"The Trump administration is moving ahead with a uranium mining project in South Dakota that’s drawn years of pushback from the Oglala Sioux Tribe." "Federal regulators are preparing an environmental review for a project opposed by members of a nearby tribe and conservation groups."
"Public health officials in Omaha, Nebraska, say not enough kids who live near the country’s largest residential lead cleanup site are tested for the metal. Faced with similar crises or concerns, 13 states have passed laws requiring all kids to get a blood test for lead early in life."
"For two decades, Nick Pehle's grapes, pressed and distilled, have filled glasses at wineries across Missouri. ... Last year was different. In May, before the vines could bloom, their leaves started curling into the shape of small bowls."
As the Trump administration and its allies seek to stifle free speech and paint protest as domestic terrorism, Voices columnist Yessenia Funes argues that environmental journalists must heed the impact on the environmental movement we cover. Start with what happened in Standing Rock, which swept back into the news this spring. Funes explains the connection, and where we may be headed.
"When pollution gets bad enough in the rivers supplying Iowa’s largest city with drinking water, it costs Des Moines around $16,000 a day to run a special system to filter out dangerous nitrates. It’s a fact of life in the agriculture-dependent state — and climate change is making the water quality problem even worse."
"Iowa is among a few states where cancer diagnoses are on the rise. A new analysis from the Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement and the Iowa Environmental Council says that environmental exposures are partially to blame."
"Wildfires burn nearly 775,000 acres in Nebraska. Land is a grazing resource for about 40,000 cows."
"A new analysis links high use of the weed killer glyphosate to elevated rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), particularly in the Midwest, reinforcing years of research linking cancer to the weed killer made popular by Monsanto."
"High along the Southwind Nature Trail, the tallgrass prairie waves in all directions, a mix of present-day reality and historical mirage stretching to the horizon much as it did more than 150 years ago." "Today, the vast majority of what was an estimated 140 million to 170 million acres of tallgrass prairie is gone, plowed under by 19th century agricultural sprawl and the development that followed."
"A North Dakota judge on Friday finalized a $345m judgment against Greenpeace in a lawsuit pursued by pipeline company Energy Transfer over the environmental group’s role in protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline."
