Environment

Piping plovers have settled in at New Hampshire beaches and volunteers are needed to help babysit the delicate birds.

Brandan Clifford, with the New Hampshire Fish and Wildlife Service, says that COVID-19 restrictions allowed the endangered birds to nest freely on the beaches. Now that people are back, the state needs volunteers to watch and protect the nest areas both day and night.

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.

With reports of busy hiking trails, New Hampshire’s search-and-rescue teams are urging people who head into the forest to use an extra degree of caution to avoid putting wilderness first responders at risk for COVID-19.

While conservation officers are carrying personal protective gear, performing rescues could expose rescuers to the coronavirus.

State regulators are monitoring how this winter’s low snowpack could affect water supplies in the dry summer months.

The state has between 60 and 75 percent less snow on the ground than average right now. State water division director Tom O’Donovan says that's just one source of the state’s drinking water and other water supplies – in reservoirs, lakes and wells.

Low snow cover, warm spells this winter, and a mast crop of berries and acorns in the fall have more bears coming out of hibernation, particularly in the southeastern corner of the state.

Dan Bailey, a wildlife biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game, says they are seeing more winter bear activity this year than usual, with regular sightings in people’s backyards.

New research shows the Northeast is the only part of the country where winter snowfall is increasing, not decreasing – but the data the snowy season is also getting shorter.

The Littleton Zoning Board will continue to hear from residents at a hearing Tuesday about a proposed battery storage project.

Battery energy storage systems use rechargeable lithium ion batteries to store electricity from the grid when prices are low.

A delegation of ten students from Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business is attending the United Nation's COP25 Climate Change Conference in Madrid. Countries attending the conference hope to negotiate more ambitious plans to limit global warming.

Hannah Payson, associate director of the Tuck School’s Center for Business, Government and Society, is attending the conference with the students.

“It’s really kind of like a bustling city,” she says. “You hear all these different languages spoken from around the world.”

Railroad proponents are pushing back on a proposal to remove existing train tracks near Laconia to make way for a long-planned rail trail extension.

Stewards of Laconia's nine-mile WOW trail, named for nearby water bodies, hope to someday extend the paved bike and pedestrian path over nearby rail corridors and other existing trails so that it would seamlessly connect Franklin and Weirs Beach.

Portsmouth became the latest U.S. city to ban the use of some disposable plastic containers after the City Council voted Monday night to outlaw Styrofoam city-wide.

Supporters of the new law say they believe it’s the first of its kind in New Hampshire.

The ordinance will take effect at the end of next year. It’ll ban most Portsmouth businesses – except some nonprofits – from distributing single-use Styrofoam.

It’ll also ban the distribution of single-use plastic straws and containers, but only on city property.

A group of Hampstead residents is suing the town’s privately-operated water utility, Hampstead Area Water Company, and its operator, Lewis Builders Development, alleging the companies’ operations are illegal and have made the residents’ wells virtually unusable. 

New Hampshire is getting federal money to study the health effects of toxins near a Superfund site in Berlin and in homes and private wells statewide.

The state Department of Health and Human Services’ Public Health Laboratory announced Monday it will use over $5 million from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to monitor residents’ blood and urine samples after potential exposure to chemicals.

Its goal: Increase the state’s understanding of toxin exposure and effective interventions.

The Coakley Landfill will soon get treatment and cleanup from New Hampshire's Department of Environmental Services.

The Environmental Protection Agency is requiring the city of Manchester to alert residents when it discharges raw sewage into the Merrimack River. The change is part of a large agreement Manchester is finalizing this year with the EPA to ensure the city's wastewater and stormwater systems comply with the 1994 Clean Water Act. 

The North Country town of Dalton holds a public hearing Tuesday on plans to try and block a controversial landfill project.

The informational hearing at 7 p.m. comes ahead of a special town meeting July 30, where the town will vote on the emergency zoning proposal.

Dalton is one of the state's few towns with no zoning ordinance. This proposal would put some basic zoning in place.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Friday dealt what may be the final blow to the Northern Pass transmission line.

The towns of Peterborough and Jaffrey are considering a joint project to buy and manage a group of wells for their municipal water systems. 

A company based out of Chicago owns the parcel in question, named the Cold Stone Spring. It encompasses over 500 acres in Sharon and Jaffrey and includes three wells that have already received approval from the Department of Environmental Services to pump 577,000 gallons of water per day. Collectively, the towns expect to pump around 200,000 gallons per day.

A cold storage company in Londonderry has settled with the Environmental Protection Agency for past Clean Air Act violations.

Londonderry Freezer Warehouse refrigerates some of its facilities with ammonia. Handled incorrectly, the chemical can be toxic, corrosive and flammable.

The EPA says the company's cold storage facility had rusty valves, shoddy ventilation and inadequate emergency controls.

State environmental officials on Friday proposed what would be some of the lowest limits in the country for four types of PFAS chemicals in public water supplies and groundwater.

Governor Chris Sununu has vetoed a plan to replace all state cars and trucks with zero-emissions vehicles within about a decade.

The bill would have required the state to stop buying new conventional vehicles by 2026.

State agencies would have had to replace their existing fleets with carbon-free technologies by the year 2041.