Environment

Top municipal officials of three Seacoast region communities are continuing their fight against tough new environmental regulations for their wastewater treatment plants.

The Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive Asian beetle that has killed millions of Ash trees in the Great Lakes region, is creeping closer to New Hampshire.

This week an Emerald Ash Borer infestation was found in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. The pest has spread from Michigan, through the Mid-Atlantic region, to upstate New York and Connecticut.

Kyle Lombard with the division of Forested Lands says, on its own the ash borer moves very slowly.

New Hampshire fishermen facing cuts and closures imposed on them because of declining fish populations say regulators are putting them out of business. Thursday those fishermen learned that they might get some financial relief. The federal government has declared a disaster in the New England Ground-fish fishery.

A study from the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service shows that New Hampshire is the most forested of the 48 contiguous states. According to the USDA study 88.9 percent of New Hampshire is covered by trees, beating out neighboring states Maine at 83.1 percent and Vermont at 81.5

The study’s lead author David Nowak says evaluators looked over 80,000 points dropped randomly onto satellite photos from around 2005 to complete the study.

The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services has found two more lakes in New Hampshire that have been infested with milfoil, an invasive aquatic plant. DES announced  that Otter Pond in Greenfield and Naticook Lake in Merrimack both have well-established milfoil infestations.