State
AG Hood sues over Grenada, Water Valley contamination Clarion Ledger
A ring suspected of trapping and selling wild hogs in South Mississippi has been busted.
According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, four individuals from Mississippi and Louisiana were capturing wild hogs in both states and illegally transporting them for sale in Walthall County.
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2017/04/10/suspected-wild-hog-sellers-busted/100289626/ Chevron gives $1.2 M to Jackson County schools for state’s first ‘Fab Lab’ Sun Herald
JACKSON – Everyone agrees that Gov. Phil Bryant will call a special session before July 1 to take up three appropriations bills that died during the just-completed 2017 regular session.
http://djournal.com/news/special-session-agenda-still-undecided/ Regional
How rubber ducks, songbirds help scientists study Louisiana wetlands loss The Advocate
The Trump administration’s request to halt litigation over federal ground-level ozone standards relies on a recent precedent: President Barack Obama’s EPA successfully requested the same thing during his first few months in office.
https://www.bna.com/trump-epas-ozone-n57982086513/ Carbon emissions from energy sector drop The Hill
A 20-year-old EPA policy meant to protect landowners such as Alaska native groups from cleanup liability for over $1.7 billion in their state hasn’t eradicated their fear of big cleanup bills.
https://www.bna.com/liability-loopholes-persist-n57982086516/ Flame Retardant Makers Won’t Have to Do Toxicity Tests: EPA Bloomberg
Manufacturers of three flame retardants used in furniture foam, textiles, paints and other products won’t have to conduct toxicity or exposure tests requested through an environmental coalition’s petition, the EPA has decided.
https://www.bna.com/flame-retardant-makers-n57982086514/
These are the nation's most 'endangered' rivers; top dishonor goes to the Lower Colorado River USA Today
Do you want to claim a small part of the Earth as your own?
NASA is offering you the opportunity through its “Adopt the Planet” campaign for Earth Day on April 22. The space agency divided the planet into 64,000 adoptable spaces — and wants someone to claim each one before Earth Day. Each one is about 55 miles wide, according to NASA.
http://www.sunherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article143847359.html
Science, Engineering Studies Are Still a Hard Sell to Women Data show women earned just 21% of undergraduate engineering degrees and fewer in computer science, a trend that could exacerbate a gender-based earnings gap WSJ
Culverts provide an abundance of benefits to us every day. They allow us to pass over water, and for fish and wildlife to pass beneath us. And they allow us to go about our daily lives and ideally, for fish and wildlife to do the same. But when they’re badly designed, the results can be disastrous for people, communities, and the environment.
Between 2008 and 2015
U.S. Forest Service partnered with more than 200 organizations in the
Legacy Roads and Trails Program, which replaced more than 1,000 culverts across the U.S. The aim of the program was to upgrade culverts to emulate natural streams, and to allow fish and wildlife to pass more naturally both upstream and downstream. These culverts are called stream simulation culverts and consist of an arch above an open bottom, allowing the stream to continue beneath as if the culvert was not there at all.
Badly designed culverts come with a host of problems. They can cause devastating infrastructure property and infrastructure damage if they become blocked with debris or become overwhelmed with water.
Beyond the human cost, they can have a profound effect on the health of the watershed and the fish and wildlife that depend upon them. Badly designed or badly maintained culverts can cause bank slumping, erosion, and scouring—severely degrading water quality and habitat. Worse yet, the consequences of bad culvert design don’t stay localized.
“What happens upstream, affects everything downstream,” said Nathaniel Gillespie, Assistant Fisheries Program Manager at the U.S. Forest Service.
Streams, like all waterways, are complex ecosystems. Streams flow into and out of one another, affecting their surrounding environments, and the fish and wildlife that depend on them.
“Fish depend on a sizeable enough habitat to live and grow,” said Gillespie, “but they also depend on access to other bodies of water to breed and thrive.”
Gillespie said when that travel is restricted, it can effect fish populations and restrict the size of the fish living in the waterways. Countless rural communities around the country depend on the $10 billion spent every year in and around National Forests and Grasslands. Much of the appeal in these areas can be attributed to clean, abundant water and healthy fish and wildlife.
Because water systems are so interconnected, and because of the cascading effect of badly designed culverts, the role of well-designed culverts becomes clear.
“The Forest Service made this investment with our partners because these communities and our nation are going to reap so many benefits from it,” Gillespie said.
“With safety, environmental and economic benefits of smart culvert design, good culverts are just good sense.”
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/04/10/healthy-culverts-make-healthy-drinking-water
