A new emergency-care hospital is set to open in Smith County early this year. It will house the rural county’s first emergency room in two decades. 

Smith County Emergency Hospital in Raleigh will provide 24-hour emergency services, observation care and outpatient radiology and lab work services. Raleigh is currently a 35-minute drive from the nearest emergency room. 

The hospital will operate as a division of Covington County Hospital. The Collins hospital is a part of South Central Regional Medical Center’s partnership with rural community hospitals Simpson General Hospital in Mendenhall and Magee General Hospital, all helmed by CEO Greg Gibbes.

The hospital’s opening reflects Covington County Hospital’s “deeply held mission of helping others, serving patients and trying to do it in a way that would create sustainability,” not just for its own county, but also for surrounding communities, said Gibbes at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday. 

Renovations of the building – which previously housed Patients’ Choice Medical Center of Smith County, an acute-care facility that closed in 2023 – are complete. The facility now awaits the Mississippi Department of Health’s final inspection, which could come as soon as next week, according to Gibbes. 

The hospital hopes to then be approved as a “rural emergency hospital” by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

A rural emergency hospital status allows hospitals to receive $3.3 million from the federal government each year in exchange for closing their inpatient units and transferring patients requiring stays over 24 hours to a nearby facility. 

The program was created to serve as a lifeline for struggling rural hospitals at risk of closing. Six hospitals have closed in Mississippi since 2005, and 33% are at immediate risk of closure, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.

Receiving a rural emergency hospital designation will make the hospital more financially sustainable, said Gibbes. He said he has “no concerns” about the hospital being awarded the federal designation. 

Mississippi has more rural emergency hospitals than any other state besides Arkansas, which also operates five. Nationwide, 34 hospitals have received the designation, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services enrollment data. Over half of them are located in the Southeast. 

The hospital will have a “significant economic impact” of tens of millions of dollars and has already created about 60 jobs in Smith County, Gibbes said.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A bill that passed out of the Senate Energy Committee on Wednesday would label natural gas, the predominant energy source in Mississippi, “clean energy” despite its greenhouse gas emissions.

Sen. Joel Carter, R-Gulfport, introduced Senate Bill 2231, and explained the idea behind it is to take advantage of clean energy benefits as well as to avoid federal regulations that might punish the use of non-clean energy.

“Our footprint in Mississippi is largely natural gas,” Carter told Mississippi Today on Thursday. “If we weren’t able to use natural gas for some reason — if the federal government outlawed it or put restrictions on it — it would be detrimental to the economic development in our state.”

When asked how natural gas could be considered a clean energy, the senator described a “gray area” around what is and isn’t considered clean.

“There’s going to be people that make arguments that oil is clean energy,” Carter, who chairs the Energy Committee, said. “There’s a lot of arguments, there’s a lot of gray area, and that’s what we attempted to do is remove some gray area as to what clean energy is considered in Mississippi.”

Ohio and Tennessee passed similar laws in 2023, and in 2024 Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a proclamation stating natural gas is clean.

Natural gas is widely considered cleaner than coal as an energy source, but burning gas still produces carbon emissions, and methane that leaks out through the extraction and transportation of gas is much more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere. Definitions of clean energy in multiple academic resources, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy’s website, exclude natural gas.

Daniel Tait, research and communications director for the Energy and Policy Institute, blasted the proposal.

“This is a joke,” Tait said. “Natural gas is not clean.”

The Senate committee also amended the bill, which Carter admitted may “need some work” on the floor, that includes an amendment defining wood pellets as “clean energy.” Despite the recent growth of the wood pellet industry, including in Mississippi, scientists have for years contested that burning wood for energy leads to more carbon in the atmosphere than coal or gas.

Proposal to pause wind projects

Another energy proposal lawmakers are considering is Senate Bill 2227, which would put a one-year moratorium on new wind energy projects while a study committee evaluates any potential harm wind turbines might cause to aquifers or agriculture.

Sen. Brian Rhodes, a Republican from Rankin County, introduced the bill, and Rep. Bill Pigott, R-Tylertown, brought the same proposal to the House in HB 1212. Neither responded to requests for comment by this story’s publication. Rhodes’ bill is in the Senate Energy Committee. Pigott’s has been referred to the House Agriculture Committee.

While the bill’s goal is to study potential hazards, the proposal takes the position that wind turbines are having an “impact” on “aquifers and other nearby water sources,” a point wind advocates contest.

“There is no documented evidence of wind turbines polluting aquifers or harming groundwater when properly permitted and constructed,” Jaxon Tolbert, with the Southeastern Wind Coalition, said, explaining that the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act include protections against such impacts.

Other concerns the bill raises are safety issues for crop dusters and turbines spreading farming chemicals with their gust. Tolbert argued there isn’t evidence for either concern.

“Crop dusters already navigate around wind farms and other obstacles across states like Texas and Oklahoma, and crop dusters have sprayed several times at (Mississippi’s wind facility near Tunica) with no issue,” he told Mississippi Today via e-mail. “(Federal Aviation Administration) regulations require all towers over 50 feet to be marked for safety.”

Carter said his committee will take up the bill on Monday. During a discussion of the bill Thursday, he added, there wasn’t enough recent data supporting or opposing those concerns.

“The reason for the study committee would be to gather more data,” Carter said, adding that he’s unsure yet if he supports the proposed moratorium. “I don’t want the government telling me what I can or cannot do with my land, and essentially that’s what we’ll be doing if we were to impose a moratorium.”

The proposed committee would include representatives from different state agencies as well as from the agricultural industry.

While Mississippi and the rest of the Southeast haven’t historically attracted many wind projects relative to other parts of the country, Tolbert said that new, taller turbine technology has increased the potential for such projects in the region.

“A moratorium would delay investment and send a chilling signal to companies looking at Mississippi for clean energy projects,” he said.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

State employees would get eight weeks of paid maternity leave under a bill that passed the House unanimously Thursday. It now advances to the Senate. 

Currently, government employees in Mississippi must forgo pay if they decide to take time off after the birth or adoption of a child. 

House Bill 1063, authored by Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, would also give two weeks of paid leave to the child’s father or secondary caregiver. The law would apply to birth, as well as adoption. It would not apply to public school teachers. 

“What we’re hoping to do is raise the bar and say ‘Look what we’re doing, everybody else get on board,” Felsher said. “… If you’re looking for benefits behind it, besides being healthy for the family and good for the mom and dad, it sounds like it could be a good recruitment and retention tool for state employees at a time where they’re hard to keep. The state doesn’t pay as much (as the private sector).”

Speaker of the House Jason White also said the legislation is part of the state’s commitment to supporting families in the wake of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. 

“As a pro-life state, Mississippi is in a critical position to meet the needs for healthier outcomes for parents and children and to support families in our state’s workplace,” White said in a statement. “With our fellow southern states offering some form of parental leave, and Mississippi currently offering no paid parental leave to their state employees, we too can reflect our commitment to the well-being of families, as well as utilize this benefit as an employee recruitment and retention tool.”

White also said the legislation sets a good example for the private sector to follow suit.

The policy has garnered broad support this year, across party lines and chambers – with a similar bill introduced by Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs.

State leaders such as Attorney General Lynn Fitch have also publicly endorsed the policy. 

“Mississippi is one of only twelve states that does not provide paid parental leave for state employees, and I am encouraged to see the Legislature taking steps to enact it this year,” Fitch told Mississippi Today. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.