Sam Evans-Brown

Three hundred seventy-seven New Hampshire residents were competing in Boston today when two explosions erupted in the crowds near the finish line of the race. An untold number more were in Boston as spectators or volunteers.

Ronald and Karen Brassard of Epsom and their daughter were injured in the blast, but are going to be fine, according to a relative.

  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."

Today the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a budget that doesn’t fund $2.5 million for new charter schools. If that policy stands it would be mean a de facto, two-year moratorium on charter schools. It’s a move that was met with surprise and confusion by charter school advocates. But to understand the decision takes knowing something about the long, political history of charter schools.

The state’s largest teacher’s union, the National Educators Association of New Hampshire, has come out in favor Governor Maggie Hassan’s budget, including its use of casino gambling as a source of funding.

Officials with the controversial Northern Pass project – a proposed 180 mile transmission line from the Canadian border to Deerfield – have missed another deadline.

A post on the project’s website states “although we have identified a new route which meets our project requirements, we believe it is in the best of interest of landowners, communities, and all stakeholders for us to continue to build on the details of this proposal and to take the time now to make some additional refinements before we begin the formal public review processes.”

Power New England, the electricity supplier that was kicked out of the regional market for not 

  paying its bills, has proposed a settlement with regulators. The company has agreed to reimburse customers for the confusion its hasty exit from the market caused. The settlement proposes cutting $9.50 checks  to the roughly 7,300 former PNE customers who were switched to Public Service of New Hampshire. In all the payments will cost PNE around $70,000.

The Northern Woods contain a lot of the animals that are symbolic of New Hampshire: bobcat, otter, black bear, fishers, and porcupines to name a few. Many of these animals are mostly found up north because they need a lot of space to move around. One project is trying to come up with a plan to make sure that movement can continue.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives has voted to allow bars to serve alcohol until 2 in the morning. That extends closing time by one hour.

Representative Emily Sandblade, a Republican from Manchester, says there are 45 states that allow bars to close at 2 am or later. "Of these states 22, or about half have lower rates than alcohol related accidents than New Hampshire," she said on the House floor, "That statistic is telling us that our earlier closing hours aren’t buying us any special protection."

More than 2,500 individuals in New Hampshire are homeless, a 6% jump from a year ago. The data comes from a one-night census that took place in January.

Roughly half of the homeless are concentrated in Hillsborough County.

Opponents of Wind Farms and of Northern Pass are backing an effort to explicitly require the state’s Site Evaluation Committee to consider effects on view sheds, home values, opinions of town governments and other factors, when permitting new energy projects.

One bill also includes an amendment that tacks on a one year moratorium on new projects while these changes are implemented.