Posts by Molly Rains
Proponents of a bill to regulate “plug-in solar” in New Hampshire believe the devices would democratize access to the solar energy shining on the Granite State in a time of energy uncertainty. But they also want to tread carefully, they said, to avoid potentially dangerous pitfalls.
When the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services tweaked the math behind its statewide recycling rate estimate last fall, the result suggested that the state was doing worse than previously thought at diverting waste from landfills.
On Wednesday, just over a week after a U.S. District Court judge ordered New Hampshire to take all necessary steps to continue its vehicle inspection program, the New Hampshire Executive Council voted to let the state’s emissions testing contract expire.
Drought data from the monitor is shared widely and used to understand the extent of drought in different regions across the country. Its collection starts at wells like those Howley oversees, where automated instruments and human observers alike access vast and little-understood groundwater networks.
In recent years, though, the butterfly — which typically emerges from hibernation before the last patches of snow have receded — has become less common. Populations of mourning cloaks, or Nymphalis antiopa, have declined about 70% across the Northeast in the last 26 years, said Emily May, an entomologist with insect conservation nonprofit Xerces Society.
In the greater Merrimack area, where toxic forever chemicals are concentrated throughout the soil and a long-term cleanup plan is yet to materialize, keeping the contamination local is the best many feel they can do for now. But how well that’s working isn’t clear and guidance is scarce, creating headaches for developers and concern for activists.