Sam Evans-Brown

The New Hampshire House of Representatives has voted to ban lead fishing jigs or sinkers that weigh less than an ounce.

The bill had a hard fight to get to this point. Last year it was scuttled in the House after passing unanimously out of the Senate. A big reason for that was opposition from the Fish and Game commission, an appointed body that many see as supportive of sportsmen.  That’s why Republican John Burt from Goffstown voted against the bill.

New Hampshire will have to wait a little longer for more flexibility from the federal education law No Child Left Behind. The US Department of Education granted three more states waivers today, but New Hampshire was not on the list.

The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services has released a draft of a major study trying to pin down the sources of nitrogen pollution in the Great Bay Estuary. The results offer some insight, but few easy solutions.

A poll from New England College finds broad support for Governor Maggie Hassan and Senator Jeanne Shaheen and less support for Senator Kelly Ayotte. The poll shows more voters view Hassan and Shaheen favorably by 30 and 35 point margins, respectively. The polls director, Political Science Professor Ben Tafoya, says Senator Kelly Ayotte has a narrower lead of 5 points.

"I think our take-away is that folks are much more closely divided on their approval of job performance for senator Ayotte then they are for Senator Shaheen or Governor Hassan," says Tafoya.

Fiddleheads are the whimsical, tightly coiled spiral of fern sprouts that push their way up from under the layers of winter debris on the forest floor. They are also a regional and seasonal delicacy, and their season is incredibly short. In some Southern parts of the state, it may already be over. For any given fiddlehead patch, it can last as little as a week and a half.

That means for those who harvest the sprouts, fiddlehead patches are closely guarded secrets.

Governor Maggie Hassan has sent a letter to the governor of Connecticut, Democrat Dannel Malloy, asking him to reject changes to that state’s renewable energy laws, called the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). The changes are seen as a boost to the controversial Northern Pass Transmission line.

The Governor Hassan’s letter says the Connecticut proposal that would allow hydro to be counted toward that state’s renewable energy goals quote, “undermines our common goal of fostering new and small-scale renewable resources here in New England.”

Lawmakers in Connecticut are working to review and revamp the rules that encourage renewable electricity generation. And the changes as proposed could be good news for Canadian hydropower, and bad news New 

  Hampshire Biomass.

Democrat Bob Duff chairs the Energy and Technology Committee in the Connecticut State Senate. He’s also a sponsor of a controversial bill on renewable energy.

  The House Science, Technology and Energy Committee kicked off a summer’s worth of work to reform the way the state evaluates proposals for new power plants Tuesday. They heard a whole day’s worth of testimony about wind energy. 

Speakers at the wind forum talked about wind farms’ impacts on wildlife, the grid, and the health of people who live near them. The discussion closed with a presentation on possible changes to the process by which wind projects get a permit.

Oral arguments were heard Friday in a lawsuit which will determine if the state’s new education tax credit is constitutional. The state argues that for the tax credit to be considered unconstitutional, the judge has to consider first if directing money through a tax credit is the same as spending money in the budget. Next the judge will have to determine if because some parents use that money to send their kids to religious schools, does that violate the state’s constitution?

A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the controversial Education Tax Credit will be heard today in Strafford County Superior Court. The law was passed last year by Republicans seeking to create more avenues for educational choice. But Democrats say it saps resources from Public schools and have targeted the law for repeal.

Morning Edition host Rick Ganley spoke with NHPR Education Reporter, Sam Evans-Brown about the lawsuit. 

A survey is now underway in Concord, to determine how far an infestation of invasive beetles has spread. The Emerald Ash Borer has been detected in trees up and down the Merrimack River in Concord. But so far the survey has not found any of the pests outside of a six-mile radius of the city.

There are 25 million ash trees in New Hampshire, found mostly in western and Northern counties. They make up about 6 percent of the state’s forests. But so far, the beetle that has decimated forests in the Midwest, has only been discovered in and around Concord

New Hampshire’s public universities made a pitch for restored funding to the budget writers in the New Hampshire State Senate Monday, but they got a lukewarm response.

The federal government has approved Southern New Hampshire University’s online College for America.

This is the first time that a program not based on grades and credit hours has qualified for federal financial aid. College for America is competency based, which according to SNHU President Paul Leblanc, allows students a lot more flexibility. To explain what competency based education means, Leblanc says, “the key is if you can show us if you’ve mastered that writing competency in a week, then we’re not going to make you sit through 15 weeks of college composition.”

The New Hampshire Senate has voted along party lines to table a proposal that would have repealed a controversial education tax credit. The vote effectively kills the effort to repeal the law, which went into effect in January.

The credit lets businesses claim an 85 percent tax credit for money donated to qualified scholarship organizations. Those organizations then award scholarships worth an average of $2,500 dollars to qualified, low-income students who can use it for a private school, homeschooling or an out-of-district public school.