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OMAHA — There’s a term baseball coaches often use about their teams: “coming full circle.” It’s usually a good thing. With Ole Miss, it’s better than good. When Mike Bianco used the term Sunday morning before a practice at Creighton University, “full circle” was more like baseball Nirvana.

As has been well-documented, Ole Miss has been to baseball hell and back in one season.

Think about it. On May 1, Bianco’s Rebels left Fayetteville having lost tough games to the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday and Sunday. The defeats dropped the Rebels to 7-14 in the Southeastern Conference and 22-17 overall. They didn’t have their backs to the wall, so much as they were locked behind an impenetrable wall with seemingly no way out and precious little oxygen left to breathe.

Since then, Ole Miss has won 14 of 17. The Rebels are a perfect 6-0 in the NCAA Tournament, the only team in the tournament that has not suffered a single defeat. They are one of four teams still undefeated in the College World Series. They have out-scored NCAA competition 51-12. They are on the proverbial roll.

So, now, who do they play in the most important game an Ole Miss baseball team has played in decades?

Arkansas, that’s who. Full circle. The winner of Monday night’s 6 p.m. all-SEC matchup will be one victory away from the CWS best-of-three championship series. The loser drops into the losers’ bracket and must win three straight games without losing to reach the championship series.

If Ole Miss is the hottest team in the tournament – and the numbers say the Rebels are – then the Razorbacks are close behind. The Hogs have won four straight and Saturday afternoon crushed Stanford, the highest seeded team in the CWS, 17-2.

Arkansas, 44-19, has won six of seven games in the NCAA Tournament, losing only to Oklahoma State in the Stillwater Regional. The Razorbacks are an offensive machine, having slugged 102 home runs, including two among their 21 hits in the battering of Stanford.

“They can swing it, that’s for sure,” said Ole Miss freshman Hunter Elliott, the left-hander who will start Saturday night’s game. You gotta make pitches against them. If you make mistakes, they hit home runs.

“In the series we played against them, I think every run they scored came on home runs. That tells you they hit mistakes.”

Elliott, who is 19 years young, hasn’t made many mistakes lately. He allowed three hits and struck out 10 in a 5-0 Super Regional-clinching victory over Southern Miss. He pitched five innings of three-hit, one-run baseball against Miami in the Coral Gables Regional. Before hostile crowds and under intense pressure, he has been dominant in NCAA competition.

“It’s unbelievable what Hunter has done,” second baseman Peyton Chatagnier said. “It’s crazy really. He has so much confidence. It’s like he knows he’s going to get the job done.”

Catcher Hayden Dunhurst has watched Elliott’s freshman progression from a distance of just over 60 feet away.

“He’s gotten a lot better over the course of the season, and you can see it in his body language,” Dunhurst said. “He’s acting like a veteran not a freshman.”

Dunhurst said he noticed the unmistakeable transformation happen in the second game of the three-game series at Arkansas. Ole Miss lost the game 6-3 but it was no fault of Elliott, who pitched well. Elliott allowed three runs on just four hits over six innings. He struck out eight and walked only one. All three Razorbacks runs against Elliott came on two home runs.

Said Dunhurst, “He got in a jam, but he worked his way out of it. You could see it happen. He kept his composure, held his head high and his shoulders back. He’s been that way since.”

Asked about how he felt about starting a true freshman in such a huge game as Monday night’s showdown with Arkansas, Bianco responded, “We have all the confidence in the world in Hunter right now. He’s earned it. It’s hard to do what he has done in the conference.”

Bianco pointed out that Elliott’s statistics – as impressive as they are – are even better when you consider the circumstances. The kid’s record is 4-3. His earned run average is a nifty 2.82. Opponents hit only .202 against him.

“But you gotta realize those statistics have largely come against SEC competition,” Bianco said. “We didn’t move him to the starting rotation until the conference season started. A lot of guys pad their numbers in the early season against lesser competition. Hunter didn’t have that luxury. His numbers are really good, but they are better than they look, actually.

“We knew he was going to be good. We knew he was going to be a weekend arm. That’s why we signed him. But we didn’t know when that was going to happen. We’ve had a lot of stars in this program that weren’t stars when they were freshmen.”

This freshman will make the most important start of his life before more than 25,000 people at the College World Series and before millions of viewers on ESPN. Will the stage be too big?

No, he says. There might be some pre-game butterflies, he admits.

Said Elliott, “But once you throw the first couple pitches, you just lock in and it’s just another game.”

Just another game? Just the most important game in Ole Miss history since long, long before he was born – if ever.

The post Arkansas marked the low point for Rebs. Now the Hogs stand in their way appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with one of the owners and founders of The Great Mississippi Tea Company, Jason McDonald. Jason graduated valedictorian of his class at Hammond High [Magnet] School in Hammond, Louisiana. He graduated from Millsaps College in 2001 with a BA in Religious Studies. He attended law school at Mississippi College School of Law until 2010, when he realized that law was not his life’s work.

In January 2010, Jason became a partner of McDonald Land and Timber, LLC with other members of his family. As a timber farmer, Jason saw first-hand the decimation that a hurricane the size of Katrina can leave in its wake for farmers. Jason set off to find a crop that is ethically sustainable and environmentally friendly and can survive a hurricane with little to no damage. Jason stumbled upon a venture in the land of his forefathers in South Carolina, The Charleston Tea Plantation. Jason decided that tea may well be the next boom crop for Mississippi and the United States, after all, tea is the second-most consumed beverage on the planet besides water. There is only one problem; tea is not widely grown in the First World because of labor costs and human rights.

Jason has set about researching all aspects of the industry, consulting with some of the most decorated people in the tea world, and enlisting many industrial, manufacturing, and machine professionals to tear apart and rebuild the tea industry to make it work in the developed world, just as he did when he was a child. It is because of this curiosity and ingenuity that we are proud to have him as the driving force behind The Great Mississippi Tea Company. His is a story of resilience, pivoting, growing and entrepreneurial spirit. And The Great Mississippi Tea Company continues to grow and win international acclaim for its Mississippi-grown teas.

Sponsored by the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

The post Mississippi Stories: Jason McDonald appeared first on Mississippi Today.

“You saw me take my first breath. I saw you take your last. Daddy 5-23-85 – 8-23-21,” reads the tattoo on Lakirah Alexander’s arm. The inked words and art of a broken heart honor Alexander’s father, who was a victim of gun violence.

“Makes you think. Makes you wonder,” said Valerie Alexander, Lakirah’s grandmother. “We sat down with family and decided to open a business. For Lakirah, it’s a good way for her to learn responsibility and honor her father, make him proud. It’s all about her building a life that she wants, and she has family to help her do just that.”

Driven and determined, Lakirah, with her grandmother’s help, opened Tasty Takes, a restaurant on U.S. 49 in Star, all while juggling what comes with being a busy, graduating senior at McLaurin High School.

From end-of-year classes to being on the basketball team to prom, graduation and college campus visits, her to-do list would frazzle many adults.

“I like it a lot, and I get to meet all kinds of people,” Lakirah said of her blooming business. “I’m learning how to earn money for my future because I am going to college. I’m thinking about something in the medical field,” said the young restaurant owner.

Tasty Takes isn’t big, nor is it fancy, but the customers line up Monday through Saturday for burgers, hot dogs, french fries and sodas. A few picnic tables invite some to sit outside awhile when the weather is good and enjoy their meals while traffic zips by on the highway.

The post Young entrepreneur honors father with opening of restaurant appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The South Dakota Republican leadership, like many of their counterparts in Mississippi, oppose accepting federal funds to provide health insurance for primarily the working poor.

In South Dakota, the Republican leadership tried to prevent approval of an upcoming citizen-sponsored ballot initiative that would mandate the expansion of Medicaid if passed by voters in November. In a preemptive move, South Dakota legislators placed a constitutional amendment on the June party primary election ballot that would have required any citizen-sponsored initiative going forward (such as Medicaid expansion on the November ballot) to garner the approval of 60% of voters instead of the customary majority vote to pass.

South Dakotans rejected the constitutional amendment earlier this month, setting the table for their likely approval in November of the citizen-sponsored initiative to expand Medicaid to provide health insurance for primarily the working poor.

In Mississippi, if not for the action of elected officials, a proposal to expand Medicaid also most likely would have been on the upcoming November ballot. But unlike in South Dakota, the aim of the elected officials in Mississippi was not to stop Medicaid expansion, though that was one result of their actions.

In May 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled invalid a citizen-sponsored initiative to approve medical marijuana. In doing so, the 9-member elected Supreme Court also ruled invalid the entire initiative process. That decision halted the effort of Medicaid expansion supporters, including the Mississippi Hospital Association, to garner the required number of signatures needed to place the initiative on the November 2022 ballot.

Legislators said during the 2022 session they would fix the language that led to the Supreme Court ruling the initiative process invalid and reinstate it. But in the end, legislators could not agree on that fix and the session ended without legislators restoring the initiative process.

It would be easy to assume that legislators failed to restore the initiative process because they wanted to prevent another effort to place Medicaid expansion on the ballot. But the facts do not necessarily support that assumption.

One of the primary opponents of Medicaid expansion is House Speaker Philip Gunn. But Gunn was backing a proposal to restore the initiative process with essentially the same signature mandates as the original process.

Over in the Senate, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the presiding officer, has indicated support for some form of Medicaid expansion. But it was Hosemann’s Senate leadership that was arguing for requiring a much greater number of signatures to place an issue on the ballot. The Senate’s proposal would have more than doubled the number of signatures needed to place an issue on the ballot, making it more difficult for the Medicaid expansion supporters to succeed. In the end the two sides could not reach agreement on the mandated number of signatures.

In essence, the House, where Gunn opposes Medicaid expansion, was fighting not to make it more difficult to place issues on the ballot while the Senate, where Hosemann has indicated some support for Medicaid expansion, was advocating for making it much more difficult to place issues on the ballot.

Unless Gunn was using some super Jedi mind game where he was tricking the Senate with reverse psychology, his intent was not to block the initiative from being used for Medicaid expansion.

But it would make sense that those opposed to Medicaid expansion would be leery of the initiative process. After all, voters in six Republican states have subverted the wishes of their elected officials and expanded Medicaid.

As mentioned, South Dakota will likely be the seventh this November. And polls indicate Mississippians would have approved Medicaid expansion had it reached the ballot this fall.

The only state where the ballot initiative to expand Medicaid was not successful thus far, other than Mississippi, is Florida. And in that case, legislators were successful in changing the rules of signature gathering mid-stream and throwing up legal obstacles to the effort to expand Medicaid through the ballot initiative.

Thus far, 38 states have expanded Medicaid. The North Carolina Legislature is considering a Medicaid expansion proposal. Of those states that have not expanded Medicaid, only three — South Dakota, Wyoming and Florida — have mechanisms for citizens to bypass the Legislature and place initiatives on the ballot.

Perhaps there will be efforts again in the 2023 Legislature to restore the initiative process in Mississippi and give Medicaid supporters another opportunity to place the issue before voters.

The post Mississippi officials did what South Dakota leaders couldn’t — block Medicaid expansion appeared first on Mississippi Today.

I’ve come to understand a simple truth: The very worst things could be happening in the world around you, but everything feels so much better while watching a baseball game with your dad.

I owe my obsession with the game to Dad. He coached my tee ball team, we played catch in the front yard until it got too dark to see, and he taught me swing mechanics. He made so many sacrifices to watch me play in Little League, and he encouraged me after I realized in middle school that my dream of becoming a big league player was just so laughably, unbelievably unattainable.

He let me stay up way past my bedtime to watch our Boston Red Sox finish close games. Watching us play the Yankees, he taught me the skill of respectful trash talk (I later learned the art of vulgar trash talk in the right field Ole Miss student section). I’ll forever cherish some of the lessons I learned when Dad took me to my first Major League game at the old Turner Field in Atlanta, and our first trip to Fenway Park was borderline spiritual.

But perhaps the most important thing dad has taught me about baseball is that it’s a game of failure. The sport’s best hitters routinely fail to reach base about 70% of the time. Even the most dominant pitchers can struggle to find the strike zone for no good reason, and the most intelligent players are always liable to make fielding or baserunning errors. Some of the greatest baseball teams in history lost close to half of their season’s games.

Baseball has never been about avoiding that inevitable failure, Dad has always said; it’s about how you respond when it happens.

So that’s why, sitting with my dad at home on Saturday night watching our beloved Ole Miss Rebels decisively win their first game at the College World Series, I found myself completely lost in the story of Tim Elko.

Elko, the captain of the team that has nearly reached the pinnacle of the sport, has become a true college baseball legend for responding remarkably to failure. Ahead of this Father’s Day, I wondered if Elko’s dad would agree.

“To say there have been ups and downs is an understatement,” John Elko told me, laughing. Then, before I even mentioned my dad’s most important baseball lesson, John Elko says to me: “You know, baseball is a game of failure.”

My dad and Tim Elko’s dad are on to something.

Tim’s freshman year, he quickly realized after arriving on campus that SEC baseball teams are loaded with talent and he’d have to wait his turn. His sophomore year, he began to emerge but a nagging injury held back his production. His junior year in 2020, the hottest hit streak of his life — and his team’s incredible 16-game win streak — was abruptly ended when the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down.

He entered his senior year in 2021 thinking it would be his last at Ole Miss. He led the team to an impressive 21-6 start with a high national ranking, and Elko was absolutely smoking the ball. Early that season, he was racking up the accolades: SEC Player of the Week, Bragan Slugger of the Week, Collegiate Baseball National Player of the Week.

Then, in a freak accident replayed hundreds of times by Ole Miss fans, Elko rolled over first base awkwardly in a meaningless mid-week blowout and tore his ACL. The lifeblood of the team, everyone rightfully assumed, was out for the season.

“My immediate thought was that his career is probably over,” John Elko said of the shocking injury. “It was just a devastating feeling, to be honest with you.”

But five days later, Tim video-called his parents. He showed them his new knee brace, and he told them what the team doctors had just told him.

“The minute they told him he could possibly play through the injury, he said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do this,’” John Elko recalled.

Just 33 days after the injury, Elko came into the game as a pinch hitter at Texas A&M and blasted a three-run home run. He led Ole Miss to game three of the Super Regionals last year and hit seven home runs and 18 RBI — all on a torn ACL. That performance led to unironic calls that the university build an Elko statue at Swayze Field.

That’s an impressive way to respond to an unexpected moment of failure.

“When he decided to play on the bad knee, we both felt and said it at the same time that God was gonna move here, that he was gonna make something happen,” John Elko said. “And the rest is history. It shouldn’t have been able to happen the way that it did, but it did. You can explain it any way you like, but we prefer ‘miracle.’” 

After that 2021 season ended, Tim had a decision to make: Should he take his chances and enter the MLB draft with a bum knee, or should he come back to Ole Miss for one more “COVID season” to rehab his leg and try to prove himself to scouts?

“He thought and prayed about it for a few days, but made the decision to come back to Ole Miss,” John Elko recalled. “He said, ‘We’re gonna go to Omaha and win a national championship.’ That’s why he came back.” 

Well in Omaha one year later, Tim Elko has his squad knocking at the door of the national championship series. It’s an incredible accomplishment considering how badly the team was playing in March and April. The turnaround, too, can be largely credited to Elko and the team’s other leaders. Elko’s play this season has been incredible and has surely impressed pro scouts: 22 home runs, 71 RBI, 58 runs scored and 41 walks.

During the game on Saturday night, an ESPN reporter interviewed John Elko at Charles Schwab Field. All the fathers and sons sitting in that stadium and watching on national TV saw Tim have just a decent game: he had one hit, one walk and scored the first run of the game. Of course, John Elko talked about how proud he was of his son and the team.

It’s a strange thing to consider, but all those fathers and sons who watched the game Saturday night aren’t too unlike the Elkos. All those fathers want is for their sons to succeed and to respond well after moments of failure, and all those sons want is to make their fathers proud.

Tim Elko sure is successful, and he’s clearly done a great job responding to failure. And John Elko sure is proud. That’s what it’s all about for the Elkos and for all of us.

I’ll be watching the remainder of Ole Miss’ run here in Omaha, and my dad will be back at home. We’ll talk on the phone after the games and discuss the key plays and big moments. But for the remainder of the College World Series, we’ll both be watching out for that same old maxim: How do players and teams respond to the inevitable failure?

My dad and I like the chances of the team whose leader has proven he knows how to respond to failure well. And you have to believe John Elko feels the same way.

The post Tim Elko, our fathers, and the ‘game of failure’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

PETAL —The Petal Gas Storage Station lies halfway between the winding banks of the Leaf River and the International Checker Hall of Fame. It’s a warren of pipes, wellheads and metal buildings where noisy compressors pump gas underground and then suck it back up to the surface again. 

In the process, the Petal plant releases half a ton of a potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every hour—more than any other gas storage facility in the country.

Petal is one of hundreds of underground natural gas storage facilities across the United States, where operators pump gas into underground salt formations, aquifers or depleted oil and gas reservoirs, storing the gas until it is needed.

Underneath the Petal plant lies a vast dome of salt nearly two miles in diameter that formed millions of years ago, during the Mesozoic Era, when other layers of rock pushed down on the surrounding salt formation until it was squeezed upwards into a bulging dome.

A gas company began hollowing out the Petal Dome, creating the nation’s first salt cavity specifically designed for natural gas storage in 1951. Today, eight artificial caverns carved into the Petal Dome store up to 30 billion cubic feet of natural gas, fuel that provides a critical backstop for the region’s fluctuating energy needs.   

The Petal storage plant is relatively small as gas storage facilities go: It ranks as the 41^st largest underground gas storage facility in the country. However, its emissions of methane, the primary component of natural gas, are far and away the highest of all such facilities in the nation.

In 2020, Petal emitted 4,947 metric tons of methane, according to reports submitted by the facility’s owner, Gulf South Pipeline, and its parent company, Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The emissions were three-and-a-half times higher than the methane released that year from any other U.S. gas storage facility.

The Petal facility has held onto the dubious distinction of being the largest such methane emitter for each of the last five years, according to data the companies have submitted to the EPA. In 2020, three of the seven highest emitting gas storage facilities in the country were owned by Boardwalk and its subsidiaries. 

Gulf South and Boardwalk have begun to curb emissions at the Petal facility, cutting them in 2020 by nearly 50 percent of what they were in 2019, a year when Petal’s emissions were more than five times larger than any other underground gas storage facility in the country. Boardwalk executives said they slashed emissions again, this time by 54 percent, in 2021.  

The EPA has not yet verified Petal’s 2021 emissions. If they are correct, Petal would still be the largest methane emitter among gas storage facilities in the country when compared to the most current available data for all the others. 

The emissions are especially concerning because methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas that, unlike carbon dioxide, has an impact on climate change that is most acute in the years immediately following its release. Methane is 81 times more potent in warming the climate than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.  

Over a 20-year time frame, emissions from the Petal storage station equal the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 87,000 automobiles, more vehicles than the population of Petal and its neighbor Hattiesburg combined.

The Petal facility’s emissions do not violate any state or federal laws, but they call into question the ability of the oil and gas industry to voluntarily curb its own climate pollution.  

Emissions from the transmission and storage sector account for approximately 25 percent of the total methane emissions from the natural gas industry.  A draft rule proposed by the EPA last November includes what would be the first mandatory methane emission reductions for existing gas transmission and storage facilities.

An environmental assessment by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for an expansion of one of the Petal compressor stations noted in 2019 that methane is not toxic, and that the compressors are not within 1,000 feet of any residences. 

But leading health organizations, including the American Lung Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Physicians for Social Responsibility, wrote to EPA Administrator Michael Regan in July 2021, urging more stringent measures to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas operations. 

“Extraction, processing, transport and distribution of methane all contribute to emissions, both of methane and of accompanying pollution like volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and toxic gases,” the letter said. “These emissions pose serious threats to human health, directly as in the case of exposure to toxic gases as well as the smog formed from VOCs, and due to methane’s contribution to climate change.”

In January, after the EPA published its proposed rule change that would impose stricter standards, dozens of Black church leaders in Mississippi wrote to Regan in support of the proposed regulation, noting that their communities are heavily affected by natural gas facilities. They called the proposed regulation an “important step forward.” 

Gerald Steele, an alderman in Petal whose ward includes the gas storage site, expressed surprise that the Petal plant’s emissions were the highest from such facilities in the nation. He said that the company is an important financial contributor to the city through its employment and tax contributions. But the news about the emissions, he said, was “really alarming.”

The EPA has historically sought to partner with oil and gas companies through the Natural Gas STAR program to help the companies voluntarily reduce their emissions. An EPA and industry report published in 2006 showed how a facility like Petal could reduce compressor emissions by more than 90 percent. The capital costs for such fixes were so low—several thousand dollars per compressor—that operators could recoup their costs in as little as a month through reductions in the loss of valuable natural gas. 

Boardwalk did not respond to an inquiry about the Gas STAR report. Although the company has begun to reduce its emissions, EPA documents suggest that as of 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, they had not followed recommendations made in the report.

Simple economics make the facility’s outsized emissions perplexing: Natural gas released from the Petal storage facility had a wholesale value of approximately $500,000 in 2020. That would seem to represent a needless annual loss in revenue for either Boardwalk or its customers.  

Boardwalk and Gulf South are gas transportation and storage service providers. They don’t buy and sell natural gas, but store it and transport it for others, an arrangement that could reduce some of Boardwalk’s incentive to fix leaks.   

“My guess is Boardwalk Pipeline [Partners] does have financial incentives to prevent leakage because they would be liable for losing their customers’ gas, although contracts often include a permitted amount of gas lost in transportation and storage,” David Lyon, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said.  

Boardwalk said Gulf South’s terms for lost gas can be found in a gas tariff document held by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. However, as this article went to press, it wasn’t immediately clear which document they were referring to.   

Lyon, who spends his days pouring over emissions data and researching technologies and policies to reduce leaks from the natural gas industry, seemed baffled by why a company like Boardwalk would not have implemented such effective, low-cost fixes years ago. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Daniel Zimmerle, the director of the Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, is an expert at quantifying and finding ways to reduce emissions from oil and gas operations similar to the Petal facility. But he, too, said he had no explanation for the facility’s high methane emissions.  

“It just seems really unusual,” Zimmerle said.

Emissions from leaky valves

The reason that Petal’s outsized methane emissions have persisted for so long—more than a decade after other gas companies and the EPA showed how they could be all but eliminated—might remain a mystery, but the source of the emissions is well-documented. 

Geology is not to blame.  Whether salt caverns or other rock formations are used, underground storage is highly effective at trapping natural gas under layers of impermeable rock that prevent the gas from escaping. A recent study found the daily volume of methane percolating through the soil near underground storage wells was 0.1 kilograms per day. That is less than the amount of methane that a cow burps in a 24-hour period. 

However, at Petal, “reciprocating compressors,” which use pistons to pressurize natural gas  for storage or to push gas through the regional pipeline network, were responsible for 99 percent of the 4,947 metric tons of methane that the facility released in 2020.

The vast majority of these emissions came from the compressors’ “isolation valves,” which disconnect the compressor from both the underground storage and the regional gas network when the compressor is not in use.

Compressors in a storage facility that provides natural gas to a region only during periods of peak demand can sit idle most of the year.  This is the case with the Petal storage station, where the facility’s compressors sat idle for nine months on average in 2020. 

But Petal’s isolation valves are leaky. Instead of shutting off gas completely when closed, the isolation valves allow thousands of tons of methane to pass into the facility’s idled compressors. Once inside the compressors, the gas escapes into the atmosphere through open “blowdown valves.”  

When Inside Climate News first inquired about the emissions from Petal in June 2021, Boardwalk Pipeline executives said the facility’s outsized emissions were a reflection of the site’s size and the role it played in the regional gas network. The Petal gas storage facility used a larger than usual number of compressors, not only to pump gas in and out of storage but also to push gas through the company’s transmission pipelines, they said.     

“When the total emissions reported for this facility are broken out on a per compressor unit basis, they are comparable with other companies listed on the same EPA report,” Jillian Kirkconnell, a spokeswoman for Boardwalk Pipeline Partners said in a written statement.

But an analysis of emissions data from Petal by Inside Climate News found that the gas storage facility’s emissions in 2019 and 2020 were more than three times higher on a per compressor basis than the emissions rate from individual compressors averaged across each of the nation’s top 10 methane-emitting, underground gas storage facilities. 

In fact, methane emissions from just one compressor at the Petal Gas Storage facility emitted more methane in 2020—2,355 metric tons— than the total methane emissions from any other gas storage facility in the United States that year. 

Releases of such magnitude, Zimmerle said, typically cause frost to form on the outside of the leaking equipment as the pressurized gas escapes.

“You should see that if you’re at the site,” he said of the frost. “It should be pretty obvious to them.”

Zimmerle said he initially questioned the magnitude of emissions from the Petal facility, noting that individuals who make the measurements and report the data at any site sometimes accidentally add an extra zero, unintentionally inflating emissions. But after seeing that the company had elevated emissions year after year and recently acknowledged its high emissions and the efforts it has begun to reduce them, Zimmerle said, he changed his mind. 

Boardwalk Pipelines did not dispute the data they reported to the EPA for 2020. In fact, in a sustainability report published last year, the company highlighted compressor emissions as a problem it is now working to address. 

The company also did not dispute the conclusions reached by the Inside Climate News analysis, that emissions from the Petal facility are much higher on a per-compressor basis than other similar gas storage sites.  

However, the company noted its 2021 reduction of methane releases from the Petal gas storage facility and that it reported these reductions to the EPA. Taylor Gillespie, a spokeswoman for the EPA, said the agency is still verifying emissions from 2021 that Boardwalk and other companies submitted earlier this year, and so could not verify the reductions.  

Even if Boardwalk reduced emissions at the Petal facility as much as they claimed from 2020 to 2021, the plant’s methane emissions would still be 60 percent higher than any other underground gas storage site in the country, when compared to the most current emissions data available for other facilities. 

A ‘workable solution’ ignored

In the company’s first sustainability report, released last year, Boardwalk noted that it is modifying and replacing older compressor equipment to reduce methane emissions.

“Boardwalk is continuing to take steps to reduce emissions across its systems and compressor stations,” Kirkconnell said.

She added, “a number of compressor blowdown valves and isolation valves have been repaired or replaced and procedures at the facility have been modified to minimize methane losses when units are not in operation. This resulted in significant reductions in methane emissions from 2019 to 2020 to 2021.” 

Climate advocates say the reductions are welcome news, but they add that it’s unclear why it took the company so long for those emissions reductions to begin.

The 2006 Gas STAR report emphasized as a “prudent operating practice” that operators should keep compressors pressurized when they are not in use, something the report states will reduce emissions by as much as 68 percent, at no cost, by eliminating isolation valve leaks. The report added that maintaining gas pressure on idle compressors can introduce additional safety concerns inside compressor buildings. But it also discussed precautions that could be taken to mitigate any added risk.

“There is no reason to believe it is not a workable solution,” said Zimmerle, of Colorado State University.   

Zimmerle said there are a number of different strategies that compressor operators can pursue to reduce emissions. For example, gas company National Fuel recently reported 95 to 99 percent emissions reductions on two of its compressors by simply replacing leaky isolation valves with new ones.   

Still, nearly two decades after the EPA-industry partnership’s report detailing its emission reduction strategies, Boardwalk and most other gas storage operators continue to depressurize their compressors, and report high emissions, when their compressors are not in use.   

“It’s been over a decade since EPA published this report and there are still these significant emissions,” Lyons, the Environmental Defense Fund scientist, said.  

 A proposed rule might make a difference

In its most recent annual financial report, filed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Boardwalk noted that failing to reduce its emissions could pose a risk to its business.

“Increased attention to climate change, environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters and conservation measures may adversely impact our business,” the company wrote in the report.  “Companies that do not adapt to or comply with investor or other stakeholder expectations and standards, which are evolving, or that are perceived to have not responded appropriately to the growing concern regarding ESG issues, regardless of whether there is a legal requirement to do so, may suffer from reputational damage and other adverse consequences.”

Boardwalk also noted that its emissions might soon be regulated under the EPA’s proposed rule to establish standards of performance for methane emissions from new and existing sources within the oil and gas sector, including gas transmission and storage. The agency is expected to issue a supplemental proposal containing proposed regulations “later this summer,” Joseph Goffman, the EPA’s principal deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, said during a confirmation hearing last month. The agency expects to finalize the rule by the end of 2022.  

“The proposed rule includes several requirements relevant to our operations, including stricter emissions limits for various facilities and equipment (including pneumatic controllers, storage tanks, reciprocating compressors, and wet seal centrifugal compressors), more frequent leak detection and monitoring of fugitive emissions from compressor stations, and deadlines for repairing fugitive emissions,” Boardwalk’s financial report stated.

Lyon, of the Environmental Defense Fund,  said the rule will result in the reduction of  methane emissions by an estimated 60,000 metric tons from reciprocating compressors—the same type of piston-driven compressors used at Petal facility—at gas storage facilities alone. When measuring the climate impact over a 20-year period, that’s equivalent to taking just over 1 million automobiles off the road.  

Boardwalk noted in its sustainability report that it is an “active” member of the ONE Future Coalition, a group of natural gas companies working to voluntarily lower methane emissions across the natural gas supply chain. The group’s goal is to reduce methane emissions across the entire sector—from the wellheads of gas fields to the homes and businesses of end users—to less than 1 percent of total natural gas produced by 2025.

To align with this goal, Boardwalk will have to make significant additional cuts. Gas storage is a small subset of the gas industry and should make up a small fraction of the industry’s total emissions.  However, in 2020 Petal alone leaked approximately 0.6 percent of the natural gas it stored that year—a rate equal to 60 percent of the entire industry’s targeted emissions budget—based on the emissions and storage data Boardwalk reported to EPA.  

Danielle Fugere, the president and chief counsel for As You Sow, a non-profit shareholder advocacy organization, said the steps Boardwalk has taken in recent years are encouraging but that they still have a long way to go.

“You have to reduce your emissions to at least the level of other similarly situated companies, and even those companies need to do much more,” she said. “The first thing we would ask Boardwalk to do is to solve its compressor problems immediately, and then continue its work to reduce emissions year on year.”

This story was published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment. Click here for the Inside Climate newsletter.

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OMAHA — For six innings sturdy Dylan DeLucia had pitched the game of his life. He had faced 19 Auburn batters and retired 18, mixing pinpoint control of his 92-93 mph fastball with a devastating slider. Ole Miss led 5-0.

Then, in the seventh, Auburn led off the inning with three straight hits to score a run and prompt a mound visit from No. 5, Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco. DeLucia had thrown 84 pitches to that point.

Would Bianco take him out? Or leave him in?

Bianco had no intentions — none at all, he said afterward — of lifting DeLucia.

“I just wanted to check him emotionally,” Bianco said. “He’s tough as heck, but, man, he can be emotional. And I just wanted to make sure that we kind of calmed him down a little bit and got him back in the zone. That was it. I knew his stuff was good. … And so, I didn’t see a reason for him to come out with that lead.”

Wise decision — one that helped the Rebels win 5-1.

DeLucia struck out the next batter, then got the next two with a weak fly ball and a pop-out. He fanned the first two Auburn batters in the eighth inning, too.

Said Bianco, “That’s what the good ones do. The good ones make pitches and get off the field. They don’t let it blow up on them. Dylan did that tonight.”

DeLucia — “Loosh” to his teammates and his fans — was only marvelous. He wound up going 7.2 innings, allowing four hits and striking out 10. He pitched ahead in the count throughout and didn’t walk a single batter.

“DeLucia threw his fastball above us and his slider below us,” said Auburn coach Butch Thompson, an Amory native and former Mississippi State pitching coach. 

Ole Miss got all the runs the Rebs would need in the first inning, plating two runs on Kemp Alderman’s smashed two-run, line-drive single to left field. Kevin Graham, who had doubled before that, then added a solo home run to left field in the third, and the Rebels scored two more in the sixth.

So this fairy tale-like Ole Miss postseason continues. After finishing the season with a mundane 32-22 record and coming within an eyelash of being left out of the NCAA Tournament, the Rebels have now won six straight NCAA games and have out-scored their opponents by a whopping 51-12. That’s right: 51 to 12.

The Rebels will face Arkansas, which earlier in the day slammed No. 2 Stanford 17-2, on Monday at 6 p.m. The winner of that one will be just one victory away from playing in the College World Series best-of-three championship series.

On paper, Arkansas is a better team. The Razorbacks’ victory over Stanford was the most lopsided CWS game in 34 years. Arkansas, which has won 44 games, won two of three from Ole Miss at Oxford the last weekend of April.

Clearly, this is a different Ole Miss team than it was a month and a half ago. These Rebels are playing baseball at a high, high level in every facet of the sport. They are pitching it well, pounding the strike zone. They are hitting it hard and doing so when it matters most. Take Alderman’s first inning single that came with two outs. Indeed, all three Ole Miss hits in that inning came with two out. That’s what coaches call timely hitting. The Rebels have done it throughout this 6-0 NCAA run. They are catching it and throwing it well, too. A case in point: If you didn’t see it, you should have seen catcher Hayden Dunhurst whip a pick-off throw to first base for the third out of the eighth inning. If you blinked, you missed it.

Another huge part of this Ole Miss run is the bullpen. Josh Mallitz, who replaced DeLucia with two outs in the eighth, struck out the side in the ninth inning. Mallitz has been practically unhittable in the postseason.

Something amazing: The Rebels have pitched and played so well here lately, closer Brandon Johnson has been almost like the Maytag repairman. You don’t bring in your closer when you have a big lead, and the Rebels have enjoyed one in nearly all these postseason games.

They are a confident team.

Asked how the Rebels felt about playing Arkansas again, Graham responded, “Good. At this point it doesn’t matter who you’re playing. Everybody is good. Everybody can beat everybody.”

Count Ole Miss very much in that number.

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OMAHA — If you’ve read it here once, know you could have read it 50 times or more over the years. Winning baseball championships is all about playing your best when it matters most — getting hot at the right time.

What happened in April matters not in June.

That’s why it says here: Ole Miss has as good a chance as anyone in the College World Series field of winning the whole shebang. Nobody has played better baseball through the NCAA Regionals and Super Regionals than the Rebels. What’s more, the Rebels began their championship-quality play in the late regular season.

In sports terms, they have peaked at the right time.

Ole Miss may have been the last team to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. They may have squeaked in. They may have entered the tournament with one of the most modest records of anyone in the field at 32-22.

None of that matters now. None of what happened in April and early May matters. The Rebels were ranked No. 1 in the early season for a reason. They have the talent. They just had to put it together.

They have. They have won all five their NCAA Tournament games by a combined score of 46-11. That’s no misprint: 46 to 11. They have 13 of their last 16 games overall. 

Let’s look at how other CWS teams on the Ole Miss side of the bracket have done lately. (We’ll worry about the other side when the time comes — if it comes.) Keep in mind, they’ve all done pretty well or they wouldn’t be there.

Auburn, Ole Miss’ Saturday night opponent, has won five of six games in NCAA play, sweeping through the Auburn Regional and then winning two of three at No. 3 overall seed Oregon State. Of their last 16 games, the Tigers are 11-5. That’s really good — but not quite as good as Ole Miss.

Staying on the Ole Miss side of the bracket, Stanford, the highest seed left in the tournament, has lost twice in NCAA play and holds a 6-2 record. The Cardinal did end its pre-NCAA schedule on a 16-game winning streak, so there’s that. Also, Stanford is the only national seed remaining on that side of the bracket.

Arkansas, Stanford’s opponent Saturday afternoon, is also hot. The Razorbacks have won five of six in the NCAA Tournament. Bur Arkansas wasn’t playing that well coming in to the NCAA Tournament. The Hogs were two-and-out in the SEC Tournament and lost six of their last 10 regular season games before that. 

If you go by what happened all season long, Ole Miss is the long-shot on its side of the bracket. Stanford, Arkansas and Auburn — probably in that order — were better teams over the entire season. 

But if you go by what has happened lately, Ole Miss is the hottest team, a perfect 5-0 in the tournament and 13-3 over the last 16. That’s balling.

Much depends on the first two games, beginning with the Saturday night game against Auburn. Looking at the numbers, it doesn’t appear the Rebels have the pitching depth of the other teams in the bracket. For that reason, it’s critical that Ole Miss remain in the winners’ bracket. Dylan DeLucia and Hunter Elliott, who threw shutouts against Southern Miss in the Super Regional and have been sensational in May and June, need to continue their recent excellence in Omaha.

Win those first two — against Auburn and against the Arkansas-Stanford winner — the Rebels will be in the proverbial catbird’s seat. Lose either and they’ll have to go far deeper into their pitching staff to reach the best-of-three championship series. They would have to win against teams that have deeper pitching staffs, at least on paper.

Bottom line: Tennessee, the best team in the country, is not here. There is no prohibitive favorite. Any of the eight remaining could win it. And, of the eight, nobody has played better baseball lately than Ole Miss.

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Abortion advocates vowed at a rally Friday to ensure Mississippians retain access to abortion regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court decides in the coming days.

Dozens of reproductive rights advocates from Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia traveled to Smith Park in Jackson on a sweltering afternoon for The “D-Day Rally,” organized by the nonprofits SHERo Mississippi and Mississippi in Action. 

“That D means that we’re going to continue to defend abortion access and abortion in Mississippi,” Michelle Colón, executive director of SHERo, said in an interview before the rally. “We’re going to continue to be undeterred in our efforts in helping Mississippians navigate through the process in going to clinics if that’s what they want. And we’re going to continue to be the ones to decide our destinies.”

The rally also attracted anti-abortion protesters who frequent the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s sole abortion clinic. They carried signs purporting to show fetuses following abortions and shouted over the speakers through megaphones.

“You women need to go home, and put on some clothes, and serve your husband, and be Godly,” one man yelled at the crowd as Colón took the podium.

“I don’t care what the Supreme Court says,” she said. “Abortion is health care. Abortion saves lives. Abortion is sacred.”

Amanda Furdge, 34, is a mother of three who grew up in Jackson. She moved to Chicago after high school, and only then did she understand that ending a pregnancy is an option people have. 

About one in four U.S. women have had an abortion by the time they are 45. 

Furdge terminated two pregnancies in Chicago. 

“Nobody was in my business,” she said. “It was like a regular doctor appointment.”

Every time she talks publicly about her experience with abortion, she said, “I meet 10 women who say, ‘Me, too.’” In Mississippi, she added, shame stops people from talking about it.

Her experience informed the poem she read at the rally.

“My body / my boat / That only I roe,” she read from the stage. 

“I, I, I, my, my, my,” screamed a protester with a megaphone. “You’re selfish!” 

“We have heartbeats, too,” she continued. 

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi case, has set the stage for the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision granting the constitutional right to abortion. Mississippi initially argued the Supreme Court could uphold the state law at issue in that case – a 2018 ban on abortions after 15 weeks, but changed its position in 2021 and asked the Court to overturn Roe. 

A draft opinion leaked in early May indicated the Court’s conservative majority is prepared to end the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S.

States could then decide on the legality of abortion. In Mississippi, a trigger ban passed in 2007 would almost immediately ban abortions in all cases except when the pregnant woman’s life is in danger or when she was raped and has reported it to law enforcement. 

Abortion rights supporters and the protesters at the rally seemed to agree on one thing: The fall of Roe is not the end of the national struggle over abortion. 

Ukwuoma Ukairo, caller engagement coordinator at Access to Reproductive Care-Southeast, one of the abortion funds that serves people in Mississippi as well as five other southern states, said that if Roe falls, she anticipates her organization offering “a lot of practical support” as people travel outside the region.

Advocates expect the closest clinic to Jackson if Roe falls will be in Carbondale, Illinois, a nearly seven-hour drive.

Heidi Miller, development manager for the Alabama-based Yellowhammer Fund, another fund that serves Mississippians, said she already sees Southerners forced to travel to Colorado and Washington, D.C. for abortions. She expects that to increase dramatically if Roe falls. 

A group of nearly 30 people with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice started their trip to Jackson in Brownsville, Texas. A bus made stops in Hidalgo and Houston before finishing the drive to Mississippi.

“We’re here in solidarity,” said Paula Saldaña, a field organizer who traveled with her children. “This breaks that myth that Latinx and Hispanic people are against abortion.”

Dr. Coleman Boyd, a frequent presence protesting outside the Pink House with members of his family, said he would “love to see Roe overturned, but my hope’s not in Roe.”

“Abortion will end in this nation when the church stands up and establishes justice,” he said. “It’s not dependent on a judge or nine judges. It’s dependent on Christians saying you cannot murder children in our neighborhood.”

State Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, who also spoke at the rally, said Mississippi has not done enough to help families. 

“Let’s expand access to health care,” she said. “Let’s stop locking up our men and putting them behind cages… 

“Let’s hold those accountable who take our precious taxpayer dollars out of the mouths of babies,” she continued, apparently referencing the welfare scandal in which state leaders misspent at least $77 million in federal funds intended for the poor and used the money to bestow gifts and favors. 

“If we really cared, those are the things we would be proposing.”

Valencia Robinson, executive director of Mississippi in Action, said she was glad people had traveled from across the country to attend the rally in Jackson. 

“We want to show the rest of the country that in Mississippi, there are organizers and supporters here, and work is being done,” she said. 

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Mississippi still has money left to spend from the 2002 settlement that was supposed to desegregate the state’s public universities, according to the budget presentation at the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees meeting Thursday. 

The settlement stems from Ayers v. Fordice, a 1975 class-action lawsuit that alleged the state of Mississippi was systemically underfunding Mississippi’s three historically Black universities, Jackson State University, Alcorn State University and Mississippi Valley State University. 

After nearly thirty years of litigation, the state and the private plaintiffs, led by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, settled in 2002. Mississippi agreed to pay the three HBCUs about $417 million in additional funding over the next 20 years for capital improvements, endowments, and summer school programs. 

That money was projected to run out at the end of this month, but on Thursday, the IHL board members approved the additional allocation of funding, about $1.6 million, that the universities had not spent. IHL also allocated another $3 million in interest from an endowment that the settlement created, which the board will allocate in perpetuity. 

It is not clear why the funds are unspent; IHL did not respond by press time.

Ever since the lawsuit was settled, many advocates have maintained the payout was not enough to bring the HBCUs to a level playing field with Mississippi’s predominantly white institutions. Alvin Chambliss, the attorney who brought the lawsuit, didn’t want to settle, but the state of Mississippi cut a deal over his objections. 

Chambliss’s sentiment is echoed today by many HBCU alumni, faculty and administrators. They point out that as the HBCUs were receiving the settlement funds, state lawmakers were making deep cuts to funding for higher education. To make up for the loss, the HBCUs had to use the settlement funds as yet another appropriation, rather than a way to catch up to the PWIs. 

The wind down of the Ayers settlement this year comes as all eight universities are seeing an increase in state appropriations. This is mainly due to funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, John Pearce, IHL’s associate commissioner of finance, told the trustees on Thursday. 

This session, lawmakers allocated the universities about $176 million in capital funds to make infrastructure improvements and repairs, a 1,230% increase on capital funds appropriated last year. 

“There’ll be a lot of investment that’ll be able to be made in the capital operations of the institutions,” Pearce said. 

All eight universities are also seeing more revenue from tuition, according to IHL’s fiscal year 2023 budget. Every university but Jackson State has increased tuition the last two years, while Jackson State has seen increased enrollment. 

The tuition revenues represent “a real increase in the ongoing operations of the institutions,” Pearce said, adding that “this is all a strong increase.” 

Pearce added that this still doesn’t change the decades-long trend of state appropriations making up a decreasing share of the universities’ budgets. 

“Just for context, even though we improved year over year, we still have a change in the long-term funding of the university system away from the state of Mississippi and toward tuition,” he said. 

Excluding Ayers funding, the three HBCUs are seeing some of the biggest budget increases this year. After the University of Mississippi, which will see about an 8% budget increase, Alcorn State and Valley State will have the next highest increases at around 7%.

Jackson State is receiving the largest share of unspent funds and endowment income, according to an email from IHL Spokesperson Caron Blanton. Jackson State is receiving about $3 million, Valley State is receiving $1.3 million, and Alcorn State is getting about $300,000. 

Most of those funds are from an endowment created by the settlement. The settlement stipulated the universities could not control the income from the endowments until they reached at least 10% “other-race” enrollment. Until then, the income had to be spent on advertising and scholarships for “other race,” meaning white students. An ad hoc committee under IHL would be in charge of the endowment income for each HBCU until the university reached the enrollment requirement. 

Jackson State and Alcorn State met the enrollment requirement, but Valley State never has been able to, so the IHL committee still oversees its endowment income. 

As for the private endowment, the IHL board was supposed to raise $35 million that the HBCUs could also receive once they met the enrollment requirements. To date, it has only raised $1 million. The settlement contained a provision specifying that the board didn’t have to raise all the funds in order to meet its obligations. 

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