Annie Ropeik

Officials in the town of Thornton have rejected a proposed cell tower on land owned by Gov. Chris Sununu’s family at the edge of the White Mountain National Forest.

Eversource is joining a group of utilities aiming to build a national network of high-speed electric vehicle chargers.

The company, which is New Hampshire’s largest electric provider, is the first in the Northeast to join the Electric Highway Coalition, launched last month by utilities in the Southeast, Gulf Coast and Midwest.

New Hampshire’s U.S. senators are asking federal regulators to allow state and local governments to spend pandemic stimulus funds on addressing PFAS chemical contamination.

Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan joined a bipartisan group making the request to theTreasury Department this week.

A Rochester city councilor is facing calls for his resignation after being accused of sexually abusing boys two decades ago.

The state says it hasn't been following its own rules in notifying people of potential water contamination near the Saint-Gobain plastics factory in Merrimack.

Regulators say they’re working to correct the problem and think most affected properties are already aware of the issue. But citizen advocates are worried that some in the area may be unknowingly drinking contaminated water as a result of the lapse.

Liberty Utilities has suspended a home weatherization program for its natural gas customers because of delays at the Public Utilities Commission in approving expanded energy efficiency goals for the state.

Other electric and gas utilities say they could soon face similar choices that will affect their customers if regulators continue to leave the issue undecided.

This week's ice-out on Lake Winnipesaukee is part of a trend toward earlier spring thaws in New Hampshire due to climate change.

The lake was declared ice-free and navigable by boat on Monday, April 5. It's about two weeks earlier than the average ice-out date over the past hundred-plus years.

Responders have put out at least two small brush fires in New Hampshire this week amid dry conditions and high winds.

One was in Cornish, near homes on Route 12-A. The other destroyed a barn in Hinsdale.

Fire danger has been rated at least moderate in the state this week. And there's little rain in the forecast in the coming days. The state is well below average on precipitation for the year, with another potential drought in the works this spring.

Combined with gusty winds, the state says it means any open burning can easily catch and spread uncontrolled.

In a federal whistleblower complaint, a former attorney for the Saint-Gobain plastics company claims he was told to “look the other way” on potential water contamination like the kind that’s affected New Hampshire and Vermont. 

In a report released Tuesday, New Hampshire’s Attorney General ruled a police officer was justified in shooting and killing a man in Meredith last November. It was the fifth police-involved shooting the state has investigated in about a year.

New Hampshire is likely headed into an early spring drought despite recent rain and snow, according to the latest national forecast – and state officials are already warning of the potential drinking water impacts.

President Biden’s $2-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan could bring expanded Amtrak train service to New Hampshire and Northern New England.

Amtrak, the publicly funded national rail operator, released a new map this week of expansions it could offer by 2035 under Biden’s proposal.

New runoff controls are coming to Great Bay after three adjacent cities reached an agreement with the Conservation Law Foundation to avert an appeal of a key federal water quality permit.  

The Environmental Protection Agency issued the long-awaited permit for a dozen towns around Great Bay last year.

A Seabrook man who shouted racist threats at a family last year violated the state's Civil Rights Act, the Rockingham Superior Court has ruled.

According to a complaint released by the Department of Justice in January, John Doran, unprovoked, began shouting slurs at a car containing a family returning from a beach trip last July.

When one victim approached him, Doran pointed a gas hose at them, threatened to burn them and said "go back to Africa."

New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan is re-introducing a bill to give more federal support to multi-state climate change programs like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

A former chemical industry lobbyist and top official in the Trump Administration's Environmental Protection Agency will serve as the assistant commissioner for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.

State transportation officials are considering a plan to open the shoulders on the I-95 Bridge between Portsmouth and Maine for travel during peak congestion times.

The Maine and New Hampshire Departments of Transportation are working together on the project. It would cost about $8 million and be set for completion by Memorial Day of 2023.

The state and the Saint-Gobain plastics factory in Merrimack will settle a dispute over chemical treatment technology with a consent decree.

The agreement, filed Friday in Hillsborough County Superior Court, comes after the factory missed a February deadline to make upgrades that would prevent excess emissions of toxic PFAS chemicals.

Scientists at the University of New Hampshire are studying ways to tap trees and make syrup with species other than maples, in hopes of developing new niche markets for small producers as climate change reshapes the state’s current sugaring industry.

The researchers have been tapping and monitoring trees like beeches, birches, walnuts and sycamores this winter.

The New Hampshire state Senate on Thursday advanced a plan to require utility investment in large offshore wind energy projects and other renewable sources. The proposal for what’s known as a "procurement program" passed on a bipartisan 23 to 1 vote.

New federal research shows drought can increase the risk of unsafe arsenic levels in private drinking water wells -- especially in New Hampshire, Maine and the Midwest, where arsenic in wells is already a problem.

The study from the U.S. Geological Survey comes as forecasters predict the country's worst spring drought since 2013, affecting tens of millions of people, especially in the Western half of the country.

Managers in the White Mountain National Forest are planning a series of controlled burns aimed at protecting homes in Conway from the growing risk of climate-drive wildfires. 

The proposal aims to prevent fires in a developed area on the forest boundary, where the pine-driven ecosystem is prone to burning.

Federal officials say they’ve definitively linked three contaminated water wells in Greenland to the Seacoast’s Coakley Landfill Superfund site.

The Environmental Protection Agency gave a public update on the site Wednesday night, for the first time since 2019.

Nearly 20,000 people in New Hampshire were still without power due to high winds early Tuesday evening.

Most of the outages are with Eversource in Portsmouth and other parts of the Seacoast. The New Hampshire Electric Co-op also has large outages in the Lakes Region and Eastern White Mountains, including, as of 5:30 p.m., nearly 3,000 in Alton.

New Hampshire’s coal-fired power plant, the last of its kind in New England not set to retire, will now remain online through at least 2025, despite calls from climate change activists for it to close. 

The news comes from a federal filing in late February by the regional grid manager, ISO-New England.

Two men suffered minor injuries when their small airplane overturned on landing at Hampton Airfield this morning.

The 70-year pilot and his 68-year-old passenger took off from Skylark Airport in Connecticut, according to North Hampton rescue officials. They flew in what’s known as a kit-plane – an amateur-built aircraft with one engine and two seats.

Responders say the plane crashed in Hampton and was found flipped over in the snowy median beside the runway. They say both passengers wore seatbelts and could get out of the plane on their own.