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• Wisconsin has fewer remaining lead water pipelines than previous estimates, suggesting the state may be able to eliminate them faster and at lower cost than expected.
• New inventory requirements have given regulators and utilities their clearest picture yet of where lead pipes remain and where more investigation is needed.
• Federal regulators now require water systems to replace all lead service lines by the end of 2037 because no level of lead exposure is considered safe, especially for children.
• More than 181,000 Wisconsin service lines (12% statewide) are still classified as unknown because many communities lack complete records and must verify pipe materials through inspections and outreach.
• Federal infrastructure funding has provided major support for lead line replacement projects across Wisconsin, but officials expect available funding to decrease in the coming years.

Wisconsin may be closer than previously thought to eliminating lead water pipes. About 164,000 municipal and community lead water service lines still need replacement with safer materials, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of water system data reported in April. That’s roughly one of every 10 municipal and community water lines statewide. 

The estimate includes confirmed lead lines — roughly 146,000 across 137 municipal and community water systems — and an estimated share of service lines with unknown materials that are statistically likely to contain lead, based on EPA methodology.

Some data gaps remain, including some water systems that did not file a report on time.

Still, the total is far below previous government estimates as more complete inventories more clearly show where lead pipes remain, part of a nationwide effort to reduce exposure to the toxic metal linked to serious health risks.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2025 — before many water systems completed or updated their inventories — that nearly 180,000 water lines in Wisconsin were made of lead, a sharp drop from its 2023 estimate of over 256,000.

“We may be able to remove all (lead service lines) faster, fully, and forever – sooner and at a lower price tag than expected,” Erica Galante-Johnson, senior lead service line replacement policy analyst at Environmental Policy Innovation Center, wrote in a report comparing the lead service line estimate before and after new inventory data became available. 

Why replace lead service lines?

Once a popular material for water service lines, lead was banned by regulators for such purposes in Wisconsin and nationwide beginning in the 1980s due to concerns about potential lead exposure. 

“There is no safe level of exposure to lead,” the EPA’s website says. 

Children are especially vulnerable to lead, since even low levels of exposure can lead to behavioral and learning problems. High levels of lead in blood can cause seizures, coma or death. Adults exposed to lead are more susceptible to cardiovascular and kidney problems.

Water systems limit risk by treating pipes with chemicals that reduce corrosion, but failures such as Flint, Michigan’s crisis a decade ago show how those safeguards can break down, exposing residents to lead. 

That’s why federal regulators now require aggressive replacement timelines. 

Municipal and community water systems must replace all lead or galvanized pipes before the end of 2037. Some Wisconsin cities, like Madison and Stoughton, have already replaced all lead pipes. Many others, including Eau Claire, Milwaukee and Wausau, have projects underway to replace them at no or low cost to homeowners.

At least 29 municipalities in Wisconsin have received more than $159 million through 2025 to replace lead service lines through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by then-President Joe Biden.

The EPA in May announced an additional $94.3 million Wisconsin allocation under the 2021 law. 

Biden’s EPA revised its Lead and Copper Rule, tightening monitoring requirements and establishing  timelines for replacing lead pipes. 

The first step: requiring water systems to document what’s underground.

More complete information helps identify where lead lines are concentrated, said Ann Hirekatur, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ lead and copper section manager.

The inventories are more than a bureaucratic exercise. Federal rules now tie them directly to replacement requirements.

Wisconsin water systems previously needed only to report estimates of their lead service lines to the state Public Service Commission.

Biden’s EPA changed that. Water systems were required to submit an initial inventory by October 2024, listing the best available information about each water line. That gave DNR officials line-by-line records for the first time, Hirekatur said.

By Nov. 1, 2027, water systems must improve those records by trying to identify service lines of currently unknown material and documenting connector materials. After that deadline, any service lines with an unknown material will be treated as lead, and water systems must start replacing at least 10% of lead lines under their control each year. 

The new regulations require digging through historical documents — or even digging up pipelines one by one — to confirm the material and location. 

The more rigorous process revealed more lead service lines in some communities than previously thought. That includes Whitefish Bay, which documented more than 56% of service lines as lead during the first draft of its inventory.

Locating pipelines can be challenging

Despite the new inventories, regulators still have yet to identify the materials in more than 181,000 Wisconsin service lines, or 12% of all statewide.

As of April, 312 of 610 Wisconsin municipal water systems identified materials in every service line. About 60% of systems recorded 5% or fewer pipelines as unknown material. 

Meanwhile, 102 municipal water systems reported more than half of their lines as unknown, with 12 yet to submit inventories. 

“Some systems kept good records, and some systems don’t have any records at all,” Hirekatur said.

Water system managers must show their work in documenting the makeup of service lines. 

The best evidence is a “tap card” that describes the pipe’s primary features and installation history.

But many communities never preserved those records because they were not required to do so.

The city of Lancaster illustrates that challenge. Water system officials started looking for lead pipes in the 1990s, and they initially found only two and about 50 others whose material was unknown. But the DNR initially marked more than 1,700 out of the city’s 1,845 lines as unknown because the verification documentation fell short of standards.

The utility didn’t save old paper inspection records, said John Hauth and Jamie McCartney, the retiring and incoming directors of public works, respectively.

Calling DNR representatives “very helpful,” Hauth said his inventory is now getting into “pretty good shape.” 

“We send it to them, they will highlight areas and send it back and say, ‘OK, well, you know you need to explain this better, or you need to match this up,’” Hauth said.

Gathering evidence

At the DNR’s suggestion, Hauth and McCartney used construction records to rule out neighborhoods built after lead was banned from new pipeline construction and found water meter replacement records to fill in some blanks.  

The managers submitted a revised draft, still under DNR review, that labeled fewer than 400 service lines as unknown. The city plans to verify the remaining resident-owned lines through door-to-door visits and use hydro-excavation equipment to check city-owned lines.

“We’ve only got the few that we know of,” Hauth said. “I think it’s gonna be manageable.” 

Josh Hyndman, Mount Horeb’s former water system manager, also has experience with thin documentation. The village started replacing lead pipes in 2011 and compiled its inventory as early as 2021 to apply for a DNR lead line replacement grant.

“We went down into our basement and started pulling out all the old records,” Hyndman said. “ I found a construction date that was from January of ’78, and it spelled out that everything would be three-quarter-inch copper for all businesses.”

That helped Hyndman determine that all service lines installed after 1978 were copper, reducing the number his team had to inspect or excavate.

In 2024, Hyndman left Mount Horeb for a job in Whitewater. Mount Horeb now has just one lead service line remaining, beneath a vacant lot. He said the inventory process was much easier in Whitewater because the city maintains comprehensive records for each line. As of April, Whitewater had 16 lead service lines and plans to replace all but one serving an abandoned water tower by the end of 2027.

Most unknown service lines are located on the private side of the water system, Cathy Wunderlich said. She is project manager and principal technologist with the engineering firm Jacobs, which the DNR contracted through 2028 to help local water systems finish their inventories. The service is free, with the costs covered by a federal grant.

Lead and copper are rarely used for water lines over two inches in diameter, so they’re more commonly used in private-side pipes instead of the public side, Wunderlich explained. 

Although municipal water systems do not own the private side of service lines, they must document them. That requires permission and access from property owners. 

A more cost-effective approach encourages residents to submit evidence, said Shawn Kerachsky, CEO of Community Infrastructure Partners, which used federal grants to contract with Wausau and Racine to inventory and replace the lead lines.

“This is not an engineering and construction problem,” Kerachsky said. “It’s a public health issue that happens to be solved through very simple engineering and construction, but world-class communication outreach and logistical planning.”

His company promoted the “Equiflow” campaign when helping Wausau complete its inventory — partnering with local organizations to encourage residents to identify their water lines by uploading photos or allowing technicians to inspect them. The approach helped Wausau reduce its share of unknown service lines to about 30%. 

The DNR also offers grants to help water systems educate residents about inventory and replacement projects.

What’s next?

Water systems will ultimately use the data to apply for federal grants and loans to fund lead service line replacements. 

“We encourage water systems to replace them as soon as possible, because it’s in the best interest of public health,” Hirekatur said. “Right now, there’s more money available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, and once that gets used up, there’ll be a lot less funding available.”

The DNR will announce which projects it will select for federal pipeline replacement funds by year’s end. The program offers loans with a 0.25% interest rate, far below market rates, and principal forgiveness. The department expects to have some funding available in 2028, but much less than previous years.

Wisconsin’s lead pipe count is falling. But the search isn’t over. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

HOT SPRINGS COUNTY—As Derek Trauntvein traveled around the Bighorn Basin for his job with the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service this spring, the landscape looked so desiccated and browned out that it resembled late summer conditions.

“In a normal year, this would be lush green right now,” Trauntvein told a gathering of journalists last week in the 195-square-mile scar of 2025’s Red Canyon Fire. “June is the best time to visit the Bighorn Basin, because it’s green and beautiful.” 

Not so in 2026. 

On the heels of the warmest winter ever, which coincided with the sparsest spring snowpack on record, the normal green-up is absent, he said. 

“Green-up is delayed, and in some places not even happening,” Trauntvein said. 

Measured moisture levels in the basin’s vegetation are at a July-like level, an indication that fire season’s probably going to come early.

“We may not grow anything to burn,” Trauntvein said, “but we still have a lot of residual [vegetation] from last year, and that’s definitely going to be problematic for this coming summer.” 

The Bighorn Mountains foothills “look like August right now” and the cheatgrass he’s spotted is already drying out and especially concerning. When a cheatgrass-infested area burns and the nonnative grass dominates the fire scar, it’s then more prone to burn again, creating a feedback loop of more fire and more cheatgrass. 

Those conditions are why Alicia Hummel called this spring’s persistent drought a “worst case scenario” for a landscape that’s still recovering from the Red Canyon Fire. Blueish perennial grasses that sprouted near the Bureau of Land Management rangeland manager’s feet were dominated by much-taller cheatgrass, an invasive annual grass that’s slowly overtaking Wyoming and the Bighorn Basin. 

“Those should be outgrowing the cheatgrass right now,” Hummel said. “It’s just so stunted. We shouldn’t have the cheatgrass exceeding our [native] perennials.” 

Native perennial grasses at only “a half or even a third” of their typical height and volume is a bad formula for the future of cheatgrass, which thrives in disturbed areas and especially burned landscapes. Native grasses can gain a toehold and help keep cheatgrass at bay, but that’s a less likely outcome when they’re being so clearly outcompeted. 

The federal wildfire and land managers were gathered alongside state, county and University of Wyoming officials to teach roughly a dozen journalists, most from out of state, about the elaborate process of restoring rangeland after wildfire in a landscape where invasive grasses are already widespread. The outing was organized by Intermountain West Joint Venture, a Missoula-based partnership group that focuses on “people-centric” approaches to conserving western habitat. 

More fire coming soon? 

As the caravan of reporters, land and weed managers and scientists toured the burned swath of Hot Springs County, state officials were gearing up for what’s expected to be a “tough year” for wildfire.

“If you look at the drought monitor, you will see dark red,” Gov. Mark Gordon said on May 28 at an annual interagency wildfire briefing. “[That] means there’s a fire danger that is far higher than it’s been in a long time.” 

Two weeks later, the entirety of Hot Springs County remains in “severe” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Other areas in Wyoming have it worse: 15 of the state’s 23 counties included at least some areas where drought is considered “extreme.” Some blasts of spring snow and rainfall helped somewhat, but were not enough to pull areas out of drought, according to Wyoming State Forestry Division spokeswoman Melissa DeFrantis.

And so the wildfire season has already arrived, even in the western mountains. When roughly 250 acres burned near Sagebrush Flat west of Togwotee Pass last month, the Bridger-Teton National Forest experienced its largest May wildfire in history. 

The grim outlook comes in the wake of two consecutive big Wyoming wildfire years. In 2024, the state confronted the second-most acres burned in its history, trailing only 1988. 

Wyoming officials are fighting back against a future of more wildfires and more cheatgrass. 

There was a bygone era when many Wyoming weed and pest districts threw in the towel and did nothing to interrupt the cheatgrass-wildfire cycle. 

“For a lot of years in this state, for a lot of the counties — especially more heavily infested counties — [cheatgrass] was not on our priority list at all,” said Lindsey Woodward, the weed and pest coordinator for the Wyoming Department of Agriculture. 

The mentality at the time, Woodward said, was: “We have no tools, we have no time, we have no budget, we’re not going to win — we’re just not going to [treat] it.” 

Fighting back

That attitude has abated. 

Nowadays, the Wyoming Weed and Pest Council facilitates massive efforts to address cheatgrass and other invasive annual grasses. 

“We have, in the last 10 or so years, really really pushed for bigger landscape-scale projects — watershed-sized projects,” Woodward said. 

During the last three legislative sessions, Wyoming lawmakers have fought over funding levels for spraying cheatgrass that enables those projects. Tens of millions of dollars have ultimately been made available after each fight. That’s helped, but experts say it’s still not enough to hold the line on invasive grasses that have already affected over a quarter of Wyoming’s landmass.

Partly that’s because of the exorbitant cost of spraying cheatgrass. 

The most effective herbicide, Rejuvra, provides enduring protection against cheatgrass, but spraying quickly runs up a steep bill. Woodward used the term “staggering” to describe the per-gallon cost. 

“It’s about $1,100 a gallon,” she said. 

Largely for that reason, Hot Springs County Weed and Pest District Supervisor Heather Love applied for $9.8 million to treat the Red Canyon Fire scar. 

Some spraying is already underway, though there could be years of effort ahead before the restoration work is complete, Woodward said. Spraying blackened ground can be counterproductive, because it can also kill native perennial grasses trying to reestablish. Reseeding can also delay spraying. 

“By the time you consider all of that … some of these projects are three or four years before you’ve completed the steps,” Woodward said. 

Ultimately, the costly and complex landscape recovery efforts will help ranchers whose cattle and sheep graze within the Red Canyon Fire scar.  

Out on the fire scar tour, the stewards of the V Ranch — where the blaze began — recounted confronting the wildfire and their experience helping the landscape heal in the 10 months that have since lapsed.

“Proper grazing is critical,” said Jim Wilson, whose granddaughter, Emme Norsworthy, will become the family’s fifth generation overseeing the ranch. 

“The BLM is right,” Wilson said about the need to rest rangelands from grazing after wildfires, motioning to his own federal allotment. “That country will probably not get grazed for two more years. We’re gonna let it grow up, let it go to seed.” 

Wilson was sanguine about Red Canyon Fire’s long-term impact on his ranch and adjoining allotments. The blaze could actually do some good for wildlife and cattle alike, he said. 

“All old sagebrush is not good,” Wilson said. “They’ve got to have new sagebrush, they’ve got to have forbs.”

But to ensure the land’s productivity, Wilson, weed and pest professionals, the BLM, and others will have to make sure that cheatgrass doesn’t take over. 

Ian Tator, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s statewide terrestrial habitat manager, spoke to how thresholds of invasive grass cover can make or break the habitat for mule deer. Cheatgrass coverage greater than 10% can cause the struggling ungulate species to avoid an area; 20% coverage can trigger habitat abandonment. 

“We want to work really hard to not let it get to that point,” Tator said.

The post Drought delivers ‘worst case scenario’ for fire scar recovery in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin appeared first on WyoFile .

The Virginia Department of Health issued a health advisory Wednesday as the measles outbreak in Buckingham County continues to grow. 

There have been 89 confirmed cases reported as of June 11. Health officials suspected community transmission in May when the outbreak started with a dozen cases. None of the infected individuals had reported recent travel, indicating that the virus is spreading locally. 

Anyone who is unvaccinated against measles, unsure of their immunity status or experiencing symptoms should avoid large gatherings, crowded settings and community events in Buckingham County until the outbreak subsides, health officials said.

That recommendation includes the Amish Parochial School Consignment Auction, an annual fundraiser scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Dillwyn. 

Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases. People can spread the virus from four days before symptoms appear until four days after a rash develops, according to the advisory from the Health Department. 

Symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose, red or watery eyes and a rash that typically begins on the face and spreads to the rest of the body, according to the Health Department. 

Anyone experiencing symptoms should stay home and avoid public gatherings. Health officials also said people should call their doctor’s office before seeking treatment in person so staff can take precautions to prevent additional exposures.

The Health Department encouraged anyone who lives, works or plans to visit the Buckingham County area to review their vaccination status and talk with their healthcare provider about vaccination. Vaccination remains the most effective way to prevent measles, according to the Health Department. 

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is typically recommended for infants between 12 and 15 months old, with a second dose at ages 4 to 6. During an outbreak, however, doctors may recommend an early dose for infants ages 6 to 11 months to provide protection while the virus circulates in the community.

The post Health officials issue advisory about large gatherings as measles outbreak grows in Buckingham County appeared first on Cardinal News.

UKIAH, CA., 6/11/26 — An annexation information workshop hosted by the city of Ukiah Thursday evening answered dozens of questions and addressed comments made by Ukiah Valley residents with more than 60 in attendance. 

First presented last year, the city’s proposed annexation would bring areas to the north and south of Ukiah into the city limits, switching responsibility for servicing those areas from the county to the city, like providing law enforcement service and road maintenance. 

Among the most common concerns residents had at the 6 p.m. meeting Thursday were whether residents get to vote on annexation, how amounts of property and sales taxes would shift from the county to the city in the areas proposed to be annexed and whether property taxes would go up. 

There is a public voting aspect involved in the annexation proposal process, but not until the city’s application to the Mendocino Local Agency Formation Commission is complete. 

It’s called the protest vote. After the city presents its annexation proposal to the commission, landowners and registered voters in the areas proposed to be annexed will receive written notification of the protest process and be able to submit their choice of whether they approve of the annexation. If the commission receives more than 50% disapproval, the annexation proposal will be canceled, and the city cannot reapply for a year. 

At the meeting, city finance director Dan Buffalo explained that per the Mendocino County’s master tax-sharing agreement with the cities in the county, if annexation goes through, the city would take half of the increment of property taxes on parcels in the areas proposed to be annexed. This means the city would get half the amount of however much a property’s assessed value increases in a year, which since 1978, has been locked in at a maximum of about 2% per year. The county gets the other half of the growth. The amount the city can take will be capped at 15% of total property taxes in the areas proposed to be annexed. Buffalo emphasized that property taxes would not go up because of annexation if it happens. 

As for sales tax, every year after the first year of annexation, if it happens, one-fifteenth of a 1% sales tax called the Bradley Burns tax that is normally split among the county and city would go to the city in the areas proposed to be annexed, meaning it would take 15 years for the city to take 1% sales tax that is normally shared with the county, in the new areas of Ukiah, if annexation happens, Buffalo said. 

The state’s environmental regulator will hold a public hearing June 15 on its proposed rules for how the toxic wastewater can be reused. Here’s what you should know.

Jens Soering continues to insist he’s innocent of the 1985 murders of his girlfriend’s wealthy Bedford County parents, Derek and Nancy Haysom, one of the most publicized crimes in modern Virginia history.

Now, seven years after Soering was freed on parole, his legal team says new evidence — combined with older evidence, some never submitted at his trial — supports his nearly four-decade effort to clear his name and erase his two convictions for first-degree murder and his two life sentences. 

If Soering and his new evidence are correct, he did not commit the savage slayings of the Haysoms, who were stabbed multiple times in their blood-covered home. The evidence comes mainly from new DNA analysis of blood samples taken at the gory murder scene. They identify two males, neither of whom is Soering, as participating in the killings.

The decision is up to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, which is expected to rule sometime in the next several months. It could take longer if the justices order an evidentiary hearing by the Bedford County Circuit Court, where Soering’s trial took place in 1990, one of the first in the nation to be televised gavel-to-gavel.

Asked by Cardinal News if he is investigating the possibility of two killers on the loose from the grisly Haysom murders, Bedford County Sheriff Mike Miller said in a voicemail, “I can tell you, and all the readers, that the Bedford County Sheriff’s office will continue to keep this county as safe as possible; but I cannot comment on any open cases or evidence in them.” 

A rarely won legal action

Soering spent 33 years in prison and is now 59.

He has employed a rarely won legal procedure called a petition for a writ of actual innocence. The writs were created more than 20 years ago to allow those who claimed to be wrongly convicted to prove their innocence with new evidence after traditional appeals expired. Prior to 2020, just a handful of these writs were granted because the convicted had to prove their case by “clear and convincing” evidence that no rational trier of fact would have found them guilty. That was a high bar.

In 2020, the state legislature eased the legal hurdle by lowering the bar to proof by a “preponderance of the evidence”; the standard, which is also used in civil trials, requires the petitioner to prove that there is a greater than 50% chance that the claim is true.

The legislature also allowed for multiple filings instead of just one if important new evidence emerged. Additionally, it permitted those who had pleaded guilty to file a writ, recognizing that people occasionally plead guilty for reasons other than guilt. 

Despite the lessening of the burden of proof, the writs remain difficult to win. During the last three years, the Court of Appeals has reviewed 84 writs. Two writs were issued, and the convictions vacated. The rest were dismissed, most summarily.

The Haysom murders and Soering’s efforts to win his exoneration or release have continued to draw national and international media attention, including television documentaries, such as Netflix’s 2023 four-part series “Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom.”

Soering also gained public support from celebrities who believe he was wrongly convicted. Among them is movie and television actor Martin Sheen and popular crime novelist John Grisham, both of whom called on the state of Virginia to grant Soering release from prison. Even former German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly came to Soering’s aid, calling for him to be transferred to Germany, his home country, where it was thought he would quickly be released.

Despite all the attention Soering’s case has gotten for nearly four decades, efforts by convicted people to clear their names are not unusual.

Since 1989, 3,819 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated in the United States, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. The registry lists 73 exonerations in Virginia since 1989, and just five before that.

The year 1989 was the beginning of what the registry calls the Exoneration Era and marks the year of the first exoneration from a DNA examination. Such testing in criminal cases spread nationwide as it was perfected in the following years, allowing many to prove they were wrongfully convicted.

DNA tests are a scientific technique for examining bodily fluids or parts. The tests can provide detailed information on a person’s genetic makeup, helping identify everything from a person’s risk of hereditary disease to their ancestry and paternity — to their possible involvement in a crime. 

Soering said in an April 22 video interview from Germany that he initially pleaded guilty to killing the Haysoms only to protect his girlfriend, their daughter Elizabeth Haysom, then 20, who he said admitted to him that she had stabbed her parents to death. “I was scared to death that she would be executed. … It was puppy love. She was my first girlfriend.” He was just 18 at the time of the murders.

Armed with the new evidence, Soering’s Charlottesville attorney, Elliott Harding, filed the petition for a writ of actual innocence in February. Most of the evidence came last year when Sheena Haysom, Elizabeth’s niece and the Haysoms’ granddaughter, voluntarily provided DNA tests of her blood. When compared with samples of blood found at the scene of the murders, it revealed that two members of Sheena’s family “cannot be excluded as sources of male blood found at the scene,” according to the petition. In addition, the petition argues, Soering’s DNA did not show up anywhere at the scene and no reliable forensic evidence points at him.

Those blood samples were analyzed for the first time for DNA in 2009 after the state decided to test archived crime evidence to correct wrongful convictions from before newer technology allowed for detailed testing of blood and other samples.

Prior to that, the blood samples from the murder scene had only been tested for blood type. A few drops of type O blood, a type that Soering shares with more than 40% of the U.S. population, were found at the scene. That, a bloody sock print supposedly matching Soering’s foot, testimony of his co-defendant, Elizabeth, naming him as the murderer and his own recanted confession resulted in his trial conviction.

The state attorney general’s office has not filed an official response to Soering’s petition for a writ of actual innocence. Communications director Rae Pickett said the office is waiting for the appeals court to ask for a response.

Christopher Dolen, acting commonwealth’s attorney for Bedford County, also said he had no immediate comment on the writ petition, except to say “we definitely are cooperating” and “would make our files available.” Asked about the petition’s contention that two killers escaped prosecution in the Haysom murders, Dolen said, “I don’t want to talk hypotheticals.’ 

Retired Bedford County Circuit Court Judge James Updike, who served as the county’s commonwealth’s attorney in 1990 and prosecuted Soering, said through the court’s clerk that he does not comment on active cases.

Ricky Gardner, the now-retired Bedford sheriff’s detective who led the investigation of Soering, could not be reached for comment.

The murders 

In the fall of 1984, Soering, the 18-year-old son of a midlevel German diplomat stationed in the United States, and Elizabeth Haysom, 20, enrolled at the University of Virginia. Both were honor students on scholarships. They began dating later that year. For Soering, a nerdy intellectual, Elizabeth was his first love, and he fell deeply. 

The murders occurred on the evening of March 30, 1985, at the Haysoms’ home in Boonsboro, a rural, higher-income Blue Ridge foothills section of Bedford County west of Lynchburg. Derek William Reginald Haysom, 71, was a retired Canadian steel executive, and Nancy Astor Benedict Haysom, 53, was an artist with family connections to British aristocracy. Their blood-soaked bodies were discovered a few days later when friends showed up for a game of bridge. They had been stabbed multiple times, and their necks slit ear to ear.

Soering and Elizabeth rented a car the weekend of the murders and drove to the Washington, D.C., area, ostensibly for a weekend getaway. The stories they gave of what followed began to diverge dramatically.

Elizabeth claimed that after arriving in Washington, Soering took the rental car, drove to Boonsboro, stabbed her parents to death and returned covered with blood. The supposed motive was because they disapproved of his relationship with Elizabeth and wanted it ended.

Soering told Cardinal News that the trip to Washington was their first chance to be alone together that spring because they both had roommates at the university. They went to a record store, a tie-dye place, movies — “tourist stuff.” But then, he said, “She told me she was using drugs and had a debt to pay.”

Soering said she claimed her drug dealer was a fellow college student who had offered to reduce her debt if she would carry some drugs from Washington back to Charlottesville. Soering offered to go with her, but she refused and drove off by herself. 

When she returned to Washington that night, he said, she told him she had killed her parents and begged him to help her with an alibi that they were together in Washington when the murders occurred. She also told him, “If you really love me, you’ve got to do this for me.” (Soering’s allegation that Haysom killed her parents first came up in his 1990 trial; he appealed the conviction to the Virginia Supreme Court, which denied his appeal in 1998.)

Soering said he does not know what might have caused Elizabeth to kill her parents. “I knew she hated her parents … but there was no talk of killing anybody.” He said he did not know she was going to her parents’ home that night, but believes something happened and “things went sideways.”

He said all he could think of at the time was that he had to save Elizabeth from the electric chair. He decided that if it came to that, he planned to say that he alone had killed her parents. The two then spent the rest of that night in Washington rehearsing the scene of the murders so he could get the story straight. 

Conviction, parole and then deportation

Soering said he knows now that had he not made that confession, he might not have been charged, much less convicted. 

What exactly happened that night may never be known, but DNA “establishes the presence of at least two male contributors at the crime scene, neither of whom is Jens Soering,” according to the writ petition.

However, Soering said he could think of little but his consuming love for Elizabeth. “At the time, I didn’t realize … how naive I was back then and how inexperienced.”

In planning to claim that he had committed the murders, Soering mistakenly thought that with his father a diplomat, he would be sent back to Germany for trial. There, he reasoned, he would be treated more leniently because of his youth and would serve no more than a few or more years in prison.

The pair initially managed to avoid direct suspicion, and investigators hit a dead end. Then in October 1985, seven months after the murders, the focus turned to Soering and Elizabeth, who suddenly left separately for Europe and Southeast Asia, where they rejoined, traveled around and ran out of money. 

On April 30, 1986, six months after leaving the country, they were arrested on check fraud charges in London.

Authorities in Bedford County flew to London to interrogate the two. On June 8, 1986, after four days of questioning, Soering, without counsel, gave his unrecorded confession in which he detailed how he committed the murders.

Elizabeth subsequently confessed. According to the writ petition, she initially told the Bedford County detective in charge of the investigation and British police that “I did it myself. … I got off on it.” One of the British officers “told her to stop being silly, and she replied that she was only being ‘facetious,’” the petition says.

Despite that statement, “not a single follow-up question was asked,” even though an FBI profiler had determined that the evidence and scene of the killings indicated “the crime was committed by a woman in a close relationship to the victims,” according to the petition. Other evidence at the scene also pointed to Elizabeth, including her fingerprint on a vodka bottle, butts from her brand of cigarettes outside the front and back doors, and type B blood — relatively rare and Elizabeth’s own type — found on a rag near her mother’s body. 

Elizabeth initially was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, but at trial in August 1987, she pleaded guilty to two counts of being an accessory before the fact to the murders and was sentenced to 90 years in prison. She would be eligible for parole eight years later, in 1995. She also agreed to testify for the prosecution against Soering. 

Soering soon recanted his confession, claimed innocence and named Elizabeth as the killer, a position he has argued ever since.

He remained jailed in London fighting extradition until January 1990, when he was sent back to Bedford County after Updike, the commonwealth’s attorney, agreed to reduce the charge against him from capital murder to first-degree murder. That removed the death penalty as a possible sentence, a requirement for him to be extradited from England. He was tried later that year, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two life terms.

Both Soering and Elizabeth were eventually paroled in November 2019 after each had served nearly 33 years in prison. Soering told Cardinal News that he did not want parole; he wanted a full pardon at that point. However, he said, a friend persuaded him to accept the parole and be free at last. He first became eligible for parole in 2003 and had been denied it 14 times. 

Both were deported to their home countries, Elizabeth to Canada and Soering to Germany.

Never give up

Soering’s release did not stop his efforts to win exoneration. While in Germany, he filed his February petition for the writ of actual innocence after receiving new evidence. That evidence was revealed by professor J. Thomas McClintock of Liberty University, a DNA expert whom Soering’s team asked to investigate. McClintock, a forensic scientist who runs a DNA company, obtained permission to go to the Virginia Department of Forensic Science’s lab to examine the raw data in its 2009 DNA tests of blood samples from the murder scene. 

After eight hours of reviewing the lab’s data on Aug. 1, 2022, he determined that the relevant samples had not been contaminated or mixed and that each was from an individual contributor. That removed lingering concern about the blood samples’ validity, according to the writ petition.

Later, in December 2025, McClintock and the Canadian DNA analyst who took Sheena Haysom’s blood samples determined that the DNA indicated that two unknown males cannot be excluded as the source of blood at the crime scene, the petition said.

Sheena Haysom signed an affidavit in support of Soering’s writ. In the Jan. 29, 2026, document, she says she went public with her new evidence and accusations after watching footage of the murder trial in the Netflix documentary “Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom.”

“Viewing this documentary triggered a flood of memories from my early childhood — years marked by multiple traumatic experiences, including prolonged sexual abuse” by male relatives, she says in the affidavit. She names the relatives, but Cardinal News does not use the names of individuals not officially charged or classified as suspects. Sheena also says in the affidavit she believes two of the males who sexually abused her, and possibly other family members, “murdered my grandparents Derek and Nancy Haysom — not Jens.”

In a May 27 telephone interview from her home in Vancouver, Canada, Sheena said it took her years to understand what actually happened the night her grandparents were killed. She was just 6 years old at the time, and she was told they died in an accident. A couple of years later, her father told her they had been murdered. She said she vividly recalls him telling her that “Derek fought very hard with the poker stick.” 

She wondered about that as she grew older, but whenever she would inquire about the murders, her parents would cut her off and refuse to talk about it, she said. 

Elizabeth Haysom had also talked about being sexually abused as a child by her mother, according to the petition for the writ, but had denied it at both her sentencing and Soering’s trial. Then, according to the writ petition, Elizabeth was quoted in a 2016 Richmond Times-Dispatch interview saying that she had been sexually abused by her mother for eight years, “and this was the true motive for the murders.” But she still blamed Soering for the actual stabbings. 

Efforts by Cardinal News to contact Elizabeth Haysom were unsuccessful.

Sheena said that over the last several years, she began to realize what she believes actually happened to her grandparents. “It angers me that Jens had so much taken from him by these people,” she said, adding that she sees him as an immature, childlike 18-year-old who unknowingly got trapped in an evil plot and confessed to murder in a juvenile effort to save the woman he thought he loved.

Sheena said she believes Elizabeth was present at the murders but did not participate in the killings. She also believes Elizabeth “was scared for her own life” and was intimidated by the others into involvement. Still, Sheena said, “You can’t take away the evil she has done to Jens.”

“I have complete empathy for Jens,” Sheena said. “So many lives destroyed by the greed of these people. … But what I really want is them to be brought to justice, all of them.”

Sheena’s contribution of her own DNA tests to be compared to DNA tests of blood samples from the crime scene, together with her contention that male family members were involved in the murders, gave Soering the new evidence needed to petition for the writ of actual innocence. Sheena also provided what she believes are the motives for the murders: simmering family issues, including covering up incest.

Harding, Soering’s attorney, says he got involved in filing the petition in part because his uncle, a former police detective and Albemarle County sheriff, has long believed that the evidence supports Soering’s innocence.

The uncle, Chip Harding, had been asked by one of Soering’s earlier lawyers to review the case file in another of the convicted murderer’s efforts to win his release. As a former sheriff and detective, Harding had extensive experience trying to exonerate the wrongly accused or convicted. 

In a recent telephone interview, Chip Harding said that Soering’s confession was filled with many factual errors that should have made investigators immediately suspicious. But, he said, Bedford County investigators essentially quit looking for other possible suspects in the actual murders. 

Chip Harding said his certainty that Soering is not guilty is all the firmer because of the latest DNA tests revealing other males at the scene and forensic evidence showing no valid indication of Soering. “I would absolutely grant a writ of actual innocence for Soering.”

He said he believes Bedford County needs to reopen the investigation. “I don’t think he did it, but I cannot prove it.”

Soering’s attorney, Elliott Harding, said the latest evidence from Sheena is “kind of like the cherry on top, and now we have to finish the dish.”

“We don’t have to find the killer,” he said. “At the end of the day, I don’t have to prove Jens is innocent … If someone’s trying the case today, you can’t say it’s Jens.”

The post A couple was killed in Bedford County in 1985. Jens Soering was convicted but has steadfastly maintained his innocence — and says he has new evidence to prove it. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins announced her reelection campaign in February by posting a video that showed her opening a box of New Balance running shoes. 

“This is perfect for 2026,” she said to the camera as she held up a sneaker. “Because I’m running.”

The video didn’t mention that New Balance’s owner and chairman, billionaire Jim Davis, gave $1 million to the super PAC supporting Collins’ campaign seven months prior. The company is based in Boston and has manufacturing facilities in Maine. It was one of four donations Davis made last year to the network of committees raising money for Collins.

Davis, who is worth an estimated $6.1 billion, is one of at least 79 billionaires who donated to Collins’ network between January 2025 and May 20, 2026, according to a Maine Monitor analysis of Federal Election Commission campaign finance data. If billionaires’ spouses are included in the tally, the number rises to 97.

Collectively, the group of nearly 100 billionaires and spouses has donated $9.8 million to the Collins network since the start of 2025, representing a third of what groups supporting Collins raised from all donors. 

The total from billionaires stands in stark contrast with the fundraising of her opponent, Democrat Graham Platner, whose campaign has mostly attracted smaller amounts of funds but from many more people. Platner, who won his party’s primary election Tuesday, has received at least $24,000 from five billionaires, a fraction of 1 percent of his total haul.

The breadth of billionaire funding for Collins shows how the race, which could decide control of the U.S. Senate, has drawn national interest and funding from some of the wealthiest people in the world, a group that has made up a growing share of election spending in recent years. Billionaires accounted for 19 percent of all federal election contributions in 2024, up from just 0.3 percent in 2004, according to a New York Times analysis from earlier this year. 

Billionaires and their spouses gave $529,000 to the Collins campaign directly; $370,000 to the Collins Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee that has disbursed funds to the other committees; $100,000 to Dirigo PAC, the leadership committee Collins uses to raise money for other candidates; and $24,000 to Susan Collins for Maine, a joint fundraising committee. But the billionaires have mostly opted to send their donations, nearly $9 million, to Pine Tree Results PAC, a super PAC dedicated to electing Collins that, unlike the others, is not subject to contribution limits. 

Pine Tree Results PAC has financed attack ads against Platner since April and has booked $24 million in ads leading up to the general election in November, according to data from AdImpact.

The network of five groups supporting Collins is linked through a series of joint fundraising agreements, which are legal arrangements that allow them to raise money together and then disburse the funds according to a predetermined formula. For the first time in Collins’ career, a super PAC — Pine Tree Results — is linked to her fundraising apparatus through those agreements, an arrangement made possible thanks to a 2024 advisory Federal Election Commission opinion. The super PAC also shares a treasurer with the Collins Victory Committee and Dirigo PAC.

Counting all her donations, including both from billionaires and others, the Collins network has raised about $30 million since the beginning of last year, with $12 million going to her campaign. 

The Platner campaign, meanwhile, raised $16.3 million over that time. The total does not include the $200,000 his campaign said it raised in the 24 hours after The New York Times published a story last week detailing what it described as Platner’s “unsettling” behavior with three former girlfriends. The Platner campaign has no joint fundraising agreements with any other committees, according to federal campaign finance filings, and no super PAC dedicated to supporting his candidacy. (Platner has said that super PACs “should be outlawed.”) Experts speculated, however, that big outside money will likely move toward Platner now that he has clinched the Democratic nomination. 

The Monitor counted billionaire donors by comparing the names on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaire List to Federal Election Commission donor information, which included reviewing location and occupation information to eliminate the possibility of erroneous matches based on similar names. 

The Collins campaign did not respond to a request from The Monitor for an interview with the senator and then declined to answer questions over email.

The amount billionaires gave in support of Collins is similar to the amount that small-dollar donors — those giving $200 or less — contributed to the Platner campaign. Billionaires gave $9.8 million in support of Collins, while small-dollar donors gave $9.6 million to support Platner. The Collins campaign raised about $980,000 from small-dollar donations. 

“While Susan Collins’ campaign is backed by billionaire donors, our campaign is built on a movement funded by the people, with an average donation of $26,” wrote Ben Chin, Platner’s campaign manager, in an email. 

The majority of the billionaire donations to Collins this cycle are from billionaires who made their money in alternative investments, including hedge funds and private equity. Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel LLC, donated $2.5 million to the Pine Tree Results Super PAC, the largest individual donation backing Collins since 2025. Stephen Schwarzman, the founder and CEO of Blackstone dubbed “the king of private equity,” donated $2 million. Schwarzman and the private equity industry were some of Collins’ biggest boosters in her last campaign in 2020. 

Other billionaire Collins donors include Palantir co-founder Alex Karp; Melinda French-Gates, ex-wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates; New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft; and Elizabeth Uihlein, husband of Richard Uihlein, the main financial backer of the effort to place a referendum question about trans athletes on Maine’s ballot this year.

The billionaire donors supporting Collins have a net worth of $888 billion, or nearly nine times Maine’s entire economic output in 2025. None are Maine residents.

The Platner campaign received donations from at least five billionaires. It received $1,500 from Jennifer Pritzker, a cousin to fellow billionaire and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker; a total of $12,000 from Jon and Pat Stryker, heirs to the Stryker medical equipment empire; $3,500 from Christy Walton, who married into the Walton family; and $7,000 from Democratic megadonor and hedge fund founder George Soros. Together, they are worth an estimated $42.3 billion. 

The difference between billionaire contributions to the two candidates is not surprising given Collins’ long Senate tenure, her position as chair of the powerful appropriations committee and Platner’s anti-billionaire message, said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine. 

“We generally know that, in contemporary American politics, big money from wealthy donors generally tends to head in the direction of Republicans more than Democrats,” he said. 

Meanwhile Democrats dating back to Howard Dean and Barack Obama have shown the possibility of raising huge sums from small-dollar donations, he added. 

“It’s two different ways to get there, but you both get there,” Brewer said. 

Just 3 percent of the total that Collins’ groups raised came from donors who gave $200 or less. In comparison, about 60 percent of donations to Platner’s campaign came from those smaller donations.

It’s not possible to track the state where smaller, “unitemized” donations came from. Committees are required, however, to provide the Federal Election Commission information about donors who contribute more than $200 across all federal campaigns, including their state of residence. These donations are called “itemized donations.” Both campaigns have relied heavily on out-of-state money for their itemized donations. 

Of those larger donations to the Collins network, about 3 percent came from Maine. 

Platner’s trackable donations were more likely to be from Maine: About 22 percent were from the state, according to the Federal Election Commission. 

That’s actually a large percentage of in-state donations for a Senate campaign, said Nicholas Jacobs, a professor of American government at Colby College who has studied out-of-state donations in Senate campaigns. Maine contributed more itemized funding to Platner than any other state through May 20, according to the Federal Election Commission. 

“That’s rare in general and exceptionally rare for a small state,” Jacobs said. 

But now that Platner has won his primary, big money may start flowing his way. Jacobs predicted that Platner will likely get the backing of a super PAC at some point this summer.

“That’s just the way politics works,” Jacobs said. 

In the wake of Citizens United 

This is the first time that Collins has been running for reelection since the Federal Election Commission issued an advisory opinion that allowed super PACs to join joint fundraising efforts, and Collins has taken advantage of the change.

Before 2024, campaigns — which are subject to donor limits — could not be connected to super PACs, which are not subject to limits on donor contributions. Super PACs were created in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which ruled that groups independent of campaigns have a First Amendment right to raise and spend money supporting or attacking candidates without limits, so long as they aren’t coordinating with campaigns. 

In 2024, the Federal Election Commission issued an advisory opinion allowing South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s campaign to enter into a joint fundraising agreement with the super PAC supporting his candidacy. Commission members voted, 5-1, to permit the arrangement because Graham and his campaign told the commission they “will not discuss the nonpublic campaign plans, projects, activities, or needs of Senator Graham or his campaign with Super PAC,” according to the advisory opinion.

Critics, including the Democratic Party’s House and Senate fundraising arms, argued the arrangement was a clear violation of the ban on coordination, a ban that they argued has been regularly circumvented since the creation of the super PAC in 2010. 

In her dissent, former Democratic Federal Election Commission member Ellen Weintraub wrote that “the Commission has already created far too many holes in what should be a solid wall dividing candidates and their committees from the super PACs that support them.” In 2025, Trump fired Weintraub from the commission shortly after she became chair and didn’t name a replacement. Shortly after that, the agency lost a quorum of commissioners, effectively sidelining it from its election watchdog duties since April 2025. 

The 2024 advisory opinion opened the door for the Collins campaign to connect with the Pine Tree Results Super PAC. The campaign and the PAC each have a joint fundraising agreement with the Collins Victory Committee, which has transferred funds to both organizations. Most of this money, a total of $2.4 million, has gone to the Collins campaign.

The Pine Tree Results Super PAC and the Collins Victory Committee share a treasurer, and all three groups have paid the same fundraising and event planning consultant, the Morning Group, based in Washington, D.C., Federal Election Commission records show.

Other outside groups are also spending large amounts on the race. For example, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the main fundraising vehicle for Senate Republicans, has raised $175 million since the start of 2025 and has booked $29 million in ads for the race pitting Collins against Platner. 

Many of the donors to the Senate Leadership Fund also donated to parts of the Collins fundraising network, including Schwarzman and hedge fund manager Paul Singer. Other billionaires have donated large sums to the Senate Leadership Fund as well, including casino magnate Miriam Adelson, who donated $30 million, and Elon Musk, who gave $10 million. 

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic super PAC WinSenate has booked $25 million in ads in Maine’s Senate race. WinSenate is funded by the Senate Majority PAC, the main fundraising vehicle for Senate Democrats. It has raised $115 million this cycle, and includes funds from billionaires such as Cable TV magnate Amos Hostetter Jr., who gave $2 million, and Netflix cofounder and chairman Reed Hastings, who contributed $1 million. 

Both the Republican Senate Leadership Fund and the Democratic Senate Majority PAC are beneficiaries of large amounts of funds contributed by 501(c)4 nonprofits that aren’t required to reveal their donors. That type of funding has been dubbed “dark money” due to the lack of transparency about its sources.

This cycle, the Senate Leadership Fund has raised $46 million from conservative dark money group One Nation, while the liberal dark money group Majority Forward has donated $33 million to the Democratic Senate Majority Fund. It’s unclear how much of that money came from billionaires. 

The indoor vertical farming company AeroFarms in Pittsylvania County has been acquired by an investment firm.

The buyer is an affiliate of Palm Ventures, a family investment office based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Austin, Texas, according to a news release. 

Thursday’s news release said the transaction closed in April. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Before the deal, AeroFarms had faced the prospect of a shutdown and accompanying mass layoffs for months.

Palm Ventures named Gustavo Burger, a former Kraft Heinz and Anheuser-Busch InBev executive, as AeroFarms’ new CEO.

“Consumers are choosing foods that naturally pack higher nutritional value into every bite,” Bradley Palmer, chairman and founder of Palm Ventures, said in a news release. “Gustavo Burger brings decades of world-class experience, and our job is to support his team as they deliver on that promise. AeroFarms is ready for what’s next.”

AeroFarms produces broccoli, kale and other microgreens at its 140,000-square-foot vertical farming facility in Ringgold, near the North Carolina border. 

The acquisition “significantly reduces AeroFarms’ debt, prioritizes sustainable growth and long-term profitability, while deepening customer relationships, continuing to grow consumer-favorite microgreen varieties, and preserving AeroFarms’ Certified B mission,” according to the news release.

“Certified B” refers to a company that has met social sustainability, environmental and transparency standards set by the nonprofit B Lab.

AeroFarms had 133 employees as of March 27, according to a letter the company sent to government officials. 

A media contact did not immediately respond to a message Thursday seeking a current employment figure and comment on how the acquisition might affect that number.

Burger said in the release that AeroFarms “is built on the most advanced aeroponic platform in the food industry, a category-defining product, and retail partnerships with the best names in the business.”

“My focus is to build on that foundation with the operational rigor it deserves, and create a business that performs as well as its products,” he said.

Palm Ventures, founded in 1992, takes “an unconstrained approach to building impactful companies that address significant problems facing human and planetary health,” according to the news release.

Its website lists investments in companies in the finance, education, healthcare, insurance and food and beverage sectors, among others. 

Deal prevented shutdown

In December, AeroFarms announced that it faced permanent closure because its largest investor had changed priorities. 

Between then and late March, the company sent multiple notices about its possible shutdown to government officials under a federal law that requires large employers to provide advance notice of major layoffs or plant closures.

During that time, AeroFarms changed course to say that the company had found short-term funding to stay open as it worked to close a sale of its business. More than 120 jobs were at stake.

On April 29, AeroFarms announced that it was canceling its previous warnings of possible mass layoffs and said that the company would become a “stronger, more stable business.”

At that time, an AeroFarms official declined to provide details but said the company looked forward to sharing more information later. Thursday’s announcement marks the first public update since then.

When AeroFarms first opened its Pittsylvania County location in 2022, it was based in New Jersey.

The company underwent Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 and closed its New Jersey site to focus on Southside Virginia.

In August 2025, AeroFarms announced that it had refinanced its debt to support its Pittsylvania operation.

The post Microgreens grower AeroFarms acquired by investment firm appeared first on Cardinal News.

ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio — For the past decade, the invasive plant poison hemlock has been making inroads in Athens County, and local municipalities are now working to address its spread.

The Athens County Emergency Management Agency described the plant in a May 28 Facebook post as among the most toxic in North America, noting that all parts of poison hemlock contain a deadly toxin.

“Poisoning can occur through ingestion, inhalation, or absorption via the eyes and broken skin,” the post said. “Poison hemlock rarely causes a severe skin rash, but the sap is highly dangerous if it enters the bloodstream through minor skin cuts, scratches, or abrasions.”

The plant, Conium maculatum, is a member of the carrot family and can be distinguished from other species by its purple-spotted stem and fern-like leaves. It grows four to eight feet tall and has numerous small, white, five-petaled flowers at the end of its branches.

The EMA post about dangers from the plant gained so much traction that it posted a follow up saying “there is no need for panic” and that the primary danger associated with the plant is ingestion. (It can also be dangerous to inhale parts of the plant during mowing or touch its sap.) 

Based on the public’s response to their posts, the EMA got in touch with Athens County Planner Connor LaVelle to establish a system for residents to report poison hemlock growth on public property, LaVelle told the Independent.

LaVelle said he has fielded “a lot of responses from folks” to the countyplanner@athensoh.org email address. 

LaVelle’s office handles county parks and some sections of the Hockhocking Adena Bikeway. Mainly, however, the inquiries LaVelle has received have pertained to other jurisdictions, such as the city of Athens or local townships. 

“I’m happy to direct them towards who they need to talk to,” LaVelle said.

The Ohio State University Athens Extension office also is a resource for residents concerned about the plant.

“We do education on it, and kind of make everyone aware,” said Ed Brown, Agriculture and Natural Resource Educator for the Ohio State University Athens County Extension. “We give them the life cycle of the plant and what the options are. There’s easy options and a little bit more expensive options.”

The plant is most visible in the late spring and early summer, when it has grown tall and is flowering. However, Brown said the plant can be most effectively addressed in the early spring, before it flowers and goes to seed.

The spread of poison hemlock

“It’s been here for a long time, but it’s been slowly advancing,” Brown said. “Really, I’ve seen the last four or five years, probably, it was becoming very noticeable.”

In 2017, poison hemlock was first recorded in Athens County on iNaturalist, a website and app where individuals can record observations in nature. That year, one person observed two plants. Every year since 2019, observations of the plant submitted to the app have been in the double digits. 

Poison hemlock has been found locally in “local ditches, roadsides, fencerows, floodplains, meadows and fields,” according to the EMA’s Facebook post. Almost all Athens County reports on iNaturalist are located in the central or eastern portions of the county. Many are located in the city of Athens and along the Hocking River and bike path.

Poison hemlock has also been frequently recorded along major roadways, according to Brown.

Local governments respond

Addressing the spread of invasive species falls within the county’s Hazard Mitigation Plan, last updated in 2025 and overseen by the EMA. Although poison hemlock is not specifically identified in the plan, LaVelle said he expects it will be included in future iterations. He added that the EMA’s posts about poison hemlock support the plan’s “goals of increasing public awareness and education regarding natural hazards.”

Actually curbing the spread on public land falls to local municipalities, all of which are obligated under Ohio’s noxious weed laws to address poison hemlock along roadways and lands they manage. Each different municipality within the county takes its own approach.

“From the county’s side, I think that they’ve got it pretty much under control along the bike path. They have a very regular maintenance schedule, so they keep it pretty tightly mowed,” LaVelle said. 

LaVelle noted that the county maintains a three- to five-foot shoulder on areas of the bike path. The county has also mowed another area where the plant was found on its land, at the Athens County Job and Family Services building. Maintenance workers had to remain in the enclosed cab tractor to limit exposure, he said.

“They’ve tried to keep ahead of it,” LaVelle said.

Athens Arts, Parks & Rec Director Katherine Ann Jordan said her department has previously removed poison hemlock, specifically pointing to a project to clear invasive species from the riparian area behind the community center. She said the plant has sprung back up along the bike path near Walmart.

“That’s something that we’re keeping on our radar to treat, hopefully in the next year or so,” she said. 

She added she does not have her staff mow the plant due to concerns that the plant will get in maintenance workers’ eyes and lungs. 

“It’s more of figuring out what makes sense within the staff that we have and the safety equipment that we have and the processes that we have in place,” she said.

The Hocking Conservancy District manages land on the banks of the Hocking River, where many iNaturalist observations of poison hemlock have been logged. The district has not yet taken steps to address the spread of the plant. However, Mark Holdcroft, secretary-treasurer at the district, told the Independent that poison hemlock management has been an active conversation over the past month.

“We just haven’t determined the best method yet of how to handle this plant,” Holdcroft said. He said the district is planning to seek guidance from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Holdcroft said he had confirmed the plant on land the district manages off Harmony Road and suspects it’s “all along the bike path.”

“It seems to have really gotten bad this year as compared to years in the past, but maybe we just haven’t noticed it in years in the past to this degree,” Holdcroft said. Regardless, he added, “It’s there now, so we have to address it.”

Township trustees in Athens and Alexander townships and a Buchtel Village Council member all told the Independent they had never responded to reports of the plant. Township trustees are required to address reports of noxious weeds, including poison hemlock, on private land.

Ohio University and the EMA did not respond to June 10 requests for comment (by email and phone respectively) in time for publication.

Managing the plant on private property

Brown, with the OSU Athens County Extension office, said there are many options to address the spread of the plant on private land. The first step is understanding its biennial life cycle, he said.

“This year, half of the plants you won’t even notice, because they just have a rosette. It looks almost like carrot leaves down at ground level, and they’ll just stay green, even through the winter months. Those will be green, kind of like carrot leaves, kind of feathery,” Brown said. “And then the second year, in the spring, this time of year, they send up a shoot – flower stalk – and they flower, make seed, and then they die.”

The cheapest way to address the spread of the plant is to cut the stalks off on the plant as soon as they come up, Brown said. He cautioned people to be careful not to ingest or touch the plant’s sap when removing it. The plants will not generate a new stalk and will then die.

The next year, the plants that did not flower in year one will send up stalks. If those are also removed, Brown said there will then be a noticeable decline in the population. However, seeds will remain in the seed bank so continued effort will be necessary in the following years.

In addition to hand-removing the plants, Brown said herbicide use in the early spring is another option.

Brown said his office can give people more specific recommendations on herbicides and address other questions related to managing the plant. Call them at 740-593-8555 or visit their offices at 280 W. Union St., Athens, between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.