Three seniors at Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School won't be attending graduation tomorrow and might face jail time for painting "2010" with red house paint all over the school grounds, the Daily Mail reports:

While much of the paint was subsequently removed by WAJ personnel, a specially-surfaced, outdoor basketball court has been permanently defaced and may need to be excavated and replaced, according to school superintendent John Wiktorko.

“This is a very unfortunate act of vandalism and a no-win situation for all parties concerned,” Wiktorko said, noting damages have been estimated in the $22,000 to $31,000 range, with the school seeking full restitution.

The four young men were charged following interviews with many youths in Windham, police said. The number “2010,” apparently a reference to this year’s senior class, was painted onto the back parking lot.

Earlier this week, it was gazebos. Now, the governing elite of Kingston have moved on to another civic spat -- this one over an illegal pile of brush that a city alderman had removed from his curb last week.

Once again, the quotes are priceless, as Kingston's Public Works Superintendent, Michael Schupp, tells the Daily Freeman exactly how illegally large the debris pile belonging to the offending alderman, Robert Senor, was:

Schupp, a former alderman, said the legal amount to put out at any one time is about the size of a washer and dryer put together. He said Senor had the equivalent of about six sets of washers and dryers on front of his home on Friday.

Senor, meanwhile, is insisting that he did nothing wrong:

“I am not above the law,” said Senor, who complained to Schupp earlier this month about the timeliness of yard waste collections.

But Schupp says that he only removed Senor's debris after the alderman ...

Greenwire reports via the New York Times that there is discussion behind the scenes in Congress about a possible plan to publicly disclose the proprietary fluids used in hydraulic fracturing:

The proposal making the rounds in the House would largely keep EPA out of the process and require disclosure beyond the "material safety data sheets" that many in industry have insisted are sufficient. Critics say that the documents, designed for worker safety rather than groundwater protection, lack important details about the chemicals in fracturing fluid.

The gamble for the gas drilling industry is that a much tougher disclosure requirement will become law on the wings of public outrage about the BP oil spill and the documentary "Gasland," which debuted on HBO this week. 

The Vermont-based Center for Biological Diversity informed Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday that they are suing the government on behalf of two bat species that have been decimated by a mysterious fungus. From the press release:

“Bat numbers are plummeting, bat biologists across the country have been urgently sounding the extinction alarm, and yet the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is silent,” said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate at the Center.

The Interior Department missed an April deadline for responding to the endangered species petition and has given no indication of when and how it intends to answer the call for stronger protections for the two species. Both bat species were thought to be uncommon to rare prior to the appearance of white-nose syndrome in the northeast United States in 2006. Since then, the disease has spread into 14 states and two Canadian provinces, taking a harsh toll on the two species as well as seven others.