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Ohio EPA’s call on data center wastewater was right decision

Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency made an important decision this week when it opted NOT to proceed with a proposed statewide wastewater discharge permit for data centers. It is encouraging to see the agency understands the importance of reviewing this sort of thing on an individual, case-by-case basis. “After carefully reviewing the significant volume of public comments received on the draft National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System general permit for data centers, Ohio EPA has decided not to move forward with finalizing the general permit,” the agency said Tuesday, ...

Ohio’s bid to recruit, train 40K poll workers is about preparation

As Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office prepares for a $1 million initiative to recruit and train an additional 40,000 poll workers before November, the folks at the local level understand this isn’t about volume as much as it is about preparedness. LaRose says the effort updates requirements and resources to ensure poll workers are prepared to serve voters professionally, efficiently and in accordance with Ohio law. And Mandy Amos, director of the Washington County Board of Elections says that’s got a lot to do with the anticipation ahead of hotly contested races for ...

War in Iran may shape US policy for decades

The war with Iran that never really ended is back on. Like everybody else, including the Trump administration and the Iranian regime, I have no idea how it will end. But it eventually will, and how it will be remembered will matter enormously. Politics is about many things, but whether you call it “spin,” “framing” or “narrative competition,” storytelling is never far from the heart of it. As the philosopher Richard Rorty observed, “Competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation’s self-identity, and between ...

Abnormal is the new normal for the quality of our nation’s air

There’s poison in the air outside my house, a bitter smoke of ashes and hot freeway, and it is keeping us all inside. Yesterday morning, the kids’ summer camp announced that the planned trip to the pool had been cancelled. They would do activities indoors all day. “How high can it get?” one of the boys asked, and I admitted I didn’t know. We had gone through a stretch of bad air a few years earlier — also due to invading smoke from Canadian wildfires — and I remembered feeling worried back then, seeing numbers in the 180s. The air quality index for the town today ...

Someone should have been looking out for those kids

A Vinton County case in which 16 children were rescued from horrifying conditions and four adults now face child endangerment charges has raised a host of questions. One that repeatedly surfaces is how in the world no one noticed what was happening to those children, inside that house. The answer highlights the crucial role of public school truancy officers and the safeguard we take away from kids when we allow them to be removed from the public school setting without proper monitoring and assessment. NBC 4 requested records from Gallia County, where it reports the local school ...

In defense of data centers

New York just became the first state in the country to sign a moratorium on data centers. There are two paths forward on this issue. One path builds the infrastructure that runs the next 50 years of the American economy. The other bans the future, then acts surprised when the jobs show up somewhere else. I’m here to defend the data centers because most of the fear you’re hearing is manufactured. Most people opposed to data centers don’t live anywhere near one. Their concern isn’t experience. It’s a propaganda campaign. The legitimate worries all have answers. Yes, you often ...