Seacoast

The U.S. Postal Service has installed a sign adding context to a controversial mural at the Durham Post Office.

A section of the mural titled "Cruel Adversity" depicts a Native American raid that happened in what is now Durham in 1694.

Some have called the image, painted in 1959, offensive for its one-sided depiction of history.

Some Seacoast residents were unhappy Thursday night to hear state and federal officials reiterate they don’t believe the Coakley Landfill is contaminating area drinking water.

Authorities say some groundwater wells around the Superfund site in North Hampton do show high levels of suspected carcinogens called PFCs – but they say the chemicals haven’t spread to private wells.

On the Seacoast, crews are working to repair damage from winter storms in time for the summer tourist season.

At North Hampton State Beach, repairs are being made to a collapsed parking lot and sidewalk.

More than 50 teachers and support staff at the Timberlane School District are in danger of losing their jobs due to funding.

The problem, school administrators say, is that because a higher proposed budget failed with voters, an almost $72 million default budget will go into effect. And that default budget doesn’t allow staffing numbers to stay where they are.

A  replacement for a 76-year-old bridge connecting New Hampshire and Maine opened to traffic on Friday after months-long delays caused friction between transportation officials and the contractor.

Sarah Mildred Long Bridge replaces an old span that connected Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine, along the Route 1 Bypass over the Piscataqua River.

New research from UNH says nuisance flooding of roads on the East coast has increased by 90 percent over the last two decades.

Nuisance flooding occurs as a result of normal tidal activity. It's the kind of flooding that can happen on sunny day with calm weather.

The new report estimates that nuisance flooding is already causing over 100 million hours of delays for drivers each year. As oceans rise, the report says, so could that number.

Authorities continue to investigate a suspicious package sent to Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter's Dover office Monday.

No one was injured, police said.

Shea-Porter, a four-term Democrat from Rochester, issued the following statement:

More than 100 responders from dozens of state, federal and local agencies were busy in Portsmouth Thursday, practicing their response to a hypothetical oil spill.

These exercises happen every year on the Piscataqua River between New Hampshire and Maine – but the made-up crisis they game out is always changing.

Carroll Brown is New Hampshire’s oil spill contingency planner. He says this year’s scenario imagined flying debris from a winter storm, rupturing an Irving Oil diesel tank on the riverbank in downtown Portsmouth.

Federal and state agencies will act out an oil spill response scenario in Portsmouth on Thursday as part of a federal requirement to practice for a real-life crisis.

This year's drill imagines a winter storm damaging part of the local Irving Oil facility overnight, causing a large amount of oil to spill into the Piscataqua River.

The city of Portsmouth says it expects to release a trove of documents about toxic waste cleanup at Coakley Landfill Superfund Site around the end of this month.

It comes as a group of Seacoast lawmakers files suit to get records from the entities responsible for that pollution, known together as the Coakley Landfill Group. 

A young harp seal who spent a month recuperating after getting stranded on Hampton Beach will be released on Sunday.

It’s only the second time the Seacoast Science Center has helped release a seal in New Hampshire waters.

The year-old seal is named Merrimack, or Mack for short. He was found on Hampton Beach on Valentine's Day.

Seacoast Science Center marketing director Karen Provazza says Mack was alert and chatty, but also seemed sick and confused.

Harp seals are born on ice in Canada and like to eat snow, but Mack was eating sand off the beach. 

After a week of uncertainty following a public auction of the Smuttynose Brewery, a new owner has been announced. Smuttynose is now owned by Runnymede Investments, a venture capital and investment firm based in North Hampton. The purchase was made for an undisclosed amount.

Runnymede is installing a new CEO at the brewery, Rich Lindsay, who has experience at other breweries including Samuel Adams and Night Shift Brewing.

Governor Chris Sununu wants the former Pease Air Force base included in a first-ever national study on the health effects of toxic chemicals called PFCs.

Sununu wrote this week to the federal agency leading the study, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. It’s part of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

The latest federal defense spending bill authorizes the agency to spend $7 million to study the health impacts of perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs.

Smuttynose Brewing Company will be sold at auction Friday afternoon in Hampton.

The iconic New Hampshire craft brewer announced in January that it could no longer pay its bills and needed new ownership to survive.

Police in a New Hampshire city are making efforts to address loud motorcycles in Portsmouth.

Police Chief Robert Merner says he is aware of a proposed ordinance currently in a Senate committee that would ban "motorcycle-only checkpoints," but adds he has ordered decibel reading equipment for his officers to be used citywide.

The Portsmouth Herald reports Merner says enforcement of noise levels will begin in the spring during motorcycle season.

A public hearing earlier this week attracted environmentalists, fishing groups, and many others who oppose President Trump's new proposal to expand offshore drilling in the Atlantic, including off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. We talk with NHPR's energy and environmental reporter Annie Ropeik about the latest developments and what impact offshore drilling might have for the state. 

Federal officials will be in Concord today to talk about a sweeping proposal to open most of the nation's coastline to new oil and gas drilling.

The North Atlantic and the Seacoast are included in the Interior Department's plan, but analysts say this area would likely be a low priority if it goes forward.

Gov. Chris Sununu inspected historic flooding Saturday on the New Hampshire seacoast, as Atlantic waves whipped up from a nor'easter's high winds breached and eroded sea walls for a second day.

The town of Hampton has made good on its threat to sue the state of New Hampshire over services provided at the state-owned Hampton Beach.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Rockingham County Superior Court reads like a laundry list of all the complaints some town officials in Hampton have been raising for years.

They range from the maintenance of the sidewalks on Ocean Boulevard, to the revenue generated by parking spaces, to fire and ambulance services provided at the beach.

It's been nearly five months since a racist bullying incident shocked the Oyster River School District community.

Parents and school administrators met Wednesday to talk about what's been done in response, and priorities going forward.

It was this past September when a 7-year old black student was bullied with racist language while riding the school bus home. The incident shocked many, including Oyster River Superintendent Jim Morse.

The state commission on the Seacoast’s high cancer rates signaled Friday it would push for cleanup at Coakley Landfill, despite objections from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The legislators and public representatives who make up the Cancer Cluster Investigation Commission have a report due this fall on what's driving those cancer rates, and they’ve honed in on the EPA’s Coakley Landfill Superfund site as a likely culprit.

Representative Charles McMahon, a Republican from Windham, chairs the commission.  

A meeting this week between Governor Chris Sununu and Hampton town officials may not have been enough to calm the waters in that town.

Last year, Hampton selectmen voted to sue the state over the cost of some services that the town provides at the popular state-owned beach.

Governor Sununu met with Hampton officials Tuesday night in an apparent effort to head off that suit, which is scheduled to be filed at the end of the month.

But Hampton Selectman James Waddell, who voted against filing the suit, says he doubts Sununu's outreach will make a difference.

It was a packed house at the Teatotaller café in Somersworth as five transgender panelists shared their stories and took questions from an audience.