus vaccine a "bioweapon," report Beth Reinhard and Rosalind Helderman of the Post.

The Arizona Senate voted 24-3 to censure Rogers after the speech, but she criticized "elites" for trying to silence her and has refused to apologize. Rogers "has found a rising national profile as a face of the radicalized wing of the GOP," the Post reports. Her "trajectory shows the political and financial incentives of going to extremes. After losing her earliest races as a mainstream Republican, she moved further and further right until she beat an incumbent by campaigning as the more conservative choice. Now, after a year of fanning bogus allegations about election fraud and other false claims, she is the most successful fundraiser in the Arizona state legislature."

Her increasingly extreme views gained her a re-election endorsement from former President Donald Trump and attention from his supporters, but she hasn't always taken such stances. The retired U.S. Air Force pilot ran and lost five times for state House and Senate seats with more centrist messaging that promoted her as a veteran, small-business owner and mother of two, the Post reports. Then in 2020 she essentially district-shopped her way into qualifying to run in the more conservative, more rural area around Flagstaff.

"Republicans who have watched Rogers over the past decade wonder if her views have changed or if she is merely opportunistic. Either way, Rogers’s MAGA-charged rants helped her achieve a long-elusive victory at the polls," the Post reports. "Her shift to the far right has coincided with an outpouring of grass-roots, small donors. Nearly 40,000 individuals contributed to her campaign last year, of which only a handful gave the $5,300 maximum. That means Rogers can keep dipping into this large pool of donors in 2022."

Rogers has made election reform her signature issue, promoting the false claim that Trump lost Arizona in 2020 because of vote fraud. She has sponsored a dozen voting-related bills that experts said would wreck the electoral process and other state Republicans said they couldn't endorse, Reinhard and Helderman report. The bills won't pass, but Rogers is arguably measuring success in attention and fundraising, not how many bills pass or what they do.

State of Wyoming has an new app to claim roadkill

Jaden Bales provided this picture showing the outline of a mule deer doe that was struck by a friend's car on US 287 near Lander, Wyo. He claimed the carcass for food using Wyoming's new roadkill app. (Photo via The Associated Press)

About 30 states have laws allowing residents to collect roadkill for food, but we've only heard of one that has an app for that. It's a new feature in the Wyoming Department of Transportation's app, which "helps people quickly claim accidentally killed deer, elk, moose, wild bison or wild turkey after documenting the animal and reviewing the rules for collecting roadkill to eat," reports Mead Gruver of The Associated Press. "Unlike in other states such as Alaska, roadkill meat in Wyoming can’t be donated to anybody, including charities."

"Another purpose is to help people follow the rules," Gruver reports. "For safety reasons, roadkill in Wyoming may not be collected after dark, along interstate highways or in construction zones." And it helps collect data for the state: "By geotagging roadkill with their phones and documenting the species, app users will contribute to the data that help Wyoming wildlife biologists and highway officials decide where to install wildlife crossing signs and other ways of reducing critter deaths."

Omnibus has record funding to protect horses from soring, maintains ban on horse slaughter

The $1.5 trillion omnibus bill heading to President Biden's desk has record levels of funding for enforcing the Horse Protection Act, which prohibits sored horses from participating in shows, exhibitions, sales or auctions, according to a press release from lobbying group Animal Wellness Action. Soring, most often seen with Tennessee walking horses, is the practice of hurting the horses' feet or forelegs to make them adopt a more pronounced, exaggerated gait. But enforcement has been lax at times; in 2019 a trainer and rider was allowed to compete in the Tennessee Walking Horse World Championship even though he was about to begin a suspension for repeated HPA violations.

The bill has just over $3 million in funding for HPA enforcement, over $1 million more than last year's appropriation bill. The bill also maintains the current de facto ban on horse slaughter in the U.S., according to the press release.

TikTok, Facebook and YouTube project provides people worldwide with a view of the 'Real Appalachia'

A TikTok video posted Thursday
honors Appalachian women in music.

Pop culture is rife with Appalachian stereotypes, and too many people don't seem to understand what Appalachia is really like. Melody West and Shane Simmons decided to do something about it. They launched a multi-platform social-media project called Real Appalachia, meant to introduce people all over the world to towns in the region, Shannon Smith reports for WBIR-TV in Knoxville.

It started six or seven years ago as The Appalachian Project, a Facebook page where Simmons documented the history of Appalachian towns. That page is still active, with more than 67,000 followers, but the project really started getting popular after Simmons launched a companion YouTube channel in 2020, Smith reports. They recently expanded to TikTok and now have almost 150,000 social media followers and subscribers who tune in for videos with town tours, interviews, stories, and interesting tidbits of history.

"We have viewers from all over the world," West told Smith. "And they don't know anything, really, but stereotypes. So we're showing real Appalachia and there's just interest in that, of the beauty and the history here that has just escaped so many people. And there's so many old towns that we go into that a few years later, the buildings are gone. And we want to document things as they are and how people remember them."

Apply by March 31 for $20,000 investigative reporting fellowship for community-based projects in news deserts

The Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Pittsburgh is now accepting applications for its $20,000 Doris O'Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship. Click here for more information or to apply.

The fellowship, now in its third year, is designed for community-based journalists with investigative projects in news deserts. "Community-based journalism is disappearing across the country, and it is critical that we work to reverse that trend," center Director Andrew Conte said in a news release. "At a time when we have more tools than ever to access information, it is becoming increasingly difficult to support news at a local level."

The center will also award a second-place prize of $5,000 and a third-place prize of $2,500. The fellowship and runner-up prizes are possible through a three-year grant from the Allegheny Foundation. Applications are due March 31 and the winners will be announced in April.

Erica Hensley won the fellowship in 2020 for a project on unreported lead exposure in the Mississippi Delta and its impact on residents' health. Then an investigative reporter for Mississippi Today, she now covers health for global nonprofit The Fuller Project.

Sunnie Clahchischiligi, a contributing writer for Searchlight New Mexico, won the fellowship in 2021 for a project that exposed educational failures in Navajo Nation schools that allowed thousands of students to go missing from attendance rolls during the pandemic.

The fellowship is named for pioneering journalist Doris O'Donnell, who worked began her 50-year career at the Cleveland News in World War II, then went on to work for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Greensburg Tribune-Review.

Bipartisan Rural Prosperity Act aims to cut red tape, establish 'one-stop-shop' for federal funding for rural areas

On Thursday, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y,), and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) "introduced The Rural Prosperity Act, bipartisan legislation that would cut bureaucratic red tape by establishing the Office of Rural Prosperity, a permanent office in the White House tasked with coordinating federal efforts to support and connect America’s rural communities to federal programs and resources in order to improve outcomes for rural families and economies.," Sean Golightly reports for the Arizona Daily Sun. "Currently, there are more than 400 federal programs dedicated to helping rural communities, spread across 13 departments, and over 50 offices and sub-agencies, which can create duplicative and ineffective bureaucracy."

The bill would establish a Rural Prosperity Council with members from the heads of all executive branch departments, agencies and offices with programs that serve rural areas. The council would help resolve interagency disputes and coordinate cross-agency efforts, Golightly reports.

Kelly told Golightly that the proposed office would be a "one-stop-shop" for rural communities to get federal support. A companion House bill will be introduced by Reps. Ange Craig (D-Minn.), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Cindy Axne (D-Iowa), Tom O'Halleran (D-Ariz.), and Adrian Smith (R-Neb.).

Matt Hildreth, executive director of Rural Organizing, applauded the bill, saying he liked that the proposed office would try to coordinate rural economic development but not override local authorities. "The last thing we want is the strategies to be developed at the federal government," Hildreth told Golightly. "Local people know how to solve local problems. That’s the point." Hildreth said he believes the new office would make it easier for rural communities to access federal funding.

Quick hits: Ginseng and Appalachia; why your brain likes forests more than cities; did you know about Manure Expo?

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Registration is open for the North American Manure Expo, which will take place in Chambersburg, Pa., July 13-14. Registrants can enter a t-shirt contest for the Top 10 Rejected Manure Expo Slogans; a recent one suggested that attendees "be part of the movement." We want some of the official swag! Read more here.

On the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park, a fifth of its wolves have been killed by hunters in the last six months. Read more here.

A new book explores the importance of wild ginseng to Appalachia. Read more here.

 

A newly published study shows why your brain prefers walking in a forest to walking down an urban street. Read more here.

The Black Lung Disability Trust Fund is funded by a federal tax on domestically produced and sold coal. At the end of last year that tax was cut by more than half, and the fund is running out of money. Democratic lawmakers have proposed legislation to extend the tax at its original rate through 2031, but the bill has stalled out, leaving the program's future uncertain. Read more here.

New England's town meetings are 'an exercise in community-building' in contentious times

Allan Dooley holds his voting card in the air as he voices his opposition to eliminating three of the town’s elected positions at a recent meeting in Lyme, N.H. (Photo by Alex Driehaus of the Valley News and Report for America)

Local government meetings have been heating up as voters duke it out on contentious national wedge issues. At a time when Americans feel more fractured than ever, New England's unique town meetings might serve as an inspiration, Alex Hanson reports for the Valley News in West Lebanon, N.H., and White River Junction, Vt.

Town meetings were once a banner social event, where friends and neighbors would meet up after a long winter and decide basic local issues, Hanson reports. But with social media, the pandemic, and fewer farmers, the meetings' character changed, making them less popular as a social event, said Paul Doton, meeting moderator in Barnard, N.H., for the past 30 years.

Still, "The appeal of the meeting endures, in part because democracy elsewhere feels more fragile, and because there’s nothing else quite like it," Hanson reports. Kelly Green, who has moderated meetings in Randolph since 2011, told him: "It has not changed, but it has become, I think, I sense, more important, because people are feeling like democracy is fraying."

But Green said she loves town meetings because they encourage better communication. "A fundamental feature of Town Meeting that makes it such an excellent exercise is that it requires people attending to practice speaking and practice listening," she told Hanson.

Former New Hampshire agriculture commissioner and journalist Steve Taylor told The Rural Blog, "Our love for the town meeting is often regarded by observers 'from away' as yet another "cranky Yankee' manifestation, akin to quirky regional things like overuse of the word 'wicked,' the soft drink Moxie and Saturday baked bean suppers. We don't claim it should be the norm everywhere, we just say it's the best way for us. We can hear careful explanations and differing opinions and then make our decisions right there, rather than relying on roadside signs and the vitriol of broadcast ads and social media. And our community officials are easily called to account when it's face-to-face right there in the meeting hall."

Town meetings are often much like the old days, with engaged local citizens participating in civil discussion to decide important matters. Valley News columnist Jim Kenyon writes that he saw evidence of that at the Town Meeting in Lyme, N.H. About 125 residents — around 10% of the local electorate — gathered in the school gym to vote on hot-button issues.

The meeting remained civil, and showcased why attending such meetings in person matters, Kenyon writes: "Along with an opportunity to speak their minds, residents can listen to neighbors and elected officials — often one and the same — explain their stances."

How should reporters at meetings of public agencies deal with misinformation from speakers? Here's some advice

School-board meetings have become increasingly contentious as parents bring up political wedge issues such as masking, coronavirus vaccination, critical race theory, transgender student athletes, and more. Opinions on many of these issues are predicated on misinformation and conspiracy theories. Reporters covering such meetings must figure out how to report on misinformation without spreading it themselves, Julia Métraux and Sophie Hurwitz report for Poynter.

The dangers of repeating misinformation without context are clear. For instance, last summer at least two video clips went viral that showed doctors making false claims about coronavirus vaccines at school board meetings. Thousands shared the clips on social media as proof that doctors didn't trust coronavirus vaccinations. But both clips were full of misinformation, and both doctors had iffy qualifications at best: one of the doctors appeared not to be board-certified, and the other had a PhD in education, not medicine.

"For reporters covering school board meetings, deciding how to contextualize decisions and conversations in coverage can be complex," Métraux and Hurwitz report. "Not mentioning the perpetuation of misinformation and disinformation about critical race theory, transgender students and Covid-19 at these meetings is also not a solution — this misinformation still harms people in their community."

They have some suggestions gleaned from various experts:

• Reporters could choose not to quote factually incorrect claims. To do so for shock value could do more harm than good, especially when such claims don't represent a significant portion of local sentiment.
• Different issues may require different handling. Critical race theory, for example, has become a catch-all bugaboo, so defining it as originally intended may not be context enough.
• Don't repeat racist, anti-transgender, or antisemitic language (for example), since that could help normalize such language, which can make students feel unsafe. 
• Include at least one outside perspective or fact that wasn't raised in a meeting to make articles more useful to readers. One expert said, as an example, that reporters writing about a conversation about why pandemic safety protocols matter might include a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study about how children are at a higher risk of developing diabetes after being infected with the coronavirus. 

States consider protections for threatened local election officials; if they quit, partisan officials could fill the vacuum

Election officials across the country "have faced violent threats and harassment since the 2020 presidential election, as [Donald] Trump and his allies continue to perpetuate repeatedly disproven myths about voter fraud," Matt Vasilogambros reports for Stateline. "This pressure, meant to exhaust and scare local officials into resigning, could usher in new election personnel who seek to skew results, election experts say."

Tina Peters is an example of what that kind of local interference could look like. The rural Colorado county clerk made headlines last year for embracing debunked conspiracies. She was recently indicted, making her "the first elections official to face criminal charges related to conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election, experts said," Emma Brown reports for The Washington Post. "She is accused not of fixing the election but of breaking the law as she sought to investigate whether someone else did." Specifically, she's accused of sneaking someone into the Mesa County elections offices to copy the hard drives of Dominion Voting Systems machines. 

"Peters’s alleged actions, along with efforts by other election deniers to seek public office, are contributing to concern among experts about possible escalating risk to the nation’s voting systems," Brown reports. "State or federal investigators have probed multiple alleged security breaches of election systems and equipment since Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race, including some thought to be aided by elections-office insiders or right-wing conspiracy theorists."

"Trump-aligned activists and lawmakers have worked to alter the traditional democratic process at many levels of government, from gutting local boards that certify election results to granting state legislatures unprecedented election powers that could ultimately let them change results. Partisan investigations in other states are sowing further doubt in the election system," Vasilogambros reports. "Seeing this crisis unfolding, lawmakers in at least 10, mostly Democratic-run states are considering legislation that would increase criminal penalties for those who threaten election officials. Some measures also would add new digital privacy protections for election officials."

New rural coronavirus infections down nearly 50% last week

New coronavirus infections, in ranges by county, Feb. 27-March 5
Map by The Daily Yonder; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

New coronavirus infections in rural counties fell by nearly 50% during the week of Feb. 27-March 5, to a level not seen in four months. Rural counties reported about 65,000 new cases last week, down from 120,000 the week before. "Since the peak of the Omicron surge in mid-January, rural infections have dropped by 90%," Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder.

Rural counties reported about 1,750 deaths last week, nearly one-third lower than the 2,600 reported the week before. Metropolitan counties reported 238,598 deaths last week, a little more than one-third less than the 369,026 deaths the week before, Marema reports.

The last few weeks have also seen a dramatic drop in the share of rural counties in the red zone, defined as counties with 100 or more new infections per 100,000 residents in a week. Three weeks ago, nearly all rural counties were in the red zone, but last week only about one-third of them were, Marema reports.

Click here for more charts, regional analysis, and county-level interactive maps from the Yonder.

States and schools across nation drop mask mandates, but concern remains about low vaccination rates among kids

States and school districts all over the country are dropping mask mandates in the wake of the Omicron surge.

"Parents, teachers and principals face a complicated balancing act in navigating the new rules. Some families are thrilled that their children no longer have to wear masks, while others say they’re still tentative and urging their kids to keep wearing face coverings for now. Teachers and principals are caught in the middle," Philip Marcelo and Dave Collins report for The Associated Press.

Deciding whether to mask or not can hinge on complicated factors. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently advised that most Americans can safely stop wearing masks, but should keep them on where infection rates are still high. Also, "Those hesitant about ending school mask mandates often point to low childhood vaccination rates among American children," Marcelo and Collins report. "Only about a quarter of children ages 5 to 11 have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, and about 58% of children ages 12 to 17 are inoculated, the CDC says."

Research shows that masks make a dent in infection rates. A recently published study of Arkansas schools showed that those with required masking had 23% fewer coronavirus cases than those where masks were optional.

In Kentucky, where infection rates remain high in many counties, the state legislature may pass a bill allowing K-12 students to opt out of any masking, testing or coronavirus vaccination mandates, and ban such mandates at public colleges and universities. When asked for his masking advice to the general public, Gov. Andy Beshear said: "The No. 1 piece of advice I can give is, don't feel pressure." He said people should consider their daily activities and the infection level in their county, and those with pre-existing conditions should wear one because "There is still a lot of Omicron out there."

Biden gets postal-reform bill that ensures six-day delivery and offers a lifeline to newspapers that depend on the mail

On Tuesday the Senate sent President Biden a $107 billion postal-reform bill that serves rural newspapers and their readers, and could save the Postal Service an estimated $50 billion over the next decade. Biden is expected to sign it, Gillian Brassil reports for McClatchy Newspapers. The bill received strong bipartisan support, with many Republicans joining Democrats to pass it, 79 to 19.

One feature of the long-debated bill would allow newspapers to mail sample copies to non-subscribers in their home counties at the same rate they pay for delivery to subscribers. The current limit is 10 percent of annual home-county circulation, enacted more than a century ago. The bill would make it 50%, which would only enable more sample-copy subscription appeals but provide total market coverage for advertisers that don't normally advertise in newspapers.

The bill "gives community newspapers a new ability to regain subscribers lost by the past few years of slow mail delivery," National Newspaper Association Chair Brett Wesner said in a press release. "It also offers USPS a new lease on life by relieving debt to the federal government. Now we look forward to a revision of postage rates by both USPS and the Postal Regulatory Commission, which have attempted to retire some of this debt with dramatically higher postage rates."

The bill also keeps a mandate for six-day delivery, important in rural areas, and "drops a mandate that the U.S. Postal Service prepay its retired employees’ health care benefits and requires future retirees to enroll in Medicare," Brassil reports. "It allows the agency to partner with state, local and tribal governments to provide services that are not related to mail, including to offer hunting, fishing and driver's licenses." It takes effect in January 2025.

The co-sponsors of the House bill were Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and James Comer, R-Ky., chair and ranking minority member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The Kentucky Press Association lauded Comer in a news release, in which 2021 KPA President Sharon Burton said, “He faced backlash from his own party to get this done and it is a rare bipartisan effort. Imailt is very important for rural communities and has language specifically requested by our industry. He deserves a big thanks.”

Trucker shortage and Canadian blockade threaten newsprint supply, especially for smaller, rural newspapers

Newsprint rolls (Photo by David Kasnic, The Washington Post)

"A shortage of truckers and blockade bottlenecks have put a crimp on newsprint deliveries to the nation’s newspapers," Buck Ryan, associate professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky, reports for The Rural Blog.

“The newsprint situation is severe,” Brett Wesner, chair of the National Newspaper Association and publisher of 15 titles in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, told Ryan.

The crunch appears to come from a backlog caused by the blockade by Canadian truckers to protest pandemic restrictions.

“There are too few trucks and truck drivers in the market, so deliveries to newspaper printers are often delayed or unpredictable,” Tony Smithson, a regional director of printing operations for Adams Publishing Group, a major community newspaper company, said on his NNA blog in December.

This week, Smithson told Ryan, “One supplier recently told us that they had lined up only 76 trucks and drivers for the 872 loads they had planned to ship. That illustrates the scope of the challenge.”

Most U.S. newsprint comes from Canada, so the backlog was worsened by Canadian truckers' blockage to protest pandemic restrictions, said Kentucky Press Association Executive Director David Thompson, North America's longest-tenured newspaper-association executive: “The Canadian truck convoy was part of the problem for a while, but there is just a shortage of truckers right now.”

Southeastern Kentucky publisher Jay Nolan worried this week that he wouldn't have newsprint for the 14 papers, eight of them his own, that print at his London plant. “Just got word our paper truck is now scheduled to arrive March 14. That’s three days before disaster of having zero paper in stock,” he wrote Tuesday. “Worst supply situation I’ve seen in my 40 years in the industry.”

Nolan said small, rural papers are more threatened by the shortage because most of their printers are independently owned "or have newsprint agreements with only one or two mills," not the cooperative. "Some have limited storage capacity. As the paper market gets tighter, trucking delays make just-in-time delivery more problematic." He listed several contributing factors for the shortage, including:

• A decline in demand for newsprint caused mills to close or convert their machines to other types of paper. The pandemic further crushed demand as newspapers closed.
• With fewer mills making newsprint, producers are running near capacity.
• As the pandemic rose, Covid-19 diminished the ability of providers to fully staff remaining producing plants: “Classic supply/demand/production bottleneck.”
• Increased regulations have dramatically raised requirements and training for someone to get a Class A commercial driver's license, causing a national shortage of truck drivers. Gasoline price increases have hurt the trucking industry even further.
• Delays in getting produced paper picked up for shipment has filled mill warehouses and shipping docks to a saturation point.

Nolan is not optimistic the situation will improve soon. “Recently, I was told lack of storage capacity is now hampering production,” he said. “Also, mills are running at such high capacity level, maintenance is curtailed. Now, any breakdown of machinery pushed too hard stops production.”

For Ryan's full story, click here.

Farming group coalition sends Federal Trade Commission a mammoth right-to-repair complaint about John Deere

"A broad coalition of agriculture interests has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against John Deere, demanding the right to repair their own equipment, Jesse Hirsch reports for The Counter. The 43-page complaint was filed for the National Farmers Union, other advocacy organizations and state farmers unions in Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

"Currently, when a piece of John Deere equipment breaks down on the job, its owner is expressly forbidden from making their own fixes—only authorized, company-employed technicians have those permissions," Hirsch reports. "And even if you attempted to conduct your own repairs, you’d find it next-to-impossible, particularly on newer, computer-driven models. Deere locks down its proprietary knowledge tightly, and without company-provided diagnostic software and equipment, even getting a sense of what’s broken is virtually out of reach."

The complaint details how difficult John Deere has made it for farmers to repair their own equipment. The same themes keep coming up: "lengthy waits to get a Deere-authorized technician to service machinery; further waits for the actual repairs; crops and profits lost in the meantime; and overall frustration that a company making $6 billion annually can keep such a stranglehold on their own ability to do business," Hirsch reports. And, farmers complain, the company failed to follow through on a 2018 promise to make repair tools, software guides and diagnostic equipment available for farmers starting Jan. 1, 2021.

The Biden administration issued an executive order last year supporting right-to-repair laws and ordering the FTC to limit farm-equipment manufacturers from preventing such repairs, Hirsch reports. The FTC voted unanimously to adopt the order and has promised to crack down on companies like John Deer "with vigor." Complementary right-to-repair bills were introduced in the House and Senate in February, but haven't passed yet, Alex Gray reports for Successful Farming.

Huge but harmless spider species, a relative of garden spiders, is expected to spread up and down the East Coast

A female Jorō spider in Hoschton, Ga.
(Photo by Jeremy Howell)

A huge—but harmless—invasive spider species has spread across Georgia and other parts of the Southeast, and scientists say it will likely make its home up and down the East Coast, Jordan Mendoza reports for USA Today.

It's called a Jorō spider, an orb-weaver a little bigger than your palm. It looks a lot like a common garden spider, but can be distinguished by its flashy red butt. It's native to East Asia, but likely hitched a ride to the U.S. in a shipping container about a decade ago. Jorōs were first spotted in Georgia in 2013, and have expanded their territory rapidly since then, Mendoza reports.

The spiders will probably spread up and down the East Cost in the coming years, according to a newly published study in Physiological Entomology. University of Georgia scientists wanted to figure out the potential range of the Jorōs, so they compared the species to its close cousin, the golden silk spider, Mendoza reports. Golden silk spiders—also called banana spiders—spread throughout the Southeastern U.S. over 100 years ago but have spread no further because they can't tolerate cold weather.

"The scientists collected the two species and measured numerous physical traits as well as how they adapted to different environmental conditions, including brief periods of temperatures below freezing," Mendoza reports. "The results showed Jorō spiders, compared to their relative, had a metabolism twice as high, a 77% higher heart rate in low temperatures and they survived 74% of the time in the temperatures below freezing, while the golden silk spider survival rate was only 50%. Scientists also noticed the species does well in Japan, with some regions that have climates similar to the Northeast."

So you may see a Jorō spider in your yard in the next few years, but scientists say you shouldn't worry. They love to gobble up obnoxious pests like mosquitos and stink bugs. And, like other orb weavers, they're not aggressive, and their fangs can't penetrate human skin anyway, Mendoza reports.

Iowa publisher says '60 Minutes' brush was too broad: 'Many local community newspapers are flourishing'

"60 Minutes" correspondent Jon Wertheim said on the CBS program nine days ago, “A dramatic drop in readership, loss of ad revenue and the emergence of other forms of media have posed major challenges for many legacy print media publications.”

Peter Wagner, publisher

That's true "in almost all major markets and in some smaller communities," but "The story did not, however, fairly reflect the state of many locally owned newspaper alive and well in many of America’s smaller communities," Publisher Peter Wagner writes in his N'West Iowa Review.

"Even for the best and most committed of us, some circulation numbers have dropped and selling print advertising has become more difficult. But the same can be said of the big three traditional television networks, although they never find reason to report it on their news-magazine programs."

Wagner gives a basic barometer that many don't know: "For years, the mark of a good newspaper was how many homes it reached compared to the census figure of the community in which it was published. If the circulation was equal to at least half the population number the paper was healthy and doing its job as a community watch dog and cheerleader."

Sheldon, in O'Brien County, Iowa (Wikipedia map)

He says his paper still reaches more than half of the 5,000 people living in his Iowa Information headquarters town of Sheldon and 25 percent of the homes in its four-county region, and "Many local community newspapers are flourishing. The reason is there is still a passion on the part of many for local, community news. Most smaller hometown newspapers are still publishing a good amount of fresh, local information."

Wagner says he wrote the column "to make sure our readers – and more importantly our advertising customers – understand that our Iowa Information papers should not be judged by what is happening to papers owned by the hedge-fund groups. . . . We, as the Wagner family, pledge ourselves to strive to make The N’West Iowa REVIEW the finest regional paper possible. Our family believes in the future of N’West Iowa and the need for good papers in all communities. Don’t let general comments from television commentators, on the internet or local gossips misdirect your ideas of the value of the local newspaper."

Map shows where biodiversity is most at risk; extinctions can make a big difference in fishing, farming and more

Darker red areas on the left map show concentrations of imperiled biodiversity; green areas on the right map show areas permanently protected for biodiversity. (NatureServe maps combined by The Rural Blog; click the image to enlarge)

A new map, the most detailed of its kind, shows areas of the contiguous U.S. where plant and animal species are at the highest risk of global extinction, including wide swaths of Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and the West. Little of that land is protected.

Nonprofit conservation research group NatureServe partnered with the Nature Conservancy, a network of state partners, and geographic mapping platform ESRI to gather the research, recently published in the journal Ecological Applications. Notably, they included groups that underpin food chains but are often left out of such analyses, including species of bees, butterflies, fish, mussels, crayfish, and flowers, report Catrin Einhorn and Nadja Popovich of The New York Times. As the struggle to contain the invasive Asian carp has shown, shifts in biodiversity can have a big impact.

"Maps like these offer a valuable tool to officials and conservationists who are scrambling to protect biodiversity," Einhorn and Popovich report. " That work is critical, because scientists say humans are speeding extinction at a disastrous pace."

About 13 percent of the U.S. is permanently protected for biodiversity, but the analysis found that hundreds of endangered species' habitats are in unprotected areas. "Even when species are protected under federal or state laws, they are typically more vulnerable outside of lands that are managed to protect biodiversity," Einhorn and Popovich report. "Officials may not know where they are. Private landowners may be reluctant to report them or allow surveys for fear of the restrictions that could follow if they are found."

28 percent of nation's big farmers have poor or no internet

Among the nation's larger farmers, two out of seven can't effectively access the internet, according to Purdue University's most recent Ag Economy Barometer. "The gap in access exists at the same time the sector is embracing precision agriculture technology such as GPS guidance of tractors and combines," Chuck Abbott reports for the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

The Ag Barometer is a survey of farmers and ranchers with at least $500,000 in production per year. In its February survey, 12 percent said they had no internet access at all, 16% reported a poor-quality connection, 41% reported a moderate-quality connection, and 30% reported a high-quality connection. "Some 82% of farms across the country had internet access in 2021, up from 75% in 2019," Abbott reports. "Half of farms had a broadband connection and 70% used a cellular data plan for access. Two thirds of farms had a desktop or laptop computer and 77% had a smartphone."

Though the rural digital divide has narrowed since 2016, rural adults are still less likely than their suburban or urban peers to have home home broadband or to own a smartphone or computer, the Pew Research Center found. That matters when farms increasingly rely on broadband. According to a 2021 Agriculture Department report, "Half of the farmers in the biggest corn, soybean and wheat states and a quarter of farmers nationwide have embraced precision agriculture," Abbott writes. That includes tech using drones to monitor fields and livestock.

The recently signed infrastructure bill has $65 billion to improve internet services for rural and other underserved areas; most will be distributed to states in grants. "The White House says the USDA will issue a funding opportunity notice this year for nearly $2 billion through its ReConnect program for deployment of rural high-speed internet," Abbott reports.

Rural America faces challenges in adopting electric vehicles

Electric vehicles are increasingly popular, but it may be a while before they're feasible in rural America. It depends a great deal on whether rural areas are able to snag federal money for charging stations. 

"How rural communities will fare in the battle for electric vehicles funds comes down to a sort of chicken and egg scenario, officials said," Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. "Without acceptance of electric vehicles in rural areas, federal funding for charging stations will go elsewhere. But without the charging stations, fewer rural residents will buy electric vehicles."

The Transportation Department recently released a toolkit aimed at helping rural communities leverage infrastructure funding for charging stations. Widely available stations are the key to widespread adoption of EVs, the toolkit says.

"In rural parts of the country—home to 20% of Americans and almost 70% of America’s road miles—EVs can be an especially attractive alternative to conventional vehicles," the toolkit says. "Rural residents drive more than their urban counterparts, spend more on vehicle fuel and maintenance, and often have fewer alternatives to driving to meet their transportation needs. Over the long run, EVs will help residents of rural areas reduce those costs and minimize the environmental impact of transportation in their communities."

Carey notes that increasing adoption of EVs is making governments reconsider how they fund roads, since their taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel are the main source of such funds.

Pandemic roundup: Long Covid explained; some Christians with weak immune systems worry about attending church

Here's a roundup of recent news stories about the pandemic and vaccination efforts:

Federal pandemic assistance will soon end, and some experts worry rural health care could suffer as a result. White House policymakers say they're taking that into account. Read more here.

As states, counties and municipalities increasingly lift pandemic restrictions, Americans with weakened immune systems say they feel left behind. Attending church during the pandemic has been a source of anxiety for many immuno-suppressed Christians, The Washington Post reports.

Millions of Americans have developed long Covid, which is an umbrella term for various long-term complications from the coronavirus infection. That's caused many to become homeless. The Post has a great explainer on long Covid, including current understanding of its risks, symptoms, and recovery.

Social workers are the unsung heroes of the pandemic, but many are feeling burned out and leaving their positions. Read more here.

Coal giant Peabody touts big solar project in Illinois Basin

Peabody Energy is the world's largest private-sector coal producer, but it announced last week it's launching a renewable energy company called R3 Renewables. In the announcement, the company "touted its financial backing and 'extensive' land holdings, and said it would start with development of six sites on or near old coal mines in Indiana and Illinois," the Illinois Basin coalfield, Bryce Gray reports for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The move may be startling, since the St. Louis-based company has long been a staunch defender of the coal industry, but analysts say it makes sense.

"Old coal mines offer the land and available space that’s critical for renewable energy projects. And they’re already wired for heavy electrical use, with built-in access to the wider power grid, which could make it far cheaper to rewire them for solar. And grid access is so important some renewable energy developers value it even over especially sunny or windy sites," Gray notes. "Additionally, repurposing existing mines might provide Peabody with a way to alter reclamation obligations — hefty costs tied to the restoration of land after mines close down. Keeping the land in use, albeit for a different purpose, might change when and how the bills come due."

Peabody and other coal companies have faced increasing financial pressure in the U.S. in recent years as demand for thermal coal shifts toward Asia, and have acted accordingly. In 2016 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and in 2019 it merged its Powder River Basin operations with rival Arch Resources, then called Arch Coal. Arch made the name change in 2020 when it pivoted toward metallurgical coal. "Amid the switch, Arch’s leaders spoke very clearly about the vanishing future for thermal coal" use to generate electricity, Gray reports.

Peabody remains focused on thermal coal; its website address icon is "BTU" in a blue block. One analyst speculated that major Peabody creditor and investor Riverstone Credit Partners may be behind the company's move. Riverstone not only has experience developing renewable energy projects, but also has the financial wherewithal to shepherd large-scale projects, Gray reports.

And the scale is striking: "Over the next five years, R3 aims to develop more than 3.3 gigawatts of solar power and 1.6 gigawatts of battery storage capacity at the sites in Indiana and Illinois," Gray reports. "That’s about three times the existing solar generation in the two states combined . . . and nine times their storage capacity."

Journalists who chronicled rural America by prop plane will tell the stories of towns transformed through local innovation

Deborah and Jim Fallows

Journalists Jim and Deborah Fallows spent five years writing about small towns and their newspapers for The Atlantic, parlaying their their travels via a small plane into a best-selling 2018 book and an HBO documentary. Last year the husband and wife founded the Our Towns Civic Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to sharing the stories of community innovators who are driving positive change at the local level.

Our Towns is partnering with nonprofit Community Heart & Soul to share stories of renewal in small cities and towns across the nation, and your town could be one of them. CH&S facilitates community growth through training and supporting a network of coaches who help residents identify what they love most about their town, what future they want for it, and how to achieve it.

More than 100 small cities and towns nationwide are using this model, and CH&S is currently offering $10,000 seed grants to qualifying communities (pop. 2,500 to 30,000) that want to start the process too. The grants require a $10,000 cash match from the participating community or a partnering organization. Learn more about the seed grants here.

The Fallowses lauded CH&S in a press release announcing the partnership: "The Community Heart & Soul process is both distinctive and replicable. It guides the way for residents to listen to the stories they tell each other about their towns, to reach common community goals, and to transform those goals into actions for change that can be measured and sustained."

CH&S Executive Director Mark Sherman, in turn, said the organization is "thrilled" with the partnership: "Storytelling is an integral part of the Community Heart & Soul process, and the Fallowses and their Our Towns team are masterful storytellers. I can think of no two people I would rather have help us spread the word about CH&S than Jim and Deb Fallows."

USDA and EPA officials tour Black Belt county to see chronic sewage problems, a disproportionately rural issue

Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Rural Development Xochitl Torres Small, EPA Administrator Michael Regan and activist Catherine Coleman Flowers toured a mobile home park in Lowndes County, Alabama, with standing pools of raw sewage in the yards. (AL.com photo by Dennis Pillion)

"On the eve of the Selma Jubilee, commemorating the 'Bloody Sunday' march that helped catalyze support for the Voting Rights Act 57 years ago, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toured Alabama’s Black Belt to witness a different kind of struggle: the battle for clean water and basic sanitation," Dennis Pillion reports for AL.com. EPA Administrator Michael Regan, Agriculture Undersecretary for Rural Development Xochitl Torres Small and other EPA and USDA officials "went to three different properties in Lowndes County Saturday, seeing homes where malfunctioning septic systems discharged untreated sewage into backyards and in between mobile homes, and where some residents had nowhere to go to address their sewage issues."

The group was led by author and activist Catherine Coleman Flowers, the founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, who won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 2020 for bringing attention to the issue in her native county and other rural areas, Pillion reports.

More than 2 million Americans lack access to clean water, according to a 2019 report by clean-water advocacy non-profits DigDeep and the U.S. Water Alliance. It's a problem that disproportionately affects rural residents and those in substandard housing. Because rural Black, Latino and Native American residents are more likely to live in substandard housing, they're more likely to be affected.

A key to the problem is that rural populations are often too spread out to make traditional utility lines cost-effective, and sewers are the most expensive basic utility. Cash-strapped local or tribal governments are increasingly on the hook to pay for water system improvements, according to the DigDeep report. The 2021 infrastructure package earmarked $29.3 billion in grants over five years for counties to upgrade their water systems. But rural counties may miss out on much of that money, since they often lack the manpower and know-how to compete for or spend such grants.

Regan said the situation was "unacceptable" and clean water and safe sewage systems were a "basic right" that every American deserves, Pillion reports. Regan continued: "Straight piping into lagoons, failing septic systems, waste and raw sewage backing up into yards into homes, seeing children have to walk around delicately so that they don’t sink or get bogged down into their own front yards. This is not the America that we all know it should be."

Sunshine Week starts Sunday; time to remind your audience of the importance of openness in government

Sunshine Week starts Sunday, March 13, and runs through Saturday, March 19. The annual observance, coordinated by the News Leaders Association, celebrates the importance of open government and freedom of information, and an opportunity for news media to tout their role in both. Again this year, some federal agencies such as the National Archives and Records Administration are taking part.

Newsrooms can observe the week in a number of ways. The Sunshine Week website has a content toolkit with stories, editorials, columns, cartoons, and graphics that are free for use. You can engage in social media discussions, too (search for or use the hashtag #SunshineWeek to find them). And you can also find Sunshine Week events, or contribute your own event. Several state newspaper associations have websites with articles, editorials, illustrations and other tools, in addition to the NLA site.

Rural Democrats say they feel increasingly isolated

Clearfield County (Wikipedia map)

Many rural Democrats say they feel increasingly isolated as non-metropolitan areas trend ever rightward. One exemplar of that is Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh; it was once the most evenly divided polity in the nation, but no more, Christopher Cadelago reports for Politico.

"Barrels of ink have been spilled over the past seven years examining Donald Trump’s appeal in rural places like Clearfield County," Cadelago writes. "Blue-collar 'diner stories' about disaffected Democrats and independents who crossed over to support Republicans are so common they’ve become their own media subgenre. And the reasons for that massive defection have become familiar from repetition—the erosion of manufacturing and energy jobs, the withdrawal of private-sector labor unions, an explosion of technology and expanding cultural divisions. What those tales often leave out is the other side of the same coin. In these towns and counties, there remain thousands of Democrats ... who are faithful to their party—and feel that they are paying an increasingly steep price for that loyalty. Nearly 30,000 people in Clearfield County voted for Trump in 2020, roughly three-quarters of the ballots cast. But the other 25 percent who voted for Joe Biden—9,673 people—find themselves in an unusual position: They supported the ultimate winner and yet a relentless and toxic campaign to delegitimize his victory and overturn the election makes them feel somehow as if they’re under siege."

Bird flu now found in 21 domestic flocks in 12 states; first domestic cases in two years

Just as the coronavirus pandemic seems to be waning among humans, the bird flu is picking up.

"Highly pathogenic avian influenza was identified in three more states — Missouri, Maryland, and South Dakota — said the Agriculture Department. Since the first case was confirmed on February 8 on a turkey farm in southern Indiana, HPAI has been found in 21 domestic flocks in 12 states," Chuck Abbott reports for the Food & Environment Reporting Network. "Nearly 1.9 million birds, mostly chickens and turkeys, have died, either from the disease or from exterminations intended to prevent the spread of it. Agricultural officials act quickly and ruthlessly because 'high path' bird flu can wipe out a flock swiftly. This year’s outbreaks are the first appearance of HPAI in domestic flocks in two years."

The last time there was a bird flu outbreak, it killed more than 50 million chickens and turkeys between December 2014 through June 2015. The deaths represented 12 percent of egg layers and 8% of meat turkeys in the U.S., Abbott reports.

"Avian influenza is highly contagious and can be spread by migratory waterfowl and their droppings, but also through contact with infected poultry and by contaminated equipment and clothing of farmworkers. Wild birds are seemingly unaffected by HPAI. The virus is not considered a health risk for humans."