New Ky., W.Va. mine rules better protect streams; Ky. lawmaker says they're like 'stream saver' bill

In November we reported about major changes to the Kentucky strip mining regulations hinted at by panelists at a University of Kentucky forum on coal in the state. Now the state Environment and Energy Cabinet has released those new regulations. The new guidelines will require coal companies to put more excess rock and dirt back on mined area instead over streams in nearby hollows, Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

"This is probably the single most important change in mining practices in many years," Tom FitzGerald, executive director of the Kentucky Resources Council, told Estep. A news release also explained the Department of Natural Resources would hire three additional people to perform the enhanced review of surface-mining permit applications the new regulations will require. A representative for TECO Coal, a major producer, told Estep the new guidelines would mean added costs for the coal industry, but the industry did help work out the changes and supports them. (Read more) For more details from FitzGerald, click here.

In West Virginia, regulators are going to "stop processing surface mining permits that propose to dump waste rock and dirt into streams while they develop new guidelines that force coal operators to reduce water quality impacts downstream from valley fills," Ken Ward Jr. reports for The Charleston Gazette. Randy Huffman, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, told Ward his goal is to stop wasting DEP staff time on permits that change dramatically after they are re-examined by the Environmental Protection Agency, and he feels that the state must push coal companies to further reduce environmental damage. (Read more)

Meanwhile, a group of scientific researchers called for a ban on mountaintop-removal strip mining, citing the damage done to streams when rainwater "trickles through the rubble and picks up pollutants off rocks that came from deep underground," David Farenthold of The Washington Post writes. "The water emerges, they said, imbued with pollutants such as metals and chemicals called sulfates, which can be toxic to the insects and fish in small Appalachian streams." (Read more) The scientists say "current mitigation strategies" have been inadequate; their analysis could not take into account the effect of the new rules, which remains to be seen. To read their heavily footnoted article, click here. UPDATE, Jan. 12: The Kentucky House sponsor of a "stream saver" bill mountaintop mining says the new rules achieve his goal, Mike Wynn of The Winchester Sun reports.

Knight gives FOI Coalition $2 million to help fund increasingly scarce legal battles for records

Battles for freedom of information often stop for lack of financial ammunition. Now help may be available, thanks to a three-year, $2 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

The grant will create the Knight FOI Fund, which "will fund up-front costs such as court costs, filing fees, depositions and initial consultation fees, if attorneys are willing to take cases that otherwise would go unfiled," NFOIC announced. The grant application was prompted by an NFOIC survey that found almost 80 percent of its members lawsuits to open public records in their states had become less numerous, and 60 percent said it had dropped dramatically. And 85 percent predicted that FOI litigation would drop dramatically over the next three years. NFOIC blamed "the economic crisis and the evolution of the news media," and cited several specific examples in its release.

Mine deaths hit record low, but miner's memoir is a reminder of the dangers still underground

We didn't plan it that way, but we should have remembered: In today's Courier-Journal, the undersigned reviews Face Boss: the Memoir of A Western Kentucky Coal Miner, and at the top of the Louisville newspaper's section page (and at the top of the Lexington Herald-Leader's front) is the annual Associated Press story about mining fatalties -- which declined for the second year in a row in 2009, to a record low of 34. (AP photo by George Frey: Face boss Carrey VanBuren watches a continuous mining machine cut coal at the Horizon mine near Helper, Utah.)

"That was down from the previous low of 52 in 2008," writes Roger Alford, now AP's sole correspondent in the state capital of Frankfort and former correspondent in the coalfield town of Pikeville. Coal mines accounted for only 18 of the deaths, "down from 29 in 2008; and 16 were in gold, copper and other types of mines, down from 22 in 2008. Most involved aboveground truck accidents on mine property," which shows the increasing role of surface mining.

"Most news of coal these days is above the ground: strip mining, including mountaintop removal, and coal-fired power plants that contribute to global warming. But in Kentucky and most Eastern coal states, most coal is still produced by underground miners, who work in what Michael Guillerman calls “a dark and remarkable world” that few Americans know."

That's the start of the book review, which is complimentary. I wish it could have been longer, to repeat Guillerman's point that mine operators prepare for federal inspections and usually run considerably less coal when inspectors are underground. That point was made in the AP story by Kentucky's Steve Earle, United Mine Workers of America international vice president for the Midwest: "I can say without reservation that the safest day coal miners have is when inspectors are in the mines."

New laws show a historic turn on Tobacco Road

The annual story about new laws taking effect on New Year's Day has a rural angle: The new statewide smoking bans in North Carolina and Virginia, still two of the leading tobacco-growing states.

North Carolina's ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, which actually takes effect Jan. 2, is "among the most surprising new laws," The Associated Press says. "There are exceptions for country clubs, Elks lodges and the like, but the change is a dramatic one for North Carolina, whose tax coffers long depended on Big Tobacco.

"Virginia approved a similar law that took effect Dec. 1, but it's more accommodating to smokers because it allows establishments to offer areas in which to light up as long as they have separate ventilating systems. Not including Virginia and its partial ban, smoking will be banned in restaurants in 29 states and in bars in 25, according to the American Lung Association." (Read more)

Pilgrim's Pride to pay $4.5M in immigration case; Pilgrim family members demoted, ousted by JBS

Fresh out of a bankruptcy that left some of its contract farmers holding mortgages for chickenhouses that no longer had plants to supply, Pilgrim's Pride Corp. has agreed to pay the federal government $4.5 million "to settle a two-year investigation into identity theft and hiring people not authorized to work in the United States," Rita Jane Gabbett of MeatingPlace reports. "As part of the settlement, Pilgrim's Pride recognized that its voluntary compliance programs can be enhanced to more accurately identify unauthorized persons who seek or gain employment through identity fraud or other unlawful means."

The agreement was with the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. ICE raided five Pilgrim's Pride locations in 2007 and 2008, finding 338 unauthorized workers, but no civil or criminal charges were filed. "The news comes days after Pilgrim's Pride announced it had emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy after completing a 13-month restructuring that included selling a 64 percent share in the company to JBS USA," Gabbett notes.

Meanwhile, the chief operating officer of JBS, Wesley Mendonca Batista, has replaced Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim as chairman of Pilgrim's Pride, and Lonnie Ken Pilgrim, the company's vice president, and Richard Cogdill, its chief financial officer, have been removed, Ann Bagel Storck of MeatingPlace reports, citing a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

States struggle to keep up with natural-gas drilling; EPA tells New York state to be careful

"State oil and gas regulators are spread too thin to do their jobs," ProPublica reports, in the nonprofit journalism outlet's latest look at natural-gas drilling. The country has "nearly one million active oil and gas wells, a number that's likely to climb as the feverish growth in natural-gas exploration continues," Abram Lustgarten writes.

Lustgarten examined the states where drilling has expanded rapidly. "While the number of new oil and gas wells being drilled in the 22 states each year has jumped 45 percent since 2004, most of the states have added only a few regulators," who are usually also responsible for overseeing oil drilling. "Those with the widest gaps are Texas, which is already grappling with the most drilling, and New York, which is expected to soon have the fastest rate of growth. As regulators' workloads have grown, enforcement actions -- the number of times violations were recorded and acted on -- have dropped in many states, often by more than half. That could mean companies are complying with the law -- or that inspectors aren't checking the wells." In our experience, both are true, but better compliance usually follows better enforcement.

There were exceptions; in Kentucky since 2006, drilling has declined but enforcement actions have increased. In Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the state that provided the example that Lustgarten used to start his story, drilling declined greatly this year but staffing and enforcement actions have gone up. ProPublica has a state-by-state database here; its latest wrapup story is here. UPDATE, Jan. 5: The database has been updated with information from Montana, where enforcement is up.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency, responding to New York state's proposed drilling regulations, told the state "that it had major concerns about how proposed hydraulic drilling for natural gas would affect public health and the environment, and urged it to undertake a broader study of the potential impact," Mireya Navarro of The New York Times reports. "It recommended that “essential environmental protection measures” be taken before the state begins to review permit applications for the drilling." (Read more)

How religious is your state? By what measurement?

Mississippi is far and away the most religious state, ranking first in "absolutely certain" belief in God, daily prayer, weekly worship attendance, and the percentage of residents who say religion is very important in their lives, according to polling data compiled by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The next 10 most religious states, based on the importance respondents attach to religion, are all in the South. In other categories, Utah and Kansas are in the top 10. The least religious states are those in New England, followed by Alaska, though Arizona and Colorado rank among them on church attendance. For an interactive table of the categories and the states, click here.

EPA lays out possible penalties for states if they fail to clean up Chesapeake Bay

We reported in September that the Environmental Protection Agency was going to get tough with states and localities in the Chesapeake Bay watershed (right) in a redoubled effort to clean up the estuary and rid it of "dead zones" where fish and shellfish can't live. Yesterday, EPA laid out the possible penalities for compliance. David Farenthold of The Washington Post reports, "EPA officials said they might:
-- Object to state-issued permits for new sources of pollution, such as factories, sewage-treatment plants or suburban storm sewers.
-- Require states to offset pollution in one area by cutting it in another. If a state can't find ways to curb pollution from farms, for instance, the EPA could require stricter cuts from sewage-treatment plants.
-- Take tighter control of federal money that goes to states for antipollution programs, to make sure it is used to solve outstanding problems."

However, Farenthold notes, "Clean-water laws make it easy to crack down on pollution that comes out of a pipe, such as treated sewage and factory discharges. But they give states less power to crack down on pollution that doesn't come from pipes, such as the fertilizer and animal manure that wash off suburban lawns and farm fields." (Read more)

Rural school group has news, data and analysis on education issues and trends

The Rural School and Community Trust is an excellent watchdog in Washington for rural education, and often a good source of information for reporters who cover rural schools. Its latest Rural Policy Matters newsletter has several stories of interest:

Race to Top revisions slightly better for rural schools, plus a detailed analysis

Large, very-low-poverty districts benefit in Title I formula at expense of high-poverty districts large and small

Rural districts with low graduation rates are high-poverty, high-minority

Helping Students Prepare for College, with rural adaptations (registration required)

Kansas City Fed economists see little risk of sharp drop in farmland values in the near term

The value of farmland is an important underlying factor in the rural economy. The recession has "cut farm incomes and also cooled residential and recreational demand for farmland," reducing farmland values slightly, and while they have "held relatively steady" this year, increased volatility in agriculture markets and the prospect of higher interest rates makes some wonder, "Are today’s farmland values another bubble getting ready to burst?"

So write Jason Henderson, a vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and Assistant Economist Maria Akers in the latest edition of the bank's Main Street Economist. But after going through a detailed analysis of the data, as well as current and historical trends, they sees "little risk of a sharp collapse in farmland values in the near term" because "near-term projections suggest that returns to crop production may be strong enough to support recent cropland value gains." (Read more)

Repoened rural refinery in Kentucky accuses Marathon Oil of unfair competition

A small oil refinery Southern Kentucky, recently bought in bankruptcy and reopened, is accusing Marathon Oil Corp. of unfair competition that is about to run it out of business. Marathon says a deal the refinery proposed would violate federal and state laws.

Lawrence Barker of Somerset Energy Refining wrote in an open letter to Marathon, dated Dec. 15 and published in the Dec. 26 Somerset Commonwealth Journal, that trucker-brokers who once delivered to Somerset are going 172 miles northeast, to the Marathon refinery on the Big Sandy River at Catlettsburg, because Marathon is paying them "additional incentives that SER simply cannot match." Barker said Barrett Oil of Albany has "threatened to divert to Marathon" Jan. 1, and "This refinery will close without the Barrett deliveries."

"Barker asked Marathon to refuse future purchase of regional crude reserves, and to cease the trucker’s incentives, instead giving local producers a higher price for their crude," Commonwealth Journal Editor Ken Shmidheiser wrote, calling Barker's letter "a David-versus-Goliath challenge." In return, Barker offered to provide Marathon a rare type of crude and co-sponsor advertising that would give Marathon credit for saving Somerset's 100 jobs.

Marathon spokespersons said they had not been asked to comment on the letter until contacted today by The Rural Blog. "We deny that those allegations are appropriate or correct," spokeswoman Angelia Graves said in an interview. She said Marathon told Somerset that its proposal "violates anti-trust laws," and her company is "not going to engage in any discussion with them or anyone else in the industry that is anti-competitive." Marathon's Dec. 18 letter is posted here.

In the interview today, Graves first said "Our company pays the market price," and she was asked if that included the trucker incentives Barker mentioned. "I'm not sure what he's referencing there," she said. "I'm not familiar with the individual arrangements, but we deny there's any intent to engage in any practice that is in violation of the law."

'Whoppers of 2009' and other FactCheck reports can help thwart inaccurate, misleading assertions

The folks at FactCheck, who do a good job of separating truth from fiction in politics, have published "Whoppers of 2009," their most outrageous examples of inaccurate and/or misleading assertions. The list, and future reports at FactCheck.org, can help local news media avoid passing along bad information from interviewees, letter writers and so on.

"The list of howlers includes the false claim that the stimulus bill would dictate to doctors what procedures they can and can’t perform, and assertions that health care legislation would require seniors to get advice on how to commit suicide," Lori Robertson, Brooks Jackson and Jess Henig write. "Democrats exaggerated the problems their legislation aims to fix — at one point Obama falsely accused an insurance company of being responsible for the death of an Illinois cancer patient."

FactCheck is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. For its report, click here.

More concern about livestock antibiotics' effect on people creates more pressure for regulation

"More and more Americans — many of them living far from barns and pastures — are at risk from the widespread practice of feeding livestock antibiotics," The Associated Press reports. "These animals grow faster, but they can also develop drug-resistant infections that are passed on to people. The issue is now gaining attention because of interest from a new White House administration and a flurry of new research tying antibiotic use in animals to drug resistance in people."

Reporters Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza write that they looked at the issue for six months. They start their story with a compelling dateline (Frankenstein, Mo.) and anecdote, about a farmer who nearly lost his leg after being gored by a boar with a strep infection that was resistant to antibiotics. After finding that he and his pigs all has the same resistances, he "tossed his hypodermic needles, sacked his buckets of antibiotic-laced feed, slaughtered his herd and started anew," Mason and Mendoza report. They also write about an Iowa farmer who feeds his pigs an antibiotic that is not absorbed by their digestive systems.

"Farm groups and pharmaceutical companies argue that drugs keep animals healthy and meat costs low, and have defeated a series of proposed limits on their use," the reportyers write. "Thirteen percent of the antibiotics administered on farms last year were fed to healthy animals to make them grow faster. Antibiotics also save as much as 30 percent in feed costs among young swine, although the savings fade as pigs get older, according to a new USDA study." Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., is fighting for a law that would ban giving antibiotics to animals unless they are sick. (Read more)

Stimulus funds allocated to rural areas go to some places in metro areas; definition of 'rural' at issue

"Nearly a quarter" of the $12 billion in economic-stimulus funds that has been paid out after being designated for rural areas, most of it in loan guarantees for home buyers, has gone to localities in "the nation's biggest metropolitan areas," Brad Heath reports for USA Today. "The spending reignites a longstanding debate over what 'rural' really means in an increasingly urban nation." Congress wrote definitions into the bill that allowed the aid to "small, far-flung suburbs" in metropolitan areas, Heath writes. Because metro areas are deifned by county lines and commuting patterns, much rural territory can be included. For a detailed explanation of how the federal government can define "rural," click here.

UPDATE, Dec. 30: Dawn House of The Salt Lake Tribune reports that few Utahns have taken advantage of the loan guarantees and none have applied for stimulus-funded business loans, both administered by the Department of Agriculture. "The loan programs aren't well known because the agency has no money for advertising -- and few think of the USDA as a bank," House writes. "Rural residents often find out about programs through word of mouth or when a state or federal agency refers them to the USDA Rural Development office." (Read more)

Drilling in Marcellus Shale leaves more chemicals than expected, as Congress reconsiders exemption

Gas drilling companies leave a lot more water and chemicals in the Marcellus Shale formation, right, than they did in similar formations elsewhere when they won an exemption from federal regulation four years ago partly with arguments that relatively little drilling fluid remained, Abram Lustgarten of ProPublica reports. The news could affect debate on a bill in Congress that would eliminate the exemption. (ProPublica map)

"When lawmakers approved that exemption, it was generally accepted that only about 30 percent of the fluids stayed in the ground. At the time, fracturing was also used in far fewer wells than it is today and required far less fluid," Lustgarten writes. "Three company spokesmen and a regulatory officials said in separate interviews with ProPublica that as much as 85 percent of the fluids used during hydraulic fracturing is being left underground after wells are drilled in the Marcellus Shale." (Read more)

Meanwhile, Mike Lee and Elizabeth Campbell of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram report on problems caused by a disposal well for chemicals used to extract gas from the Barnett Shale, a formation similar to the Marcellus. "There have also been reports of problems in small-town water wells and private water wells across the Barnett Shale," they write.

Miner who campaigns for safety gets good writeup

Ralph Dunlop of The Courier-Journal has a great profile in the Christmas Day paper of "perhaps the most active, relentless and combative mine-safety advocate in Kentucky, at least among working coal miners," Scott Howard of Harlan County.

Health bill will benefit rural poor, but maybe not Democrats in 2010

If you have time on this Christmas weekend to read only one political analysis of the health-care issue, we recommend the thorough, evenhanded and salient piece by John Harris, editor in chief of Politico, and reporters Alexander Burns and Josh Gerstein. It says both parties have staked their near-term and maybe long-term future on the issue, and offers scenarios that would benefit each party.

The story has one paragraph which should make rural journalists realize their responsibility to illuminate the issue for their readers, listeners and viewers, not just trade in one-sided opinion pieces. Harris writes, "The political impact of the bill could be amplified by its geographic reach. Many of the bill’s long-term benefits in terms of insurance subsidies for the poor will go to states in the South where Republicans have held sway for decades. However, many of the beneficiaries will be minorities and the rural poor, who have traditionally had a low turnout in elections." (Read more)

States' competition for stimulus funds for schools is stimulating policy proposals and debate

Education reporters, take note: "The federal Race to the Top competition is helping to drive a flurry of measures nationwide aimed, at least in part, at making states stronger candidates" for part of the $4 billion available for school reform from the economic stimulus package, Eric Roebelen of Education Week reports. Examples: Tennessee might evaluate teachers partly on student test results, and Alabama might get charter schools. Both ideas have stirred opposition. Some states have already implemented changes, hoping to get a funding boost as they face more budget cuts. (Read more)

Small daily gives frank look at troubled local bank

For most of the time since the banking crisis hit, more than a year ago, the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues has encouraged community newspapers to report on the health of their community banks, using easily available public information gathered by federal regulators and public-interest organizations. We have no idea how good the coverage has been nationwide, but we think it would be hard to beat what we've seen this week in The State Journal of Frankfort, Ky.

First the newspaper reported that the leading bank in town, Farmers Bank & Capital Trust Co., plans to start repaying the $30 million it borrowed from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and that its non-performing loans increased from $29 million to $44 million over a six-month period earlier this year, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reporter Paul Glasser also cited a recent report by the bank to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., revealing that it lost money in September, after making $4.3 million in September 2008.

Those are the kind of figures that could make depositors worry about the solvency of their bank. The newspaper confronted those fears and figures in an editorial (accompanied by a cartoon), saying, "This doesn’t mean the local bank, or its holding company, is on the brink of failure. Most failed institutions are said to have troubled asset ratios of 100 percent." But the editorial also noted that the bank plans to sell stock to repay TARP "at the risk of diluting current shareholders," that the Investigative Reporting Workshop of the American University School of Journalism reported the bank's troubled assets rose to by more than a fifth this year, and its "troubled asset ratio" was 36.9 percent in September, far above the national average of 14.1 percent. And it went back to the start of TARP, noting that the “Treasury Department insisted the loans were not bailouts of participating banks, merely a helping hand to get sound institutions through tough times. But ProPublica, a nonprofit group of investigative journalists, said some of the banks 'have turned out to be not so healthy.'”

The editorial continued relating the local situation to the national, saying the bank "is in the same predicament as its customers: Even though some economists say the recession is over, the recovery is too weak to make anyone feel especially secure. [It] finds neither businesses nor individuals are in the mood to borrow much money, which inevitably depresses the bank’s revenue outlook," the editorial continues. "If Americans really have resolved to reduce their indebtedness, that’s not a bad thing. Farmers Bank was established in an era of fewer consumer goods when people found it prudent to borrow only if they really needed to, and vigilant bankers kept them from diving in over their heads. It’s past time for financiers, and the rest of us, to rediscover the proven wisdom of living within our means."

That's a frank and helpful look at a town's most powerful financial institution, by a newspaper that has a circulation of only 8,000 and is often considered the "local little sister" to metropolitan papers in Louisville and nearby Lexington. While Frankfort is the state capital, it is not metropolitan; it has a population of only 27,000 and a county population of fewer than 50,000, so The State Journal is still very much a community newspaper. It's owned by Ohio-based Dix Communications and makes its edtorials available online only to subscribers, but Opinion Editor Ron Herron has graciously alllowed the pertinent editorial page to be posted on the Institute site, here.

A leading newspaper association executive retires

Bill Monroe of the Iowa Newspaper Association, one of the best and longest-tenured state newspaper association executives, is retiring after 29 years. He will be succeded by Chris Mudge, who has been assistant director.

In this week's INA Bulletin, Monroe writes that the association is a national leader because its 250 or so newspapers are almost all community papers: "Perhaps because there is no Top 50 market newspaper in Iowa, our members are more alike than they are different from one another. They know they can accomplish much working together. . . . They are willing to contribute to a foundation which, in turn, provides them with top quality training at a very affordable cost."

INA probably has the most extensive training program of any state newspaper group. "Our Foundation is the leading state press association foundation, having raised more money in the past three years than any other and exploding the programming options for our members," he writes. We're glad to provide an amplifier as Bill toots the INA horn. Best wishes in retirement, Bill.