Environment

A federal court in New Orleans is preparing for one of the largest and most complex environmental lawsuits ever to come to court. It stems from the worst oil disaster in U.S. history: the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig nearly two years ago and the resulting oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.

Testimony is scheduled to begin at the end of the month. The case combines more than 500 lawsuits in one proceeding designed to determine who's responsible for what went wrong.

One area still struggling to come back from that disaster is Bon Secour, Ala., a sleepy fishing village on the Bon Secour River just off Mobile Bay. Here, pelicans and osprey camp out on docks that were once lined with shrimp and oyster boats.

A three-part, hour-long audio documentary for public radio from award winning producer Claire Schoen about climate change and coastal communities.

The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the busiest in the nation. They also have some of the dirtiest air, thanks to thousands of cargo trucks that pass through each day.

But this month marks the beginning of a new era, as tighter emissions standards go into effect.

'100 Percent Clean Energy'

A common trope in environmental stories is to put things in terms of jobs vs. the environment. But that's not what happened in the case of the ports.

Yet another foreign government has accused Americans of meddling in its internal affairs. It says U.S. donors are bankrolling local political activists, and it may be time for a crackdown on the political influence of outsiders.

Politically, climate change is off this year's campaign agenda. Jobs, the economy and social issues are front and center.

But scientists are working as hard as ever to figure out how much the Earth is warming and what to do about it. Some now say it's time for a new strategy, one that gets faster results.

Talk to Durwood Zaelke, for example. Zaelke is a grizzled veteran of the climate wars: He was in Kyoto in 1997 when the world's nations drafted a treaty promising to curb warming, and he has watched that promise fizzle while the planet's temperature continues to rise.

Zaelke says the Kyoto treaty focused too much on the main greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released its 2010 data of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the state.

Power plants are at the top of the list.

The EPA collected data from nine different industries that emit greenhouse gases including power plants, pulp and paper mills, landfills and other industrial sources.

All told, they produced five-point nine million metric tons of greenhouse gases in New Hampshire.

About 40-percent of that comes from just one power plant, Merrimack Station in Bow.

It burns coal.

The number two emitter is Granite Ridge Energy in Londonderry,

It uses more efficient natural gas.

N-A-E-A Newington Energy, which burns both oil and natural gas, came in third.

The state’s Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, or LCHIP, has funded 23 projects across the state. But this could be the last year the program exists to help protect everything from historic buildings, to forests,  to farms.

The LCHIP managers say about $1 million in state money has leveraged about $ 13 million in projects.  Executive Director Dijit Taylor says one unusual site involves a farm on the state’s western border.

“It includes two islands in the Connecticut River, one of which has the potential to be a campsite for people canoeing down the river.”

If there is a patron saint of modern Republican tax policy, it is economist Arthur Laffer.  Laffer is best known for the  Laffer Curve – a graph of the theory that under the right circumstances, a cut in tax rates produces higher tax revenues.   The Laffer Curve was the keystone of  so called Reaganomics.

Laffer was in Manchester today to present a very different idea – one that so far Republicans have been slow to embrace. 

Arthur Laffer sees all taxes as essentially bad but some are worse than others.  With that in mind, he would like to swap a tax on carbon for our current tax on income.

Scientists and commercial fishermen are at odds over a new report on overfishing in the Gulf of Maine.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study gives a dire assessment of the health of the codfish population. 

At a meeting in Portsmouth, federal regulators met with fishermen to discuss the study that has yet to be peer reviewed. 

Eric Schwab, with the National Marine Fisheries Service, says federal law requires the cod fishery be rebuilt to historic levels by 2014. “We are seeing some preliminary scientific numbers that are surprising, and frankly, bad, and would lead to some more restrictive management measures if these numbers hold up,” says Schwab.

Seabrook Nuclear Plant officials says the plant is continuing to operate safely.

The vote of confidence came during the Seabrook’s annual required press briefing.

Spokesman Alan Griffith said the failed cooling system pump that prompted the plant’s shutdown in October has been fixed. But he said engineers continue to assess possible deterioration of concrete under one plant section, an electrical tunnel.. Griffith says a core sample turned up what is called Alkalide silica reaction, or ASR .

“Since then, five other key areas, including containment have been tested. None of them have any loss of compressive strength. So we don't expect this will have any effect on license renewal or our long term ability to operate safely,” said Griffith.

This week NHPR’s Amy Quinton has been taking an in-depth look at the New Hampshire’s Great Bay.

The estuary is one of the state’s natural treasures.

But it’s in trouble.

Yesterday, Amy told us about the role wastewater treatment plants have played in polluting the bay and how they now face tougher clean water standards.

But the majority of pollution in the estuary comes from so-called non point sources, such as stormwater runoff.

And much of that comes from development. Amy Quinton has more.