Rural News

Closing Ohio’s prison farms will halt a $9 million project

The proposed closure and sale of Ohio’s 10 prison farms will affect some ongoing construction projects — including a $9 million project to build new dairy and beef facilities at two farms. The state was in the final stages of constructing new cattle facilities at the London and Marion prison farms — and was about to begin installing the milking parlor equipment, when the intent to close and sell was announced. Grant Doepel, deputy communications chief for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, told Farm and Dairy the department is reassessing the new buildings at London and Marion, to see how they can be repurposed for the prison. He said some other prison farms were also undergoing some routine renovations, and those projects will be re-assessed, as well.

DRC will need the Ohio General Assembly’s approval to sell the property.

Digital farming could spell shake-up for crop chemicals sector

Global pesticides, seeds and fertilizer companies may be forced to re-engineer their business models as farmers adopt specialist technology that helps maximize harvests while reducing the use of crop chemicals. New businesses are springing up that promise to tell farmers how and when to till, sow, spray, fertilize or pick crops based on algorithms using data from their own fields. Their emphasis on reducing the use of chemicals and minerals known as farming inputs is a further challenge for an industry already struggling with weak agricultural markets worldwide.

Only rural hospital in Massachusetts imperiling Medicare funds

Under nearly impenetrable hospital payment rules, Medicare must reimburse a state’s urban hospitals for employee wages at least as much as it reimburses its rural hospitals. As a result, Nantucket sets the floor for wage reimbursements at hospitals across the state. And because Nantucket’s wages are high, due to its remote island location and steep cost of living, that has created bonuses for many other Massachusetts hospitals in recent years.

Not this year. Consultants hired by Partners made several errors that led to lower wages being reported to Medicare for Nantucket Hospital. They overestimated hours, thereby reducing the hourly rate, and did not include enough higher-paid physician hours and overtime pay, according to an e-mail from the Massachusetts Hospital Association obtained by the Globe.

Those mistakes, combined with another smaller adjustment to Nantucket’s wages, would result in a “steep and extraordinarily serious’’ decline in Medicare payments, wrote the association’s general counsel, Timothy Gens, in the e-mail. He said “the situation is further complicated by the fact that the [Medicare] deadline for corrections has passed.’’ The rates affect the next fiscal year, beginning in October.

Thousands of fish die in Colorado, concrete from flood recovery blamed

In early March, a resident of the small Colorado towns of Drake and Glen Haven — situated within northern Colorado’s Big Thompson River Canyon — reported noticing funky gray water in a side creek of the river and a murder of crows picking at a few dead fish. A few days later, March 7, a large plume of more cloudy water ran down the Big Thompson, leaving behind a massive fish kill. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials now confirm that more than 5,600 fish, mostly rainbow and brown trout, died in the Big Thompson and its North Fork, and are blaming concrete from a bridge reconstruction project, part of the state’s massive recovery and reconstruction effort following the September 2013 floods. 

The die-off is alarming news for the Big Thompson, a popular fly fishing river among tourists and locals, which formerly generated an annual $4.3 million for the region. Larry Rogstad, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Area Manager, says the “iconic” fishery is also important as one of the only rivers in Colorado with wild rainbow trout free of whirling disease. The 2013 floods had already knocked back the river’s fish populations, and Rogstad estimates the recent incident killed more than half of the estimated fish within an eight-mile-long downstream stretch of river.

Concrete can include toxic compounds and is very alkaline — which can be lethal to fish. High alkalinity was documented in the Big Thompson downstream of the bridge construction for eight river miles to a Loveland water-treatment plant in the days following the apparent concrete spill. Since then, water-quality levels have returned to normal, and officials continue to monitor any effects.