A continuing contractual dispute between the state Department of Environmental Protection and the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth is delaying efforts to clean coastal waters all over the Cape and Islands, and must be solved quickly, state Sen. Robert O’Leary said yesterday.
The 11-month standoff has left towns without important data, compiled under the Massachusetts Estuaries Project, documenting the health and particularly the nutrient loading of their estuaries, bays and ponds. The information is needed for remediation and planning.
By MIKE SECCOMBE
It sometimes seems, when trying to get on or off the Vineyard, that the Steamship Authority ferries are always booked.
But that apparently is not right. There is persistent excess capacity, and boat line senior managers have colored graphs and spreadsheets to prove it.
Today, when the SSA governors convene on Nantucket for their June meeting, they will have those graphs and spreadsheets in front of them as they begin talking about next year’s operating schedule, and possibly even the fall operating schedule.
When John Biguenet was writing Rising Water, his play about two people trapped by the flooding of New Orleans, the first four or five drafts were “so furiously angry” that they could not be performed.
Mr. Biguenet, whose family had lived in New Orleans for a couple of centuries, was deeply personally affected, and as a result he was packing his play “full of my opinions . . . my anger and my opinions and my sadness.”
The post-mortem report on the tiny bird was clinically graphic.
The chick was laterally compressed, with internal trauma to the right side, and hepatic, pulmonary and intestinal rupturing. The left eye contained sand grains adhered to the surface and compressed within, misshaping it. There was trauma to the left side of the brain and the pelvis was squashed out of alignment.
“The bird was otherwise in good condition, and results are consistent with the hypothesis that the chick died from being crushed,” the report said.
The back of the T-shirt read: “Burn Crew 2007. Burning landscapes near you.” Under those words was the equivalent of a band’s performance schedule, a dozen locales across six states.
And even though the wearer of the shirt and eight other members of her group were sitting around in a circle in a weedy clearing in the woods in firefighting gear on Wednesday, it was very like the atmosphere at the sound check before a music gig.
The removal of plants and trees from conservation land owned by the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation for use in a large private landscaping job began some two years ago, according to documents detailing the extent of the damage done by the operation.
