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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

NY Poised to Protect Seagrass —“Trees of the Sound”

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Friday, June 22, 2012   

NEW YORK - A measure designed to protect local seagrass soon should be headed to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, just as a new report shows action is needed to protect the state's multi-billion-dollar fishing industry.

In the same way animals need trees in the forest, says Nate Woiwode, marine and coastal policy advisor for The Nature Conservancy, seagrass is critical to local waters. His group just released a federally funded study that shows seagrass has been devastated in the Northeast, with as much as 90 percent of historic seagrass in some parts of New York and New England now gone.

"If you care about fishing, (if) you care about scalloping, if you like to eat fish that is locally caught, seagrass is an absolutely vital part of the lifecycle of those things, and we absolutely need to make sure that we protect it."

Woiwodie says nitrogen pollution from runoff water and air pollution from coal-fired power plants are two major factors believed to be causing the decline in seagrass. The state Senate soon should send the New York State Seagrass Protection Act to Cuomo for his expected signature.

The bill, S.4287B/A.7988A, is cosponsored by Rep. Robert Sweeney, D- Lindenhurst, and Sen. Owen Johnson, R-Babylon,

The Nature Conservancy supports the measure, Woiwodie says, because it not only protects a vital resource but also involves communities on the east end of Long Island, which are the most impacted by the decline in seagrass.

"When the governor has an opportunity to sign this, it's really going to be not just a law that protects the environment, but by virtue of protecting this resource, it is also protecting healthy coastal economies."

Woiwodie says coastal communities have a major role to play both in crafting solutions which will reduce the pollution that is killing off local seagrass, and also in protecting the most robust areas of seagrass that have survived.

The full report is online at nature.org.


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