News from rural America.

Silver mining made Northern Idaho wealthy, but left its mark on people's health, a similar issue affects folks along New York's Hudson River and critics claim rural renewable energy eats up farmland, while advocates believe they can co-exist. 

TRANSCRIPT

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

Silver mining made northern Idaho incredibly wealthy, but also left its mark on people's health in the rural Coeur d'Alene mountains.

Dating from 1917, the Bunker Hill smelting complex was the world's largest silver refinery, but most in the nearby communities were unaware it was putting out pollutants like lead oxide.

Cass Davis's father was a silver miner.

He blames lead contamination for his chronic pain and learning disabilities.

My parents knew that pollution was bad, but there was never really acknowledgement of lead poisoning.

Mary Jean Brown, formerly with the Centers for Disease Control, says children absorb significantly higher levels of lead than adults.

What happens with these kids when they go to school is they can't sit still.

She adds that symptoms last into adulthood.

They often have high blood pressure.

Cardiovascular problems are common among adults. - 50 years after cleanup began, the Silver Valley is still a Superfund site with high levels of lead. 2,000 miles away, New York's Hudson River has been intensely polluted, but also benefited from decades of cleanup.

A 200-mile stretch of the Hudson was prioritized in 1984 when the EPA declared it a Superfund site.

Now, as it's begun to recover, the focus is turning to forever chemical pollution and climate change.

Dan Shapley is with the non-profit Riverkeeper.

We can't eat the fish because there's too many PCBs in most of the fish.

You can swim most places most of the time.

It's hard for people to get that those two things can be true.

And Jen Benson with Hudson River Clearwater Sloop says new extremes in weather can hurt the river's health.

Climate change also leads to more severe weather, both on the drought side, but also on the wet side.

Too dry and too wet conditions can both put stress on the Hudson.

Critics of rural renewable energy say it eats up farmland.

But as Anja Slapien reports, others are finding the two can coexist.

The USDA has stopped supporting renewable energy projects on farmland, calling it a waste of valuable cropland.

But agrivoltaics generate solar power and ag products on the same land.

Texan Chad Raines says his livestock actually helps keep plants from blocking the panels.

That's where the sheep have come in.

It's a natural way to manage the grass.

Some farmers raise root vegetables and leafy greens that grow well in the shade of the panels.

Others farm around wind turbines.

Jeff Risley with Renewable Energy Farmers of America says steady income from clean power projects is one of the few things now boosting the farm's finances.

The biggest thing eating up rural American land, it's urban sprawl.

I'm Anya Slapien.

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.