Annie Ropeik

New Hampshire state regulators have agreed to hold a virtual public hearing next week on plans to resume utility service disconnections.

The state recently ended its pandemic-related moratorium on shutoffs for overdue payments. Now, the Public Utilities Commission is deciding how utilities should resume the shutoffs, as well as late payment fees.

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen returned to in-person campaigning on the Seacoast Wednesday, positioning climate change at the center of her re-election bid.

Shaheen, a Democrat, was at Throwback Brewery in North Hampton – joined, in masks and at a distance, by environmentalists, students and groups endorsing her.

NHPR’s new climate change reporting project, By Degrees, begins in the midst of a global pandemic, mass protests against systemic racism, a presidential election and an economic crisis.

We need your help to tell new stories of how New Hampshire is living through climate change at this historic moment.

What are we missing? What do you want to know? How is climate change affecting you right now? 

A new study says children drinking from private water wells may be more likely to have unsafe levels of lead in their bloodstreams.

New Hampshire is reporting its first case of mosquito-borne illness for 2020. A Loudon resident was hospitalized and is now recovering from Jamestown Canyon Virus.

New Hampshire’s utility consumer advocate wants more transparency and public input on plans to lift the state's ban on utility shutoffs this month.

In a new emergency petition, ratepayer advocate Don Kreis says the state's electric, water and gas utilities are reporting large swaths of customers who've held off paying their bills in the past few months.

A major new study says federal flood maps have far underestimated how many properties in New Hampshire and nationwide are at risk from substantial flooding, now and in the coming decades.

The report, out Monday, comes from a range of academic institutions and the nonprofit First Street Foundation.

A panel looking at redeveloping the former Laconia State School is pushing back on concerns about a request for money from the state.

The Lakeshore Redevelopment Planning Commission has asked for $16 million in the state's capital budget.

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A new study, commissioned by advocates in New Hampshire, shows that most firefighters’ protective gear is treated extensively with toxic PFAS chemicals.  

Scientists at the University of Notre Dame picked up the issue, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the firefighter-focused Last Call Foundation, after a request by a Granite State couple.

New Hampshire will longer ask aspiring lawyers about their mental health history in order to pass the bar.

The state court system joins Massachusetts, New York and a handful of other jurisdictions that have recently made the change.

New Hampshire’s decision comes from the committee of lawyers that judges what’s known as the character and fitness of people who want to practice law in the state.

They say they’ll continue to consider applicants’ past conduct. But they’ll no longer ask about history, diagnosis, or treatment or mental health or substance use problems.

Protesters gathered at Whole Foods in Bedford this weekend after the store sent two workers home for wearing masks supporting Black Lives Matter.

After being sent home several times, the women say they were told the store has a policy against any slogans or messaging outside the company's own. They think it's unfair.

Near-drought conditions in southern New Hampshire are straining vegetable farmers in the midst of planting season, after more than a month without substantial rainfall.

The state expects to soon declare a drought in the southern tier and lower Lakes Region, after an abnormally dry spring and a winter without much snow to recharge streams and groundwater.

Seacoast beaches have been crowded this weekend with people trying to beat the heat, though some coronavirus restrictions remain in effect. Parts of the shoulders of Route 1A have reopened for parking, but the state beach lots are only accepting 50 percent of their normal capacity to encourage physical distancing.

Pandemic closures are limiting the options in New Hampshire for people who need to take shelter from the heat this weekend.

Much of the state will see temperatures in the 90s, with high humidity, through early next week.

But it may fall short of an official heat advisory, which is what cities like Manchester and Nashua use to activate their heat response plans.

The New Hampshire Electric Co-op will not add a focus on broadband to its official mission, but supporters of the effort say they expect the attention on rural connectivity will continue.

Members voting in the co-op election that ended this week fell just short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the proposal, which would have had the co-op agree to “facilitate access to broadband” alongside existing services.

Southern New Hampshire looks to be headed for a drought this summer, after more than a month without any significant rainfall following a low-snow winter.

The state got about half an inch of rain on May 15. 

A group of New Hampshire doctors wants two Republican U.S. Senate candidates to walk back recent statements opposing mandatory vaccinations.

New Hampshire colleges will likely continue with some aspects of virtual learning when students return to campuses this fall. It's a particular challenge for disciplines like earth science, which rely on field trips and physical lab work.

The state Senate votes Tuesday on a bill that would make permanent much of the telehealth system that has emerged in New Hampshire during the pandemic.

New Hampshire's attorney general is joining the opposition to a federal challenge to net energy metering policy, ahead of the end of public input on the case Monday.

Dozens of other states, companies and groups and companies have already joined the case before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Many filed comments opposing the petition.

Members of the New Hampshire Electric Co-op will finish voting Tuesday on whether to add broadband service to their utility’s mission.

The push to bring better internet to rural towns has already drawn interest from developers, as coronavirus heightens the focus on connectivity.

Retired journalist Richard Knox of Center Sandwich has helped lead the campaign to get the 80,000-member co-op to agree to “facilitate access to broadband” as part of its by-laws.

An environmental group in Nottingham is appealing to the New Hampshire Supreme Court to try to get involved in an ongoing legal battle over community rights. 

The state will not conduct some routine sampling of inland beaches this summer due the pandemic.

The Department of Environmental Services says they’ll focus on monitoring and responding to blooms of toxic algae at freshwater shores this season.

They will not regularly sample those beaches for fecal bacteria as they have in other years.

They say their lab capacity and other logistics have been hampered by the coronavirus.

A new bill sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen would help military families get tested for PFAS chemical exposure.

The proposal would cover people who are or were stationed at hundreds of military installations with PFAS contamination.

PFAS are toxic chemicals that persist in the environment and were used in a kind of firefighting foam that is still stockpiled on many bases.

Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant remains offline after experiencing its second unexpected shutdown in about a week on Saturday night.

The incidents stem from the same system, which the plant's owner NextEra says it’s now trying to repair. Federal officials say the issue, known as a “manual scram,” has posed no danger to the public or plant workers.

Advocates are calling on New Hampshire’s congressional delegation to support job training for clean energy projects as part of COVID-19 economic recovery.

Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas joined state nonprofits for a roundtable on the issue Friday.

The lawmakers and their Senate colleagues have joined recent calls for renewable energy investment in upcoming stimulus bills. 

Leaders in Manchester, including Mayor Joyce Craig, are calling for two of the city's aldermen to resign after reportedly making racist statements on Facebook.

A local Black Lives Matter organizer says Alderman-At-Large Joe Kelly Levasseur called him a derogatory slur in a private message.

Democratic state lawmakers will get another hearing in a lawsuit over Gov. Chris Sununu’s authority to distribute federal coronavirus aid.

The complaint dates to mid-April. It argues that the legislature should get a say in Sununu's spending during the state of emergency.  

Superior Court Judge David Anderson previously denied the lawmakers’ request for an emergency injunction to stop that spending.

The state is temporarily banning shellfish harvesting in coastal Atlantic waters because of a severe bloom of potentially toxic algae.

The ban applies to mussels, clams and oysters in near-shore and offshore waters. It does not apply to lobsters, or to inland areas, such as Great Bay and Little Bay.

The advisory also does not indicate a threat to swimmer or surfers, who were allowed back onto the Seacoast beaches as of Monday.

The Environmental Protection Agency is out with a plan to clean up a hazardous waste site in downtown Berlin.

The Chlor-Alkali Superfund site sits on the east bank of Androscoggin River, next to the city’s Sawmill Dam.

From the late 1800s until the 1960s, the property housed a factory that supplied paper mills with chemicals, including chloroform, lye and bleach.

Some toxic waste from the factory sits in a capped landfill on the site, where demolition debris from the facility was deposited as recently as 1999, according to the EPA.