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Angler researches lowering lakes from the bottom to cool waters and help trout survive

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Angler researches lowering lakes from the bottom to cool waters and help trout survive


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An avid angler believes allowing more water to be released from the bottom of lakes will give coldwater fish like trout a better chance to survive the hot summer months.

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“I would notice that Laurel Hill Creek would super heat in the really warm months of summer,” said John MacDonald, 66, of Rockwood, Somerset County. 

“The trout would suffer horribly, many would die and the ones that didn’t, took refuge downstream and left the area.”

In the heat of the summer, MacDonald would wear snorkeling gear and swim down the creek looking for fish.

“I noticed they would hide in the deeper pools,” he said, “and I would find a cold water spring down there, that they were all huddled up against.”

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Ongoing research

About five years ago, he approached Camp Soles, a nearby children’s camp, about opening their lake’s bottom drain pipe to release some of the colder water to see how that would impact the temperature of the water flowing downstream. The camp’s 18-acre lake flows into Lost Run and then into Laurel Hill Creek.

“We had to make sure that at all times that water flowed over the top for the health of the lake,” he said. “We had to find a blending point which let water over the top, but enough cold water off the bottom to bring (the temperature) down,” he said.

Let’s go fishing: A look at what you need to know to fish for trout this spring across Pennsylvania

He started measuring the temperature of the water at several locations, including in Lost Run before it reached the lake, in the lake itself and then several spots down stream. 

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During the heat of the summer, he said water coming into the lake would be below 70 degrees. The water flowing over the spillway would oftentimes be 80 degrees or more and the water below where the spillway and bottom pipe blend in Lost Run would be back down to below 70.

“We are able to get to the same temperature below the dam as it was coming into the lake,” he said “We were actually able to get to that same point, as though the dam wasn’t there,” he said.

Susan Fletcher, president of the Friends of Camp Soles board of directors, has been observing MacDonald’s efforts.

“It’s not only that the fish are more vigorous and survive better, but there’s something about what they feed on that has improved,” she said.

Fletcher said MacDonald is a friend of the camp and they appreciate his efforts.

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“He’s clearly interested in the environment and when you have a summer camp, that’s what you want the kids to do, is to appreciate the natural world,” she said.

She said the dam was named Lake Tris for a descendant of the camp’s founders. She said there are online references to the waterway that have it also spelled as Lake Triss. “It’s hard to get that changed,” she said.

“One of the most popular things in recent years has been fishing,” she said about the campers enjoying the lake to catch catfish, bass and a variety of panfish.

“We love that John has taken an interest and is keeping (the lake) healthy. Because one of my favorite sayings is, when you tug at one thing in nature, you find it attached to the rest of the world.”

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This year, MacDonald is continuing his research with recording temperatures and studying the ratio of water coming over the spillway with the water being released from the bottom of the lake. He also wants to measure water volume, too.

More: Pennsylvania fishing license fees to remain same in 2025 because of increased sales

“Once I establish the ratio of what is needed, other lakes with a spillway and bottom pipe, can experiment with how far to open the pipe each year,” he said about making it a simple process for people to mimic or at least try. 

He said he’s not changing the amount of water being released, but blending the two sources of water discharge.

With the help of Camp Soles, he said the goal is to, “Someday find a very simple solution for these types of lakes to bring the water temperature down below 70, and protect our cold water heritage.”

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MacDonald isn’t officially trained to study waterways, but said he’s an avid sportsman who wants to protect the fishery. He’s hoping his research can be used by state agencies and private lake owners “for the betterment of our cold-water heritage.” 

State agency response

Lakes in Pennsylvania are managed by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Lauren Camarda, regional communications manager for the DEP, said, “A cold water, low-level discharge is not always required or beneficial, but many dams have been retrofitted with cold water releases over the years. While there could be benefits from discharging from the bottom, it could have the unintended consequence of releasing anoxic water (water with low levels of dissolved oxygen that fish need), sediment that can pollute the water downstream, or entrapping or impinging fish in the lake.”

If the lake has to retrofit its pipes on the bottom of a lake it can be cost prohibitive based on what is needed.

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“Simply ‘cracking open’ the low-level valve is generally not a viable solution as high velocity flow could be detrimental to the valve and debris may lodge in the valve preventing it from being able to shut,” she said through an email. “If a dam owner wants to change normal operation of the pool level, a permit is required from DEP. DEP’s division of dam safety consults with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission regarding situations where a cold-water release requirement may be warranted. Ultimately, this idea may have merit in certain situations but must be approached on a case specific-basis and in concert with DEP review to ensure that it is in fact beneficial for aquatic life downstream. DEP encourages dam owners that are interested in this to contact DEP to determine if it is something that could work for them.”

Mike Parker, communications director for the Fish and Boat Commission agreed that colder water may help trout survive the summer months, but referred questions about lowering lakes to achieve that to the DEP.

 Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors, and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.





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Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release

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Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release


The chorus for the song “Primary Colors” was something Walsh wrote years ago, with the song’s outro originally being used as a verse.

“And something just wasn’t quite clicking, and everything that I tried felt kind of forced,” Walsh said. “We were all just like, ‘Yeah, there’s something here, but it’s not quite doing what I think it has the potential to do.’”

The band then started toying with the dynamics between the verses and the chorus.

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“It just unlocked something for me in the idea where I was like, ‘Wow, this kind of quiet, loud, quiet, loud format really works well with this song,’” Walsh said. “So yeah, it just transformed it instantly into an idea that felt a lot stronger.”

The album was recorded with Grammy-winning producer Will Yip, a relationship still budding from their 2014 album, “Charmer.” Collins said the new album’s sound is “as true as we could be to playing the record live.”

“I wasn’t as tied to the tones that have classically been Tigers Jaw because I think at this point, I’ve just come to this realization that no matter what, if we’re making it, it is Tigers Jaw,” Collins said.

The new album has a “palpable energy” that shares the same spirit as their earlier records, Walsh said. And while “tastes evolve,” the band followed “what feels good.”

“This is the best representation of the band at the time, and it’s almost like a snapshot of us as artists, as people, as a creative entity over this time in our career,” he said.

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“Lost On You” is out now through Hopeless Records and is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

“Lost On You” was released on March 27, 2026, through Hopeless Records. The album is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

On April 16, Tigers Jaw will perform at Union Transfer at 8 p.m. They will be supported by Hot Flash Heat Wave and Creeks, the solo project of Balance and Composure vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons, who is from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.





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Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder

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Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder


What to Know

  • Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court says the state cannot automatically give life without parole for felony murder without weighing each defendant’s culpability in the killing.
  • The high court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing hearing for Derek Lee over a second-degree conviction, but paused it for four months to give state lawmakers time to consider legislation in response.
  • Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death. Life with no possibility of parole has been the only possible sentence.
  • The court says the current rule treats a lookout the same as the person who kills.

Pennsylvania’s high court on Thursday overturned the use of automatic life sentences without parole for people convicted of second-degree murder, saying it violates the state’s constitutional ban on cruel punishment when imposed without a closer look at the defendant’s specific role and culpability.

The court majority ordered resentencing in the case of Derek Lee, convicted of a 2014 killing in Pittsburgh, but the decision also has implications for others among the roughly 1,000 other inmates currently serving similar second-degree murder sentences.

The court’s order was put on hold for four months to give the General Assembly time to “consider appropriate remedial measures.” In a footnote, the justices said they were ruling on Lee’s sentence and not addressing “questions of retroactivity.”

Prison reform groups hailed it as a landmark decision, while the Allegheny County district attorney’s office said it will follow the court’s order.

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Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death, and life without parole has been the only possible sentence.

“The mandatory penalty scheme of life without parole for all offenders convicted of second degree murder fails to assess individual culpability regarding the intent to kill, and mandates the same punishment regardless of that culpability,” wrote Chief Justice Debra Todd in the lead opinion. She characterized it as not distinguishing “between the lookout, and the killer who pulls the trigger.”

The state high court’s decision comes after years of advocacy to undo mandatory life without parole sentences both in Pennsylvania and nationally. Nazgol Ghandnoosh of the Washington-based Sentencing Project said she counts 11 states and the federal system as having such laws for that kind of crime, sometimes called felony murder. Several states — California, Colorado and Minnesota — have moved away from that sentencing framework in recent years, she said.

Justice Kevin Dougherty noted in a separate opinion that unlike those convicted of first-degree murder, defendants serving life without parole for second-degree murder have “never been found by a judge or jury to have harbored the specific intent to kill” and may not have had “any involvement whatsoever with the actual killing. He or she does not even have to expect or foresee that a life may be taken.”

Lee’s lawyers had wanted the court to rule that life without parole sentences are unconstitutional for all second-degree murder convictions in Pennsylvania, said Quinn Cozzens, a staff attorney for the Abolitionist Law Center, which helped represent Lee. Instead, the court ruled that trial judges must examine the individual circumstances of a defendant’s case to decide which sentence is most appropriate, including the potential of life without parole.

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The state’s public defenders’ association said the ruling will generate new post-conviction litigation and require them to do more investigation as well as develop “strategic litigation” to get the decision to apply retroactively.

A jury convicted Lee of second-degree murder but acquitted him of first-degree murder in 44-year-old Leonard Butler’s shooting death. Butler was shot in a struggle over a gun with Lee’s codefendant, Paul Durham.

Prosecutors argued it should be up to state lawmakers and the executive branch to address the policy issues surrounding second-degree murder sentences. Todd wrote that while the district attorney’s office “acknowledges that there may be persuasive arguments why a non-slayer should not be held to the same degree of culpability as the slayer, it stresses that these are policy decisions for the General Assembly.”

Cozzens urged lawmakers to “address this constitutional violation, given that the court granted them the opportunity to do so.”

Rep. Tim Briggs, a suburban Philadelphia Democrat who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee, said he planned to engage with Senate Republicans on potential legislation in response.

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Briggs said he wanted to have decision apply retroactively, to give people serving life “for being the getaway driver” to “have the opportunity to have their facts looked at again.”

“I think inaction leaves a lot of this up to the courts to decide. I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Briggs said. “We have a policymaking role here.”

Justice Sallie Mundy wrote that Lee “willingly participated in an armed home invasion and robbery, and purposefully engaged in assaultive behavior in the form of tasing and pistol-whipping the victim.” She said Lee and Durham “arguably kidnapped the victims by forcing them into the basement” and it will be up to the county judge to decide if Lee’s life-without-parole sentence is appropriate.

Todd’s opinion, citing an advocacy group, said 73% of those convicted of felony murder in Pennsylvania were 25 or younger when the killing occurred and almost 70% are Black people.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro also responded to the ruling on X.

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Teen boys in Pennsylvania get probation after using AI to create fake nude photos of classmates

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Teen boys in Pennsylvania get probation after using AI to create fake nude photos of classmates


Lancaster Country Day School in Lancaster, Pa., Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

LANCASTER, Pa. — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence to create fake nude photos of their classmates at an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania received probation Wednesday after dozens of victims described the images’ traumatizing effect on them.

The boys were 14 at the time. They admitted this month that they made about 350 images, showing at least 59 girls under 18, along with other victims who so far have not been identified.

Authorities said the boys took images of the girls from school photos, yearbooks, Instagram, TikTok and FaceTime chats in 2023 and 2024, and morphed them with images of adults depicting nudity or sexual activity.

More than 100 students and parents from Lancaster Country Day School were in court to hear victims describe the shock of having to identify their own faces in pornographic photos to detectives. Juvenile proceedings in Pennsylvania are normally closed, but this was opened by the judge, providing an unusual opportunity for the community to be seen and heard.

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The girls described the fallout — anxiety attacks, a loss of trust, problems focusing on schoolwork and a fear that the images may someday surface in unexpected ways.

The two young men stood stone-faced throughout, flanked by their lawyers and parents, as they were called pedophiles, “sick and twisted” and perverted.

“I will never understand why they did this,” one victim told Judge Leonard Brown, saying it “destroyed my innocence.”

One young woman told Brown “how excruciating it is to bring these feelings up again and again.” Another choked back tears as she excoriated one of the defendants for expressing “fake empathy” as girls confided with him about their pain, before it became known that he had been part of creating and disseminating the images. Still another said all of her friends transferred schools, and that she “needed trauma therapy to even walk around my neighborhood.”

The defendants declined several opportunities to comment to the judge, who said he had not heard either boy take responsibility or apologize.

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“This has been a regrettable, long, torturous process for everyone involved,” said Heidi Freese, defense attorney for one of the defendants. “There were very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case.”

Brown ordered each to perform 60 hours of community service, have no contact with the victims and pay an unspecified amount of restitution. If they don’t have any additional legal problems, Brown said, the case can be expunged after two years.

As he imposed his sentence, Brown said that if they were adults, they probably would be headed for state prison. He said they should “take this opportunity to really examine” themselves.

The resolution of the Pennsylvania case comes days after three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images. The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.

The scandal in Pennsylvania led to a student protest, criminal charges against the two teenagers and the departure of leaders at the school, which says it has about 600 students K-12, class sizes averaging just 12 kids, and “an endowment in excess of $25 million.”

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Nadeem Bezar, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents at least 10 of the victims, said Tuesday he expects to file a claim “against the school and anybody else we think has culpability in these deepfakes being created and disseminated.”

He said he has not yet seen the photos but expects the legal process to determine “exactly when and where and how the school knew, how the boys created these images, what platforms they used to create these images and how they were disseminated.”

As AI has become accessible and powerful, lawmakers across the country have passed laws aimed at barring deepfakes.

President Donald Trump signed the Take it Down Act last year, making it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent, and requiring websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of being notified by a victim.

Forty-six states now have laws addressing deepfakes, with legislation introduced in the remaining four — Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico and Ohio — according to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

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Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.





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