"An unknown number of abandoned oil and gas wells dot the National Park System, but the one at Cuyahoga Valley National Park revealed itself with a whistling plume of colorless, odorless, and potentially lethal, methane gas."
"Federal workers were guaranteed back pay once the government reopened. Some at the National Park Service are still waiting."
At one time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was a reporter’s mecca for databases. Nowadays, not so much. But as the latest Reporter’s Toolbox points out, there remains a great government data source for journalists focused on environmental issues. Find out more about the official source for spending data on the U.S. government, including its superpower — search.
If it’s a journalism feel-good story you need heading into the holiday season, peek over the shoulder of the Ernie Pyle statue to the hall that houses the Media School at Indiana University Bloomington. Inside, you’ll find the heroes of the Indiana Daily Student, who, with the help of fellow journalists, stood up to suppression. WatchDog Opinion shares their inspirational story.
'For the past few weeks, Oitancan “Oi” Zephier has labored among piles of vinyl records nearly 2 feet high. KILI-FM, the Porcupine, South Dakota-based tribal public broadcasting station Zephier manages, has gone digital and no longer needs the records. The station is selling the records, because what it needs is cash."
"Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the desert Southwest."
"The Trump administration is eliminating Energy Department offices focused on clean energy and renewables and, instead, creating units dedicated to hydrocarbons and fusion energy."
"A Washington resident who was the first human case of bird flu in the U.S. since February died on Friday, state health officials said. The person was an older adult with underlying conditions and had been hospitalized since early November with a strain that was previously reported in animals but never before in humans."
"The plan from the Interior Department is one of the president’s most significant steps yet to increase domestic fossil fuel production."
"The Trump administration on Thursday announced a plan to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region off Alaska in the northern Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.
The plan is one of President Trump’s most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.
"Despite the Makah Tribe’s success in getting a waiver to carry out their exclusive treaty right for whaling, the permitting process that had dragged on for over 20 years has now been effectively delayed another year and a half – because of bogged-down federal bureaucracy. The Makah Tribe is the only one in the Lower 48 that has an exclusive treaty right to whaling."
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