Environment

Environmental advocates were in Albany Monday making the case that investing in the state's natural resources is good economic sense.

In part one of our series on Canadian power, we brought you a first story on the hydroelectricity New York imports from Canada. Today, we visit the site of a proposed plan that might send more power our way from the Canadian province of Newfoundland & Labrador. Innovation Trail reporter Emma Jacobs says the dam could bring jobs and renewable energy but also bring costs.

New York imports hydroelectricity generated by giant dams on Canadian rivers. And some would like to see the state get more of that renewable power. But as Emma Jacobs reports in the first story of our series on New York's imports of Canadian power, there's also opposition to that idea.

Bowing to pressure from environmental groups and the public, the state's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is extending the public comment period on its draft hydrofracking regulations.

When two italian brothers popularized broccoli in America during the 1920s, they centered their production in California's chilly Salinas Valley. It's largely stayed there because hot weather,like New York's hot and humid summers, stymies the plant's growth. But as WRVO's Adam Wolfe reports, a group of scientists plan on bringing broccoli east.

Even as local officials forecast a robust and growing economic impact from maritime shipping, they warn that impact worth many billions of dollars is threatened with extinction. As WRVO's Joyce Gramza reports, the shipping industry says the culprit would be the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The Department of Environmental Conservation held the first of four public hearings on hydrofracking Wednesday.More than 800 people descended on the vacant Dansville Middle School to rally both for and against the controversial natural gas drilling technique.

The Department of Environmental Conservation begins holding hearings on the rules that would govern hydrofracking this week. New Yorkers have watched closely as fracking has unfolded in Pennsylvania and some are wary that environmental abuses could happen here ¿ while others are eager for the economic boom drilling could bring. The Innovation Trail's Matt Richmond reports.

Libby Foust lives on a quiet gravel road outside Ithaca, in a farmhouse with a 360 degree view of green hills, woods and grain silos.

She moved her family here from a farm in Troy, Pennsylvania.

"Just a very small, quaint town, had not much to offer except local people with local jobs, lot of farming."