Good News Headlines 4/1/2024
UVM student reporters covered an unusually busy Town Meeting Day in the small town of Stockbridge. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Hewit.
As News Deserts Expand, Student Journalists Step Up
by Elizabeth Hewitt, Reasons to Be Cheerful
On the drizzly first Tuesday in March, voters crammed into a historic white clapboard meeting house on a hill in Stockbridge, Vermont. It was Town Meeting Day, when Vermonters across the state gather to debate and vote on local government. And the election for the next member of Stockbridge’s three-person select board, the main governing body of this town of just over 700 people, had drawn record turnout. As voters waited to cast handwritten ballots in a long queue that snaked around wooden benches, University of Vermont sophomore Sarah Andrews approached locals, notebook in hand.
California Tribe Becomes The First To Manage Land With National Park Service
by Associated Press
California’s Yurok Tribe, which had 90% of its territory taken from it during the gold rush of the mid-1800s, will be getting a slice of its land back to serve as a new gateway to Redwood national and state parks visited by 1 million people a year. The Yurok will be the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed on Tuesday by the tribe, Redwood national and state parks and the non-profit Save the Redwoods League. The agreement “starts the process of changing the narrative about how, by whom and for whom we steward natural lands”, Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League, said in a statement.
Witness The Glory Of The 2024 European Tree Of The Year – Growing In Poland For 200 Years
by Andy Corbley, Good News Network
In this year’s edition of the European Tree of the Year contest, the leafy crown was bestowed upon a common beech in the botanical gardens of the University of Wroclaw. Thought to be 200 years old, The Heart of the Garden is the third Polish tree in a row to win, following up on the Oak Fabrykant with its outrageous 60-foot-long digit in 2023, and the 400-year-old Oak Dunin outside the Białowieża Primeval Forest, in 2022. “Its majestic appearance impresses us with its unusually shaped and thick trunk, widely spread branches, and purple-colored leaves that shine beautifully in the sun,” the contest organizers wrote.
Last Coal Plants In New England To Voluntarily Close, Transitioning To Renewable Energy Parks
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Granite Shore Power announced Wednesday a historic agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in which the parties have set a firm date for the voluntary closure by GSP of operations at Merrimack Station, New England’s last remaining coal-fired power plant, as well as Schiller Station. This agreement will facilitate the creation of first-of-their-kind “Renewable Energy Parks” in the state of New Hampshire. GSP’s decision to set a firm closure date for coal-fired operations at both Merrimack and Schiller is part of the company’s long-standing repowering plan, according to a news release from Granite Shore Power.
Chevron Will Pay Record Fines For Oil Spills In California
by Janet Wilson, The Desert Sun and ProPublica
Oil giant Chevron has agreed to pay a record-setting $13 million to two California agencies for past oil spills, but some of the company’s spills are ongoing. The fines, announced Wednesday, come more than three years after an investigation by The Desert Sun and ProPublica found that oil companies are profiting from illegal spills and that oversight of the industry by California’s oil and gas division was lax. At least one of Chevron’s spills is still running 21 years after it began in a Kern County oilfield, although a state spokesperson said it has been reduced by 98% “from its peak.” The amount spilled from the site, dubbed GS-5, is larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster.
