A large blue bus covered in the faces of women diagnosed with a little-known type of breast cancer pulled into Pilgrim Memorial State Park on Thursday, concluding a three-week, 3,000-mile journey. Plymouth resident Laurie Hutcheson was the driving force behind what she called the “beautiful rolling billboard of a bus,” a cross-country effort meant to […]
Category: Environment & Health
Posted inEnvironment & Health
A rare storm is bearing down on Plymouth. Here’s what you need to know.
This time, there was no calm before the storm. Thursday afternoon, more than a day out from a rare September nor’easter expected to pummel the Massachusetts coast, Plymouth Harbor already was speckled with whitecaps. Boats bobbed at their moorings, while others were plucked from the sea for safekeeping on land. “We stopped operation of our […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
State denies Holtec’s appeal of ban on wastewater discharge at Pilgrim plant
In a widely expected ruling, the state on Tuesday rejected Holtec International’s appeal of an order preventing it from discharging treated radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay as the company decommissions the Pilgrim nuclear power plant. The decision by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection upholds a 2024 denial of Holtec’s request to release up […]
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‘It’s like a bad nightmare’
The first shards of morning light had not appeared when the call came a week ago. Kaisang Ghale and his wife, Dechen, were still sleeping. A cousin was on the line from the Rasuwa region of Nepal where Ghale was born and raised before coming to Plymouth in 1999. “My wife woke me, saying, ‘Get […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
‘I just want to go to the beach’
Mention piping plovers in some circles around here and people might give you the bird. For two decades, the town has been compelled by the state to monitor vehicle access to the outer stretch of Plymouth’s Long Beach because plovers are protected under the Endangered Species Act. The three-mile barrier strip is one of their […]
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Half of all nursing homes in Massachusetts are understaffed
This investigation is republished in collaboration with the New Bedford Light. It felt like someone was hammering an ice pick into Lynette Couture’s leg. The 55-year-old was recovering in Plymouth Harborside Healthcare’s rehab unit last fall after a horrific car crash shattered her left leg. Doctors had drilled a metal device into her bones to […]
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It’s the heat and the humidity, to the extreme
You don’t need us to tell you how oppressive the weather is going to be deep into the holiday weekend – TV news stations have been hyping the heatwave nonstop since Sunday. Nonetheless, a quick review: Thursday and Friday are expected to be the worst days of this sweltering stretch, with temperatures in Plymouth reaching […]
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A.D. Makepeace accused of illegal sand mining
The Boston-based environmental watchdog group is accusing the developer of South Plymouth’s massive Redbrook development of illegally strip-mining millions of yards of sand and “destroying wetlands and waterways without accountability.” The accusations came in a letter to A.D. Makepeace Company – a developer and the state’s largest cranberry grower – announcing the Conservation Law Foundation’s […]
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Hospital expansion leads to $3.6 million in ‘Community Health’ grants
Local programs to help middle and high school students with mental health issues, older people facing social isolation, and families hit hard by grief have been awarded $1.3 million in community health grants from Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth. This is the first round of $3.6 million in state-mandated community health grants BID-Plymouth will award to […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
Power restored, roads open
Five days after a historic storm blasted through Plymouth, paralyzing most of the town for days, officials on Friday announced reopenings and a slow return to normal. Schools are set to reopen Monday. Roads are open along with most businesses, and libraries are expected to open on Saturday, along with the Manomet Youth Center, the […]