City of Pittsfield to Host a Community Input Session

Press Release

"PITTSFIELD, Mass. (March 19, 2024) – The City of Pittsfield Department of Community Development, in partnership with Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, has been working with an urban planning and design consulting team to discuss zoning in the Westside. The next community input session will be held on Monday, April 8, 2024, at 6 p.m. at Conte Community School, 200 West Union Street, Pittsfield. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. This session will provide opportunities for attendees to be involved in an interactive mapping exercise while actively designing a neighborhood they want to see. Attendees will be able to share ideas about what they want their community to look like, including options for housing and small businesses. Refreshments and childcare will be provided by Habitat. Pre-registration is required by calling Habitat at (413) 442-3181 extension 0 or by emailing Connecting@berkshirehabitat.org. You can also preregister online: https://berkshirehabitat.org/community-meeting/ For more information, please call the City Planner, Jacinta Williams, at (413) 499-9366 or email at jwilliams@cityofpittsfield.org." READ MORE

Coming April 8: A Total Eclipse of the Sun

Michael J. Caduto | The Outside Story

The Fascinating Adaptations of Frogs

Rebecca Perkins Hanissian | The Outside Story

"Frogs have hopped about Earth since before the time of the dinosaurs, and it shows. Celebrated for their amphibious lifestyle and cacophonous choruses, the long arc of frog evolution has yielded other awesome and efficient adaptations in organs from their lungs to their skin. Research on green tree frogs demonstrates that frog lungs also assist in hearing. Like noise canceling headphones, frog lungs help dampen extraneous sounds – such as the calls of other frog species, insects, and airplanes – and allow females to hear the calls of their own species through the din. When frogs inflate their lungs, their thin, rib-less body walls vibrate with sound waves. The lungs transmit these waves to the inner ear, where they interact with sound waves arriving via the frog’s ear. Researchers believe the sound waves of noises other than species-specific calls interact with one another in a way (called 'destructive inference') that dampens them and allows females to better hear the males of her species. Not only do frogs detect sounds with their lungs, but they can also drink and breathe through their skin. Frogs absorb water through their skin when submerged. Some terrestrial frogs also have a highly vascularized surface located near their hind legs – called a seat patch – that is responsible for more than 70 percent of total water uptake, despite constituting just 10 percent of the skin area. These frogs change their posture to depress the patch onto moist surfaces to control absorption. Perhaps the most fascinating frog adaptation is the ability to breathe on land and in water via four respiratory systems. When submerged, adult frogs breathe exclusively through their thin skin (cutaneous respiration), which diffuses dissolved oxygen into blood vessels beneath the skin. Because their lungs are inefficient, frogs rely on supplementary cutaneous respiration while on land. Frogs do not have diaphragms to pull air into their lungs and rely instead on 'buccal pumping' – expanding and contracting their closed mouth – to create a vacuum that drives air into and out of their lungs through their nostrils. Moreover, the lining of their mouth is a respiratory surface. Almost all frogs begin their lives in the water as tadpoles. In this larval stage, frogs extract dissolved oxygen from water as it passes over their gills and skin, especially the highly vascularized skin of their temporary tails. Eventually, the gills and tails of metamorphosing larvae degenerate, and lungs develop, allowing frogs to venture onto land. As if skin breathing, metamorphosis, and selective lung listening aren’t sufficient party tricks, frogs’ eyes provide nearly 360 degrees of vision, allow them to see in low light and under water, and help them to swallow their food. Frogs do not chew their food but use modified teeth to hold their prey while they retract their eyeballs to push food into their esophagus. According to Jim Andrews of the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas, one of the coolest adaptations of the frogs in our region is freeze tolerance. Freeze-tolerant species, including wood frogs and spring peepers, survive the winter in a semi-frozen state in the leaf litter below the snow. The liver releases sugars that act as anti-freeze within the frog’s cells to prevent the cells from freezing and bursting. Meanwhile, the fluid between these cells freezes solid. 'They’re like frogcicles,' Andrews said. He also admires the resourcefulness of 'satellite males.' These male frogs, for whatever reason, lack good voices, be it the deep drone of a bullfrog or the high-pitched chirp of a peeper. Sensing their ineptitude, satellite males position themselves next to males with good voices and grab the females that are called in by them. 'It’s not unlike a junior high party, where kids jockey to sit with the cool kids,' Andrews said..." READ MORE

Massachusetts moves to protect horseshoe crabs during spawning

AP News

"BOSTON (AP) — Wildlife protection advocates are welcoming a decision by the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission to approve protections for horseshoe crabs during spawning, which is when the creatures are at their most vulnerable. The move comes as interstate regulators are limiting the harvest of the primordial species of invertebrate to try to help rebuild its population and aid a threatened species of bird. Horseshoe crabs predate the dinosaurs, having inhabited ocean environments for more than 400 years, but their populations have been depleted for decades due to harvest in part for bait to catch eels and whelk, a species of sea snail. Their blood is also used to test for potentially dangerous impurities by drug and medical device makers. The regulation needs final approval by Gov. Maura Healey, expected in the coming months. David O’Neill, president of Mass Audubon, said he was ecstatic over the new regulations. 'Protecting horseshoe crabs during spawning season is incredibly important to getting this keystone species back to historic population levels that are critical to the health of coastal ecosystems, including the migratory birds that rely on them,' O’Neill said in a statement. He said Massachusetts had been lagging behind other East Coast states that have strengthened protections for horseshoe crab populations including New Jersey, Delaware, and South Carolina. The animals have been declining in some of their range, and they’re critically important as a food source for the red knot, a migratory shorebird listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said it will allow no harvest of female horseshoe crabs that originate in the Delaware Bay during the 2024 fishing season, but it will allow more harvest of male horseshoe crabs in the mid-Atlantic to help make up for that. Despite their names, horseshoe crabs are not really crustaceans but are more closely related to spiders and scorpions, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration." READ MORE

New York State Legislature Votes to Ban CO2 Fracking, Closing a Decade-Old Loophole in State Law

Keerti Gopal | Inside Climate News

"The vote is a new win for the state’s anti-fracking movement, which sees the novel process as a way to skirt a ban it pushed through ten years ago, and heads off a Texas-based company that says it would produce net-zero natural gas and sequester carbon dioxide. New York State lawmakers voted Wednesday to pass a bill prohibiting carbon dioxide fracking, expanding the state’s decade-old fracking ban. The bill—which amends the existing environmental conservation law—was introduced in January and passed the state Assembly earlier this month by a margin of 98-50. On Wednesday, the bill passed the state Senate by a 46-16 vote and it now awaits the signature of Governor Kathy Hochul. 'Injecting incredibly dangerous concentrated CO2 into the ground and hoping to never have to think about it again is like a kid saying they’ve cleaned their room by shoving it all under the bed,' said Democratic state Sen. Liz Krueger, a co-sponsor of the bill, in a statement. 'We don’t need this ridiculous concept damaging our land, our water, and our people’s health and offering more false solutions to the greatest challenge of our time.' The bill’s swift movement through the legislature was buoyed by fierce advocacy from many of the same organizations and activists who campaigned against fracking 10 years ago. Alex Beauchamp, Northeast Region director at the advocacy organization Food and Water Watch, was among the veteran anti-fracking activists who pushed to expand the ban. He said the new bill’s rapid progression is in part a testament to the strength of the original movement, which brought together legal and medical experts, environmental advocates, local community members and celebrities. The movement also attracted hoards of demonstrators to Albany and made a lasting impression on the state’s legislature. 'It was the single largest grassroots environmental thing that has happened in New York in at least 20 years,' Beauchamp said. 'The legislators remember the halls of the [state] Capitol being filled over and over and over with anti-fracking activists.' The bill received opposition from some Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Patrick Gallivan (R, C), the minority whip, who cited landowner rights and a need for further research. 'More information on the true environmental impact of using liquified carbon dioxide in the extraction of natural gas is needed,' said Gallivan, who voted against the bill, in an emailed statement. 'The Legislature should not limit the rights of landowners without a thorough review of possible risks and benefits of the technology.' The expanded ban comes after Southern Tier CO2 to Clean Energy Solutions LLC made waves with a proposal to drill wells in the Southern Tier—a subregion of Upstate New York—using liquid carbon dioxide instead of fracking fluids and water to fracture underground rock formations and release natural gas, which is largely methane. The company has a business address and registered agent in Texas, in addition to its official address in New York, and is owned by CO2 to Clean Energy Solutions, which is registered in Wyoming. 

Southern Tier Solutions claims its proposal would be a more environmentally friendly way of fracking for natural gas while also sequestering carbon. But the proposal quickly sparked strong opposition from environmentalists, and the company has since gone silent. Southern Tier Solutions did not respond to a request for comment on the bill. Southern Tier Solutions also said it plans to build new direct air capture facilities to sequester more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in addition to captured industrial emissions, for use in fracking. Although proponents claim that CO2 fracking is a green alternative to hydraulic fracking and boast of the process’s potential to provide fossil fuels with net zero greenhouse gas emissions, opponents say it brings many of the same dangers and environmental hazards as traditional fracking and is, in some ways, even more dangerous. 'There are no risks that are removed by using waste CO2 instead of water, and then there are many additional risks that are added…because CO2 is a terrible poison,' said Sandra Steingraber, a biologist with the Science and Environmental Health Network and one of the leading anti-frack activists who pushed for the 2014 ban. Acute exposure to high concentrations of carbon dioxide pose severe health risks, including respiratory distress and cardiovascular problems, headaches, loss of consciousness, poisoning and asphyxiation. Pipeline ruptures can cause respiratory illness, and injected CO2 has potential to contaminate groundwater. Some researchers have also found links between CO2 fracking and increased seismic activity. 'There is no dollar sign, no amount of money that can cover the cost of long term healthcare implications for these types of practices,' said Sen. Lea Webb, a Democrat who sponsored the bill and whose district is in the Southern Tier, before the vote. In 2014, as the nation underwent a fracking boom, New York became one of the first states to ban hydraulic fracking, garnering widespread support from environmentalists and health advocates. But Beauchamp said that at the time of the original fracking ban, no one was talking about carbon dioxide fracking. Southern Tier Solutions’ proposal is only the latest iteration of the oil and gas industry attempting to get around the state’s fracking ban, he said. 'I assume in the future, there will be some other novel way to try to get at the gas that we’ve successfully kept in the ground,' he said. 'And hopefully, once again, the grassroots movement would come together and beat them back again.' On its website, Southern Tier Solutions notes the Inflation Reduction Act’s carbon sequestration credits—valued at $180 per metric ton of permanently stored carbon for direct air capture facilities—that the company might receive, and critics have pointed out that big federal tax credits for carbon sequestration projects mean there’s a danger that money meant to incentivize climate solutions could instead go to oil and gas industry projects that prove harmful to the environment. It’s incumbent on states to ensure that projects receiving federal credits are actually pursuing solutions, Beauchamp said. 'There’s so much money flying around and so little oversight, that I just have no confidence at all that the federal government will be able to ensure that the money goes to projects that actually lower greenhouse gas emissions,' he said. Advocates said that the mobilization of actors working to expand the ban has felt like a reunion, bringing together many of the same groups and individual leaders who pushed for the original ban a decade ago. Now, advocates urge Hochul to sign the bill immediately instead of waiting until the end of the year, in order to cut off the ability of Southern Tier Solutions or other companies to file for fracking permits under the wire.

The bill’s supporters included national and statewide actors, as well as local organizations in the Southern Tier. Among the more than 90 organizations supporting the expanded ban are major players from the first anti-fracking fight like Frack Action, Food and Water Watch, Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Citizen Action of New York. Celebrity supporters of the campaign, including actor Mark Ruffalo and musician Natalie Merchant, also returned to advocate for the bill. Steingraber said that the bill’s speedy passage is indicative of public progress in understanding the science of fossil fuels, health and climate change. 'It wasn’t a heavy lift this time around because we’re just in a different political space,' she said. 'The climate crisis is more of a crisis now than ever, and we’re starting to really denormalize fossil fuels.'" READ MORE