Virginia Martin

Audubon Study Finds Warming Climate May Be Inhospitable to Alabama State Bird

This is the first in a series of four stories about how changing weather patterns are and will affect the Black Belt. Let us travel to the West Alabama Black Belt and consider our state bird. We like to call it the yellowhammer. It is part of the “Rammer Jammer” song that University of Alabama fans sing after a Tide victory. This bird’s more formal name is the Northern Flicker, and like all woodpeckers we see here, it is a striking combination of colors. The male is brown, with a bunch of dots on its underbelly, a black “whisker” extending from the base of its bill, a black bib just below its neck, a white rump, yellow shafts on its tail and flight feathers, and a red streak looping around the back of its neck. These days, you can spot the yellowhammer year ‘round in The Heart of Dixie. But not long from now, it could be too hot for the official state bird to live here in the summertime, especially in areas such as the Black Belt, known for the intensity of the heat in July, August and September. That’s one of the findings reported in Survival By Degrees, a recently released Aububon Society study on the impact of warming global temperatures on various species of birds. “It’s hard to imagine our state bird being just a winter bird,” said Alabama Audubon Executive Director Ansel Payne. Read more. More stories in the series: Sunday: In West Alabama, Life Is Hard. Warmer Weather Forecasts Worse Problems Tuesday: Wood Pellet Plants in Job-Hungry Southern Towns Prompt Environmentalists’ Warnings Wednesday: Cattle, Catfish, and Cover Crops. Alabama Farms Play Role in Slowing Climate Change

by Tom Gordon

In West Alabama, Life Is Hard. Warmer Weather Forecasts Worse Problems

This is the first in a series of four stories about how changing weather patterns are and will affect the Black Belt. Much of West Alabama’s rural Black Belt is beset with long-standing poverty, poor health, deteriorating infrastructure, suspect water quality and the mental and physical stresses that accompany those conditions. Climate change is making those problems worse – or at least harder to overcome – and that effect is projected to increase in the coming decades. Increasingly higher temperatures year-round are bringing more extreme and violent storms, heavier rainfall and extended periods of drought. The threats are clear, scientists almost universally agree. Disease-causing organisms thrive in warmer weather. Increased flooding causes already inadequate sewage treatment systems to fail as well as damaging streams and rivers with greater sediment and fertilizer run-off. Stronger tornadoes tear up the landscape and homes and terrorize the population. What made the Black Belt different? Almost two centuries ago, plows overturned the rich earth of the diverse, tall-grass prairies in the Alabama Black Belt to create the plantation culture based on a single crop, cotton. The act, together with the import of slaves from Africa and the Caribbean, transformed the region into an economic powerhouse for the next 150 years – until the soil was depleted and eroded. Since then the land in many cases has been given over to pine trees, cattle ranches, catfish ponds and a patchwork quilt of soy and corn fields. Read more.

by Hank Black

Prison Study Group Aims at Rehabbing the Convicted Before Turning to Prisons

UPDATED MONTGOMERY — Gov. Kay Ivey’s prison study group held its last public session Tuesday, with lawmakers on the body calling for more resources to keep potential inmates out of the state’s overcrowded, understaffed and violence-plagued prison system, as well as other steps to reduce the existing population and better equip those who leave the system to never return. “I’ve got to come up with a report that says, ‘This is where we have unanimity, this is where we have differences of opinion,” said former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Champ Lyons. At Ivey’s request, Lyons has chaired the Governor's Study Group on Criminal Justice Policy. He was scheduled to meet with Ivey on Tuesday afternoon. Lyons said the group’s report should be complete and made public in a week or 10 days. The study group, whose members also included state Finance Director Kelly Butler, Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn and a stand-in for Attorney Gen. Steve Marshall, began its work last summer. Charged with helping the state better address the prison system’s problems, it has reviewed major litigation facing the system, visited some of the state’s prisons and discussed the shortage of correctional officers. Read more.

by Tom Gordon

Mural Disagreement Delays Grant to Five Points West

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin and District 8 Councilor Steven Hoyt clashed Tuesday over a proposed grant that would fund five new murals in Five Points West, in addition to several other programs, The argument resulted in a two-week delay and threats from Woodfin to scuttle the grant entirely. The grant, part of Woodfin’s Bold — Building Opportunities for Lasting Development — program, would give the Five Points West/Crossplex Business Alliance $26,500 to provide a variety of services, including training, talent and recruitment programs for local businesses, a new business office for meetings and training to be developed in tandem with Main Street Alabama, façade and signage improvements for small businesses and the collection of data “regarding all businesses and commercial properties in the Five Points West Commercial Corridor.” But Hoyt, who had called for the item to be delayed when it appeared before the council last month, took issue with one clause in the proposed grant requiring the business alliance to develop five murals in the Five Points West business district. Read more.

by Sam Prickett

Alabama Representatives Flip Votes on Two Measures Involving Cleanup of PFAS Pollution

KEY VOTES AHEAD The House will take up measures concerning age discrimination in the workplace and student loan forgiveness the week of Jan. 13, while the Senate will vote on judicial and executive branch nominations and possibly a measure restraining the administration's actions against Iran. WASHINGTON — Alabama’s representatives in the U.S. House last week flipped votes on two issues concerning regulation of PFAS chemicals, which have been linked to cancer and found in levels above those allowed by the EPA in the Tennessee River, drinking water and land in northern Alabama. Alabama’s lone Democrat in the House voted for a bill addressing cleanup of PFAS contamination, and the Republicans who voted gave it a thumbs-down. Then the Republicans voted for a motion to specifically name unborn children among the populations that should be protected from PFAS exposure, and the Democrat voted against it. Read more.

by Voterama in Congress

‘Bird Nerd’ Wraps up Study of Bird Deaths From Flying Into Windows

As the sun rises on a workday in downtown Birmingham, the human population in the city’s center typically includes a small group: first responders, cooks, cleaners, security guards, the homeless and those seeking to get some quiet time in the office before their colleagues arrive. During the past two years, that early morning population also frequently has included a woman walking slowly and looking closely at the sidewalks, plazas and lawns outside glass-fronted buildings. Sometimes — as much as 20 times on the morning of Oct. 13 — she would pause, kneel, remove a small brown paper sack from her shoulder bag and carefully place inside it the carcass of a dead bird, usually one that had been migrating through town. Her name is Jessie Griswold. She is the lead animal care professional at the Birmingham Zoo’s Animal Health Center. She also is an unabashed “bird nerd.” She recently concluded work on a research grant — the only type of its kind recently done in the state — to bring to local light a problem that has afflicted Birmingham and other metropolitan areas around the country. The problem? Bird deaths from window collisions. Read more.

by Tom Gordon

Jefferson County Commission Delays Vote on Fee for Card Payments

John Henry twice said his goodbyes on Thursday – first at his final meeting of the Jefferson County Commission and then at a farewell event in his honor later in the afternoon. But the final wave goodbye for the county’s chief financial officer will likely be his input in a tabled matter concerning the proposal to add a 1% convenience fee of no less than $1.95 to over-the-counter business conducted by credit or debit card with Jefferson County. Henry suggested that commissioners table the matter for two weeks so he and Revenue Director Travis Hulsey can find an answer to a revenue department budget shortfall because of the increasing use of credit and debit cards. “We definitely understand the concerns in reference to the hit to constituents,” the outgoing CFO said. Read more.

by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.

Jefferson County Commission Moves to Preserve Downtown Jail Where Martin Luther King Jr. Was Held

The Jefferson County Commission today took the first steps toward acknowledging and preserving remnants of the jail where Martin Luther King Jr. was held. History often refers to King’s Birmingham incarceration in 1963, during which he penned his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. But months before his 1968 assassination, King was again jailed in Jefferson County, first in Bessemer and a day later on the seventh floor of the Jefferson County Courthouse in downtown Birmingham. Mark Pettway, the first black elected sheriff of the county, said he is proud to be part of this memorial to King. “We have an opportunity to tell the full story about someone who came to Jefferson County to change the lives of all those who lived here,” Pettway said. “We want to make sure that that hidden treasure that is here in this building … is memorialized to make sure that the full story does not end in Bessemer but continues here in this part of Jefferson County.”

by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.

Jones Pushes for Witnesses to Testify During Trump Trial, Talks About Tensions With Iran

The U.S. Senate should conduct a “full, fair and complete” trial of President Donald Trump that includes the testimony of witnesses and the presence of the president’s lawyers to question them, U.S. Sen. Doug Jones said Thursday. “I have said consistently that I believe the American people deserve a full, fair and complete trial,” Jones said. “Justice that is fair and impartial requires witnesses, documents and the pursuit of truth over everything else. It appears that we may not be headed for a trial with witnesses.” During his weekly telephone news conference with Alabama reporters, the freshman Democrat said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has announced rules that would allow presentation of evidence and questions from senators before taking up the question of whether witnesses will be allowed. Read more.

by Glenn Stephens

Birmingham and UAB Partner to Offer Free Tuition to City Graduates

The University of Alabama at Birmingham will offer full tuition scholarships to some graduates of Birmingham City Schools as part of a new partnership with the City of Birmingham. The city and UAB announced the scholarship program Thursday morning at a press conference. “It makes a down payment on our city’s economic competitiveness,” Mayor Randall Woodfin says. The Birmingham Promise Scholarship is part of a city initiative that plans to offer graduates of Birmingham schools full tuition to all in-state public universities and colleges. UAB is the first academic partner to support the Birmingham Promise with a scholarship. UAB estimates it’ll contribute $250,000 the first year, according to a spokesperson for the city. The Birmingham Promise Incorporated does not yet have an estimate on how much it’ll contribute. Read more.

by Miranda Fulmore