Environment

Folks working in the world of water infrastructure have a joke: if all of those pipes, and storm-drains, and treatment plants were fire trucks, they’d be kept shiny and new. But instead much of that is buried underground, or kept out of sight in industrial parks, and often out of mind. So instead, tax and sewer rate-payers don’t worry about it until it breaks. And when it breaks you’ll know about it: sinkholes in streets, and backed up sewage aren’t pretty.

  People who work to protect loons think that this year the stars could be aligned for passing a bill that would tighten restrictions on lead fishing tackle. The proposed bill would ratchet up restrictions on lead fishing jigs in 2015.

A jury in New Hampshire has ruled that Exxon-Mobile must pay the state $236 million dollars to help clean groundwater contaminated with a gasoline additive known as MTBE. But the monetary award is by no means a done deal.

In a little state like New Hampshire, $236 million is nothing to sneeze at.

Delaney: This is the largest verdict obtained by the state of New Hampshire in the history of the state.

That’s attorney General Mike Delaney announcing the verdict to reporters.

The Sea is rising. Satellite measurements have found that globally the seas are coming up about 1.2 inches per decade; a rate that has increased by 50% since before the 1990s. On New Hampshire’s seacoast, there’s a lot of vulnerable infrastructure, the most obvious of which is Seabrook Nuclear power station.

Seabrook station sits in a salt-marsh, more than two miles from the open ocean. It’s nestled behind Seabrook and Hampton beaches, and you can see the buildings of the strip in the distance.

Merrimack county is under quarantine. Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive Asian beetle that has killed millions of Ash trees in the Midwest, has been discovered in Concord.

Once the beetle’s population has been established, they can spread incredibly fast, doubling every year. Today the state learned where the patient zero of the New Hampshire infestation can be found.

The Attorney General’s office has announced a settlement in what it calls the largest illegal wetlands fill in New Hampshire History. The company involved faces up to $1.3 million dollars in state and federal fines, restoration, and "supplemental environmental projects."