A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism, based at the University of Kentucky.
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Randy Essex of the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, on Colorado's Western Slope, is this year's winner of the Burl Osborne Award for Editorial Leadership, which recognizes editorial writing that is excellent journalism and makes a difference in a community. The award from the American Society of News Editors is sponsored by The Dallas Morning News in memory of Burl Osborne, a former DMN editor and publisher who died in 2012.
"In powerful and persuasive editorials, Randy Essex champions Latino immigrants, both legal and undocumented, in his own community and beyond," the judges wrote. "He uses solid research and searing sentiment to reach readers' minds and hearts."
The three editorials entered in the contest were:
• “Release money for immigrant licenses” called for the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee and Rep. Bob Rankin to break a partisan deadlock last winter and authorize spending of fees for issuing driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.
• “We stand in support of immigrants” called for a broader path to residency and citizenship and banned the use of “illegal” and “anchor babies” as labels in letters to the editor and guest opinions.
• “We need immigration law grounded in reality” decried Donald Trump’s plan to deport 11 million immigrants as a humanitarian and economic disaster.
Sperling's Best Places locator map
Publisher Michael Bennett said for a story in the 10,000-circulation paper, “In less than two years, Essex has transformed the PI from a good paper to a newspaper that provides compelling storytelling daily. And in the case of his editorials on immigration, he has helped us take a stronger leadership role in our community.” Essex, most recently an editor at The Cincinnati Enquirer, said, “It’s a great honor that a small newspaper’s editorials can be amplified through this award to call for decency toward Latinos in our nation of immigrants. These are our neighbors, and our communities are enriched by their experiences, their work and their voices.”
SaskPower's Boundary Dam—the world's first-ever carbon capture project on a large coal plant—"was equipped with a technology that promised to pluck carbon out of the utility’s exhaust and bury it underground, transforming coal into a cleaner power source," Ian Austen reports for The New York Times. "In the months after opening, the utility and the provincial government declared the project an unqualified success. But the $1.1 billion project" has seen rising costs, "requiring tens of millions of dollars in new equipment and repairs."
"The project has been plagued by multiple shutdowns, has fallen way short of its emissions targets, and faces an unresolved problem with its core technology," Austen writes. "A chart covering the first year of operation showed that the system
often didn’t work at all. When it was turned back on after shutdowns for
adjustments and repairs, the amount of carbon captured sometimes even
dropped." Repeated shutdowns have caused the Saskatchewan utility to miss multiple carbon-dioxide
deliveries to the Canadian oil company that signed a
10-year contract with the utility to buy most of the gas, leading "7 million Canadian dollars in penalties, offsetting most of
the 9 million Canadian dollars in payments received."
Confidential documents unveiled in November in the provincial legislature and authenticated by the government "showed that the system was working at only 45 percent of capacity," Austen writes. "One memo, written a month after the government publicly boasted about the project, cited eight major problem areas. Fixing them, it said, could take a year and a half, and the memo warned that it was not immediately apparent how to resolve some problems."
SaskPower and advocates for carbon capture "argue that the setbacks are typical teething problems associated with any new and complex technology," Austen writes. But "the carbon system is a voracious consumer of the electricity generated by Boundary Dam, which has 150 megawatts of capacity." Mike Marsh, the chief executive of SaskPower, "testified that about 30 megawatts of capacity were consumed by the system and an additional 15 to 16 megawatts were needed to compress the carbon dioxide. The utility cut its emissions reduction target for this year to 800,000 metric tons, from one million."
Pollution from traffic, factories and other industrial activities may be causing thousands of premature births each year and costing the U.S. billions of dollars, according to a New York University’s School of Medicinestudy published Tuesday in Environmental Health Perspectives, Chelsea Harvey reports for The Washington Post. The study, which "focuses on a type of pollution known as fine particulate matter—tiny particles, less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter," found that more than 3 percent of preterm births in 2010—nearly 16,000 in all—"could be attributed to fine particulate matter," leading to direct medical costs of $760 million and an estimated $4 billion lost in reduced economic productivity.
A study published last month in Nature Climate Change found that reducing carbon emissions to avoid a 2-degree Celsius increase in global warming could prevent up to 175,000 pollution-related premature deaths
nationwide by 2030 and generate health benefits of about $250 billion
annually.
The mechanisms behind premature births caused by particulate matter "are not entirely understood, but it’s believed that exposure to air pollution can cause inflammation of the placenta during pregnancy, which can ultimately lead to an early delivery," Harvey writes. "Preterm birth—which is usually defined as delivery that occurs more than three weeks ahead of term—is associated with a variety of medical problems including an increased risk of infant mortality, breathing and feeding difficulties, cerebral palsy, increased risk of developing other diseases and developmental delays that can lead to cognitive impairment throughout life . . . Researchers were interested in estimating the economic losses that result from these disabilities—essentially, the economic productivity that’s lost over the course of an individual’s lifetime as a result of cognitive impairments and the reduced ability to work." (Read more)
A study by researchers at Stanford University published in Environmental Science & Technology found that hydraulic fracturing from oil and natural gas operations contaminated groundwater in the area around Pavillion, Wyo., Neela Banerjee reports for InsideClimate News. The Environmental Protection Agencyrecently criticized a report by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality that said fracking likely played little role in polluted water wells in the area. A 2011 EPA study linked fracking to water contamination in the area. (InsideClimate News graphic)
"The Stanford study identified chemicals in Pavillion's water related to substances that companies reported using in local fracking operations and acid stimulation, an oil and gas production method," Banerjee writes. "Researchers also found that energy companies frequently fracked at much shallower depths than previously thought, sometimes very close to drinking water wells. In addition, companies fracked into underground sources of drinking water, or USDWs, defined under federal law as aquifers that could supply a public water system. Fracking into USDWs is legal, but the oil and gas industry has long insisted that fracking occurs far deeper than where aquifers are located."
"Researchers found that because of Pavillion's distinct geology, where natural gas often exists alongside water, hazardous chemicals could migrate from fracking zones along fissures into the aquifer," Banerjee writes. "Faulty cement barriers around the steel casing inside an oil or gas well also create the potential for fracking chemicals to seep underground. Finally, as many as 44 unlined earthen pits were used before 1995 for disposal of diesel- and chemical-laced fluids from drilling and production. Tests of nearby groundwater showed dangerous concentrations of diesel-related and volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, a known carcinogen, and the neurotoxin toluene." (Read more)
Saying efforts to fight heroin and opioid addiction are grossly underfunded, President Obama called on Congress "to open the purse strings to help expand treatment, particularly in rural areas, and applauded bipartisan legislation designed to combat the problem," Jeff Mason reports for Reuters. Obama, who was speaking on a panel at a drug summit Tuesday in Atlanta, "said opioid overdoses killed more people in the U.S. than traffic accidents did and compared the importance of addressing the issue to that of fighting Islamic State militants." He said, "It's costing lives, and it's devastating communities."
Mason writes, "Obama, who earlier this year asked the U.S. Congress for $1.1 billion in new funding over two years to expand treatment for the epidemic, has faced criticism for not doing more to fight the problem sooner." The U.S. Department of Agriculture this week made $1.4 million in grants available to rural communities to fight heroin and painkiller abuse.
Obama said on Tuesday: "Part of what is troubling about the opioids epidemic is that we're
seeing significantly higher spikes in rural areas. And part of that is
because there has been a lot of under-resourcing of treatment
facilities, mental health facilities. There may be, in some of those
cases, more stigma than there might be in big cities about getting help.
If you're in a small town, everybody kind of knows you—you may be
more hesitant, right? I don't know if that's an experience that you
felt."
Treatment needs to be available in every county in the U.S., Obama said. "The problem we have right now is that treatment is
greatly underfunded. And it's particularly underfunded in a lot of
rural areas. Our task force, when we were looking at it, figured out
that in about 85 percent of counties in America, there are just a
handful or no mental health and drug treatment facilities that are
easily accessible for the populations there."
"So if you get a situation
in which somebody is in pain initially because of a disk problem, they
may not have health insurance because maybe the governor didn't expand
Medicaid like they should have under the ACA—they go to a doctor
one time when the pain gets too bad, the doctor is prescribing
painkillers, they run out, and it turns out it's cheaper to get heroin
on the street than it is to try to figure out how to refill that
prescription, you've got a problem," he said. "And that's why, for all the good
work that Congress is doing, it's not enough just to provide the
architecture and the structure for more treatment. There has to be
actual funding for the treatment. And we have proposed in our budget an
additional billion dollars for drug treatment programs in counties all
across the country."
Also participating in the panel was Crystal Oertle, a mother of two from rural Shelby, Ohio, (Best Places map) who became addicted to opioids. She said her story is similar to that of many people—she started using painkillers recreationally and eventually became addicted. "It slowly happened from weekend to
then needing it throughout the week, needing something to go to work," she said. "Eventually I needed something stronger than the Vicodin. I was doing
OxyContins, Dilaudid, things like that, until that eventually led into
me doing heroin. And the higher milligram
things like Oxycontin and Dilaudid to me are pretty much like heroin.
They’re like synthetic heroin—almost as strong. So when it came to
the point and I couldn’t find those kinds of pills, I had to go to the
street to prevent my withdrawal symptoms, so that I could participate in
my life—my children, getting them to school, me going to work. So
that’s how I got into using heroin after the pills."
Obama said, "What we have to recognize is, in this global economy of ours that the
most important thing we can do is to reduce demand for drugs. And the only way that we reduce demand is if we're providing
treatment and thinking about this as a public health problem and not
just a criminal problem. Now, this is a shift that began very early on
in my administration. And there's a reason why my drug czar is somebody
who came not from the criminal justice side but came really from the
treatment side—and himself has been in recovery for decades now."
"Part of what has made it previously difficult to emphasize treatment
over the criminal justice system has to do with the fact that the
populations affected in the past were viewed as, or stereotypically
identified as poor, minority, and as a consequence, the thinking was it
is often a character flaw in those individuals who live in those
communities, and it's not our problem they're just being locked up," Obama said. "And I
think that one of the things that's changed in this opioid debate is a
recognition that this reaches everybody."
The only good news about the drug epidemic is that it's affecting so many people in so many areas that "we're seeing a bipartisan interest in addressing this problem—not just
taking a one-size-fits-all approach, not just thinking in terms of
criminalization and—which, unfortunately, too often has been the
response that we have to a disease of addiction—but rather, we've got an
all-hands-on-deck-approach increasingly that says we've got to stop
those who are trafficking and preying on people, but we also have to
make sure that our medical community, that our scientific community,
that individuals—all of us are working together in order to address this
problem," Obama said. (Read more)
The decline of paper mills in Maine has left rural areas that relied on the industry with high rates of unemployment, plummeting property values and declining populations, leaving many rural communities trying to find ways to diversify local economies, reports the editorial board of The Bangor Daily News. "There is a project on the table that promises to aid in economic
development and diversity—the proposal to create a national park in
the Katahdin Region, a part of the state hit hard by the closure of
paper mills." But so far state lawmakers
"have been resistant to a national park or national monument." (Best Places map: The Great Northern Paper Co. in Millnocket closed in 2014, laying off 200 employees. The region has been proposed for a national park )
Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Independent Sen. Angus King "wrote to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, asking her to assemble an Economic Development Assessment Team to help rural regions in Maine inventory their assets and identify challenges and opportunities to diversify their economies," states the board. "Among the senators’ requests to Pritzker, three are crucial: strengthening the workforce and workforce training efforts in rural Maine, developing strategies to support bottom-up economic development and sharing national best practices for economic development in rural regions affected by the decline of industry."
"But the majority of Maine residents, including those in Maine’s more rural 2nd Congressional District, support a national park," states the board. "Nationally, areas surrounding national parks saw larger population gains between 1970 and 2010 than the U.S. as a whole—and certainly much more than rural Maine. These areas also outpaced the U.S. in income growth and employment gains during that period. This is the type of growth—especially an influx of new people—that the Katahdin region needs. Many want to live in scenic places with ample recreational opportunities. Some of these new residents will bring businesses and entrepreneurial skills with them."
"A national park or monument is not a panacea, but it can be an important part of the region’s remaking," states the board. "That’s why the assessment Collins and King are requesting must examine all possibilities for rural economic development—tourism included." (Read more)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made $1.4 million in grants available to rural communities to fight heroin and painkiller abuse, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday during a drug abuse summit in Atlanta, states a press release. Vilsack also will hold town hall meetings in rural areas hit particularly hard by drug abuse—New Hampshire, Missouri, Nevada, Mississippi and Appalachia—to "bring together local and state government partners, the health community and other stakeholders to raise awareness of the issue and discuss possible solutions."
Vilsack said in a statement: “The opioid epidemic is a fast-growing problem all across America, and we know that rural communities are facing an even higher burden than those in urban areas. We’ve identified ways to use existing resources to help rural towns and organizations address this challenge head-on and potentially save lives, and I look forward to meeting with community leaders to better understand how we can further support their efforts to create healthier, safer futures for families and individuals who may be struggling.”
The $1.4 million is made available through USDA's Rural Health and Safety Education competitive grants program, states the release. "Administered through USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the program’s goal is to enhance the quality of life in rural areas through improved health and safety education efforts, including expanding the focus to address the critical challenges of substance abuse in rural communities across the nation. For the first time, USDA is encouraging applicants to develop projects that specifically work to educate the public about opioid abuse and overdose. USDA will also consider projects that target other health outcomes." The application deadline is June 1.
About seven million people in the U.S. live and work in areas "with potential for damaging shaking from induced seismicity," says a report released Monday by the United States Geological Survey that for the first time includes maps identifying "potential ground-shaking hazards from both human-induced and natural earthquakes," Jessica Fitzpatrick and Mark Petersen report for USGS. "In the past, USGS maps only identified natural earthquake hazards. This is also the first one-year outlook for the nation’s earthquake hazards and is a supplement to existing USGS assessments that provide a 50-year forecast."
Petersen, Chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, said, “By including human-induced events, our assessment of earthquake hazards has significantly increased in parts of the U.S. This research also shows that much more of the nation faces a significant chance of having damaging earthquakes over the next year, whether natural or human-induced.” (USGS map)
"The list of places at highest risk of man-made earthquakes includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio and Alabama," Joel Achenbach reports for The Washington Post. "Most of these earthquakes are relatively small, in the range of magnitude 3, but some have been more powerful, including a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2011 in Oklahoma that was linked to wastewater injection."
Scientists said "they do not know if there is an upper limit on the magnitude of induced earthquakes; this is an area of active research," Achenbach writes. "Oklahoma has had prehistoric earthquakes as powerful as magnitude 7. It's not immediately clear whether this new research will change industry practices or even whether it will surprise anyone in the areas of newly estimated risk. In Oklahoma, for example, the natural rate of earthquakes is only one or two a year, but there have been hundreds since fracking and horizontal drilling, with the associated wastewater injection, became commonplace in the last decade."
Rural grocery store owners in Minnesota and North Dakota are facing the same fears as similar owners in other states—that competition from chain stores that offer cheaper prices will force them out of business, Grace Lyden reports for The Forum of Fargo‑Moorhead. Closing grocery stores could turn the community into a food desert and harm elderly residents who rely on deliveries. Karen Lanthier, the Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships
assistant program director for sustainable local foods, said in a news
release, "Grocery stores are the primary source of healthy food. When
they close, consumers face serious access challenges and in some cases
rely on less-healthy food as part of their diet."
A survey released this month by the University of Minnesota Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships and the Minnesota Center for Survey Research found that 34 percent of rural Minnesota grocery store owners expect to no longer own the store in five years. Twenty-eight percent of stores have customers who travel 30 or more miles to shop,
and 61 percent of respondents said the nearest discount grocery store was 20 or more
miles away, with only two percent saying there was one was less than 10
miles away.
"Almost all of those grocers said high operating costs and narrow profit margins were challenges for their business, and 29 percent said their most significant challenge was competition with large chain grocers," Lyden writes. That's a problem Tony Laddusaw, who owns a local store in in Hawley, Minn., (Best Places map) can understand. "Unlike his peers, Laddusaw has seen business grow in recent years, thanks to the swelling population of Fargo-Moorhead about 20 miles west. But Hawley's nearness to the metro area also means potential patrons often bypass the local store in search of a better deal." Hawley, who bought the store from his parents in 1999, told Lyden, "We're losing probably 35 percent of the business to Fargo-Moorhead, and it's convenient for people because they work there."
A 2014 survey of 53 grocers conducted by the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives found that "more than 40 percent of rural grocers said narrow profit margins were a major challenge for their stores," Lyden writes. "About two-thirds said they were challenged by the availability of satisfactory labor, and more than 80 percent said a major challenge was residents shopping out of town." Laddusaw said in a good year profit margins are about 3 percent. He told Lyden, "That's why there aren't that many grocery stores anymore because people can't survive on that 3 percent net." (Read more)
Do lawn signs actually have an impact on political elections? A study by researchers at five U.S. colleges published in Science Direct found that signs on average increase vote share by 1.7 percentage points. The study, by researchers at Columbia University, Binghamton University, Knox College, High Point University and Old Dominion University, looked at lawn signs planted in random locations for "a congressional candidate, a mayoral candidate, an independent expenditure campaign directed against a gubernatorial candidate, and a candidate for county commissioner," finding that "signs increased advertising candidates’ vote shares. Results also provide some evidence that the effects of lawn signs spill over into adjacent untreated voting precincts."
Lauren Leatherby of Journalist's Resource, writes, "The results from each of the four individual experiments were not, on their own, statistically significant. But the researchers were able to draw general conclusions after pooling the average results of the four experiments. While lawn signs appear to have a modest effect on voting outcomes, they could, theoretically, provide an edge in certain tight elections. The authors suggest that future studies use a larger sample size and look more closely at how this campaign strategy might influence voter behavior in neighboring precincts." (Read more)
Maury Povich might be best known for his daytime talk show's recurring theme of paternity test results and guests embarrassing themselves with their wild antics. But not as many people might know that Povich and his wife, newswoman Connie Chung, own a free weekly tabloid in Montana that has become one of the state's most well respected publications, Heidi Gaiser reports for Columbia Journalism Review. The Flathead Beacon grew from a staff of seven publishing 24 pages in 2007 to a staff of 20 publishing 25,000 copies of 64 pages each week. The website also sees about 100,000 unique visitors each week. Povich and Chung have owned a home in the area since 1998. (Beacon photo by Greg Lindstrom: Not many weeklies would send a reporter and photographer to the Super Bowl, especially to cover an athlete who wasn't expected to even play)
"The Beacon has also earned numerous Montana Newspaper Association Awards, six times being named the state’s best large weekly, with four wins for best website," Gaiser writes. "Carol Van Valkenburg, who taught for 30 years at the University of Montana’s journalism school, calls the Beacon 'the best newsroom in Montana.'" Van Valkenburg said of Kellyn Brown, who was hired to launch the paper, “The paper does excellent journalism, and Kellyn has created a vibrant work environment. He’s made journalism fun again. I’ve sent a lot of reporters his direction, and they have thrived.”
"The Beacon’s editorial formula is a mix of in-depth pieces using bold photos and sophisticated graphics, plus a print wrap-up of the week in local news in charts, numbers and short stories," Gaiser writes. "Outdoor recreation, natural resources and the area’s relationship with Alberta, Canada, are all regular parts of the coverage mix." It also helps to have financial backing. Reporter Dillon Tabish told Gaiser, “Maury and Connie really emphasize that the Beacon should be a must-read every week. They put their money where their mouth is by giving us the opportunities and resources to make that possible.”
The best rural energy efficiency programs are in states such as Minnesota and Iowa, which "have enacted legislation directing rural electric cooperatives and generation and transmissions to fund demand side management and/or meet energy savings and peak load reduction requirements," states a report by the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. "In
addition to the impacts of legislation, these states and G&Ts have developed a collaborative program infrastructure that helps to design and implement effective programs on a statewide or regional basis." (Southwest Energy Efficiency Project graphic)
In other states, such programs "are a mixed bag when it comes to energy efficiency, largely depending on whether state policy directs co-ops to meet efficiency targets," Robert Walton reports for Utility Drive. The report "does not broadly call out rural electrical cooperatives for efficiency failings, but it highlights weaknesses at a handful of power providers and suggests policy changes could push greater energy savings."
The report states: "The data demonstrates that in states where cooperatives are regulated by EERS, with the exception of Arizona, cooperatives achieve maximum savings levels at 1.00 percent or higher." The report found that "in states with a strong collective program design and implementation infrastructure, whether sponsored by a state or created by a group of cooperatives working together, 'cooperatives have saved more than those states where rural electric cooperatives develop and operate programs independently.'"
"Energy Central reports on the report's recommendations, including states taking legislative action to bolster efficiency efforts at cooperatives and using an integrated resource planning process to push energy saving initiatives," Walton writes. "Effective programs leadership and an emphasis on least-cost resources are also keys to promoting efficiency, the report found."
Vermont, one of the smallest and most rural states, "has boxed big food companies into a corner," forcing many corporations, including General Mills, Mars and Kellogg, to announce plans to begin labeling genetically modified foods, Dan Charles and Allison Aubrey report for NPR. "Two years ago, the state passed legislation requiring mandatory labeling. The Grocery Manufacturers Association has fought back against the law, both in court and in Congress, but so far it's been unsuccessful." (Campbell's Soup Company graphic)
"Congress failed to pass an industry-supported measure that would have created a voluntary national standard for labeling—and also would have preempted Vermont's law," Charles and Aubrey write. "Which means for now, food industry giants still face a July 1 deadline to comply with the state's labeling mandate. And since food companies can't create different packaging just for Vermont, it appears that the tiniest of states has created a labeling standard that will go into effect nationwide."
"Food companies have argued that such a label will scare consumers away because they'll see it—incorrectly—as a warning," Charles and Aubrey writes. "If it has that effect, companies will react by removing genetically modified ingredients from their products. In fact, food companies see the labeling campaign as a veiled attempt to drive genetically engineered crops out of agriculture. Privately, however, many companies are hoping that consumers will disregard those labels and continue to buy the same products as always. Consumers who are motivated to avoid GMOs may be doing that already, by buying organic or non-GMO products. If that's the case, those GMO labels will turn out to be just extra words on the package."
Congress night have intervened "had the pro-GMO forces been willing to accept mandatory national labeling to avoid mandatory state labeling," Urban Lehner reports for DTN The Progressive Farmer. "Instead, they held out for voluntary labeling. Whatever its merits, the voluntary approach never had much chance of passing the Senate. The Democrats wanted mandatory labeling, and they had the leverage: If Congressional action failed, Vermont's mandatory-labeling law would take effect. When a voluntary bill made it to the Senate floor, it got only 48 votes."
"If the pro-voluntary camp figured mandatory in one state is preferable to mandatory nationally, it miscalculated," Lehner writes. "The battle line of toppled Goliaths underscores the miscalculation. Labeling products differently in different states is costly and cumbersome. Rather than pulling out of Vermont, these food companies are imposing Vermont's standards on the rest of the country. A state with 625,000 people is effectively making food-labeling policy for a nation of 320 million. Worse, absent Congressional pre-emption, other states remain free to pass their own labeling laws. Their mandates could differ from Vermont's, leaving the industry with the dreaded patchwork of contradictory labeling laws."
Health officials in Kentucky—especially in Eastern Kentucky—hope to increase lung cancer screenings by patterning the effort after a successful colon cancer screening initiative, Jackie Judd reports for PBS NewsHour. In rural Eastern Kentucky, smoking and lung cancer rates are double the national average, while the state is second in adult smoking rates and leads the nation in lung cancer and rates of death from it. The epidemic in Eastern Kentucky is "fueled by a toxic combination of poverty, medical illiteracy, limited access to care, lifestyle choices like smoking and a fatalism that says knowing you have cancer won’t save you." (CDC graphic: Colon cancer screenings are up in Kentucky)
Fifteen years ago, Kentucky led the nation in "both the highest incidence and mortality rates for colorectal cancer," Allison Perry reports for University of Kentucky News. Rural residents didn't seek care, partly because of a lack of facilities and partly because of a refusal to schedule an appointment. If local residents wouldn't seek care, health officials decided to bring care to local residents.
"In the seven years following this new focus on colorectal cancer, the screenings rates nearly doubled, from 34.7 percent of the age-eligible population receiving screenings to 63.7 percent," Perry writes. "This raised Kentucky’s rank from 49th in the country to 23rd compared to other states. No other state has had such a dramatic increase in colorectal screenings in such a short period of time. As a result, the lives of many Kentuckians have been saved: the incidence rate for colorectal cancer is down nearly 25 percent, and the mortality rate has dropped 30 percent. Through colorectal screenings, doctors can find precancerous lesions and remove them before they become cancer. Screenings also allow physicians to find these cancers at an earlier stages, when they are more likely to respond to treatment."
In Kentucky "the challenge is to not only encourage certain lifelong smokers to get
screened, but to get them to quit, and for others to never start," especially because of the addictive nature of smoking, Judd reports. "It will be even more difficult than changing the profile of colon cancer because smoking involves addiction. The hope of public health officials is that the model used to bring down colon cancer deaths can be used to the same effect, not only for lung cancer but for other diseases plaguing this depressed swathe of America."
In rural areas across the nation, dollar stores continue to pop up "at a frantic pace, delighting residents with the convenience of big inventories and low prices while threatening local merchants who say they can’t compete," Pam Louwagie reports for the Star Tribune. "In Minnesota, Dollar General opened 42 stores in the past two years, bringing its total to 75. Family Dollar opened 16 stores in Minnesota since September 2014, for a total of 72. Many of the stores are appearing in towns too small for big-box retailers." (Tribune photo by Jim Gehrz: Dollar General in Isle, Minn.)
Nationally, about 6,000 dollar stores have opened since 2010,
for a total of nearly 30,000, according to the retail research firm
Conlumino, Louwagie writes. "Consumer spending in dollar stores has skyrocketed from
around $30.4 billion to $45.3 billion during that time, the firm found.
While price remains the top reason customers shop the stores, according
to the firm’s surveys, convenience matters, too. More shoppers are also
wandering in to browse."
Advocates for dollar stores say they provide local tax money, while reducing the need for locals to travel out of town to the nearest Walmart, Louwagie writes. Owners of local stores argue that dollar stores have hurt their businesses. Bruce Schelhaas, owner of a grocery store in rural Tracy, said sales are down 10 percent, forcing him cut hours and scrap "a planned $400,000 project to replace all of the store’s freezer and refrigerator cases." He also said his store offers something the dollar stores don't: fresh meat, produce, bakery items and a deli.
For $8 million, a rural town along the Nevada/California/Arizona border could be yours, Henry Brean reports for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The town, Cal-Nev-Ari (US-Zip.org map), located in Clark County, Nevada,about 70 miles south of Las Vegas, was built in the 1960s as a town for pilots. "The sale includes just about everything: the dirt airstrip, restaurant, bar, convenience store, post office with ZIP Code, mobile home park, 10-room motel, RV park, and the casino, which has been open since 1968 with a non-restricted gaming license. The only things not offered are the town's roughly 350 residents, some privately owned homes, the small community center and a volunteer fire station built by Clark County after the original one 'burned to the ground,'" said Slim Kidwell. Kidwell and his wife Nancy own the town.
"Kidwell is selling a full square mile along U.S. Highway 95, and more than 500 empty acres are ready to be developed, he said," Brean writes. "The Kidwells already did the hard stuff, building infrastructure and and bringing in utilities. The water system can draw from three wells and is only at about 20 percent of capacity." Based on a few of the inquiries received so far, "prospective buyers see potential for a retirement community, a renewable energy project, a motorsports park, a dude ranch, a survival school, a shooting range or a 'marijuana resort,' assuming that sort of thing becomes legal some day."
The Environmental Protection Agency has criticized a report by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality that said hydraulic fracturing likely played little role in polluted water wells in the area east of Pavillion, Wyo. (Best Places map), Benjamin Storrow reports for the Billings Gazette. EPA said "Wyoming regulators downplayed health concerns, glossed over ambiguities and made unsubstantiated claims about the source of contamination in their study." EPA's comments "raised questions over state officials' contention that natural gas operations are not responsible for pollution found in some water wells outside this central Wyoming community of roughly 230 people."
The state report "linked contamination in the wells to naturally occurring pollutants," Storrow writes. "Methane buildup in landowners' water was more likely a product of natural seepage from shallow geologic formations than gas production, the state concluded."
"EPA repeatedly questioned those claims in its review of the state study, saying Wyoming investigators lacked the evidence, or relied on limited proof, to make their assertions," Storrow writes. "Federal regulators noted the DEQ did not cite any evidence for its claim that small amounts of fracking fluid were used to stimulate the Pavillion field's gas wells—a central tenant of the state's argument that the practice was not to blame for the polluted water. And while state investigators acknowledged a gap in the protective layer encasing many Pavillion gas wells, they failed to examine whether fracking fluids could have escaped through those openings, the EPA found." (Read more)
The number of babies born suffering from opioid withdrawal, or neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), has increased from 1.2 per every 1,000 hospital births in 2000 to 5.63 per every 1,000 hospital births in 2009, with an estimated 21,732 babies born with NAS in 2012, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A rise in heroin and opiate use in rural areas has helped lead to high numbers. NAS numbers are highest in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. Health officials in Wisconsin released a report this month that found that the number of babies born in Wisconsin addicted to heroin increased 125 percent from 2009 to 2014. Opiate addiction has become an increasing problem in the state's rural areas, especially some of the smallest counties. (Stateline map)
"When a pregnant woman uses drugs or alcohol during pregnancy, some of the substances travel through the placenta to the baby," Christine Vestal reports for Stateline. "In many, but not all, cases, exposure to opioids during pregnancy can cause the fetus to develop physical drug dependence. When the umbilical cord is cut at birth, the newborn is abruptly disconnected from its supply of opioids and can suffer withdrawal symptoms. Although painful, newborn withdrawal symptoms, which include muscle cramps, tremors, diarrhea, vomiting, sleep problems and sometimes seizures, are not life threatening and have not been shown to cause health problems or developmental deficiencies later in life. The condition can be treated with small doses of morphine and subsides within a one to three weeks."
"Last year, a federal law was enacted—the Protecting Our Infants Act—authorizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to work with states to collect data on the prevalence of babies born with opioids in their bloodstream," Vestal writes. It also calls on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop recommendations for the best way to prevent and treat drug use during pregnancy."
One problem is that it can actually hurt a baby for a drug addicted mother to quit using drugs while pregnant, Vestal writes. "Abruptly quitting opioids in the first and third trimesters of pregnancy can cause harm to the fetus, including miscarriage and stillbirth, and is not recommended. Even in the second trimester, specialists agree that the risk of relapse outweighs any potential benefit to the fetus of lowering the dose of addiction maintenance medications or discontinuing their use."
Central Appalachian coal country took a significant hit in population from July 1, 2014 to July 1, 2015, according to county-level U.S. census figures released on Thursday, John Raby reports for The Associated Press. In West Virginia, nine of the 10 counties with the biggest population losses were in southern coalfields; in Kentucky the top 10 coal producing counties lost 3,060 residents; southwestern Virginia coalfields also saw big drops.
Overall census data showed a familiar trend of decreasing population in rural areas and increasing population in urban ones, reports AP. Overall, 285 of 381 urban counties saw population growth from 2014 to 2015. The same can't be said for rural areas. In Iowa, 71 of 99 counties lost population, with urban counties or counties near urban centers seeing growth. In North Carolina, 48 of 100 counties saw population declines, Richard Stradling and David Raynor report for The News & Observer. Two-thirds of the state's growth took place in Charlotte or the Triangle area of Raleigh and Durham.
Lawmakers in Maryland are expected in the next few weeks to send legislation to the desk of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan that would ban the use of household pesticides with neonicotinoids that are blamed for killing honeybee populations, Darryl Fears reports for The Washington Post. "Farmers and professionals who better understand how to apply them in a way that poses a lesser threat to bees would be exempted by the law when it takes effect in 2018." In Maryland, which lost 60 percent of its hives last year, much of the blame is on residents who overuse pesticides on gardens and trees. (Bee Informed graphic)
"Neonicotinoids were introduced to agriculture in the 1990s and made available to the general public more recently because it was thought to be safer for bees than other pesticides," Fears writes. "They seep into plants rather than simply coating the surface. Although some researchers insist the chemical doesn’t cause bee mortality, other scientists are gathering evidence that it does. The Environmental Protection Agency launched a review to determine if several varieties of the insecticide have contributed to the collapse of bee colonies. Its findings are due in 2018." The Maryland
Department of Agriculture has said there is little scientific evidence linking bee deaths
to neonicotinoids.
If the legislation is signed into law, it could have national implications, Fears writes. "About a dozen other states are considering taking similar steps as bees
die and honey production declines. Last year, honey
production fell 12 percent among producers with five or more colonies,
according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey." (Read more)
