Enforcement has usually been serious business at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Now it seems many pollution laws are going unpoliced. TipSheet explains how the EPA’s own resources can help investigative reporters find violations, track regulatory actions and uncover nationwide patterns of corporate mismanagement.
A cool swim on a hot day is one of the quintessential pleasures of summer. That is, unless polluted water makes it — and any other aquatic contact — a high-risk activity. It’s an important environmental and public health story for journalists to tell. TipSheet helps review waterborne illnesses to watch for, regulations supposed to protect against them and local story ideas to pursue.
Steep cuts for the U.S. National Park System look likely from the Trump administration, affecting visitors, roiling local businesses and raising political hackles. For environmental journalists, budgets slashed for hundreds of park units could also turn a summer standby story into something closer to disaster coverage. TipSheet has more than a dozen story ideas and reporting resources to cover the park nearest you.
With fishing season underway across the United States, reporters have a line to an array of great, local environmental stories, whether about the recreation and tourism industries or overfishing and the health of regional ecosystems. The latest TipSheet has more than a dozen story ideas and reporting resources to help you reel in an angle of your own.
As the Trump administration rolls back Biden-era rules limiting the presence of “forever chemicals” in drinking water, an updated data mapping tool helps pinpoint local angles on the PFAS story. The latest TipSheet outlines the basics on this class of widely used chemicals, their risks to humans and the challenges of regulating them, plus provides a half-dozen story ideas and questions to ask.
Decades of effort to tackle the often-intractable problems of environmental injustice, supported in recent years by billions in funding, are now facing the knife under the Trump administration. The latest TipSheet provides a thumbnail history of government initiatives and why it matters, then offers a dozen story ideas and reporting resources to tell the story in your community.
Among the widespread federal firings that look like they’re putting the public increasingly at risk are those that strip away government oversight of dam safety. The latest TipSheet looks at what’s at stake and offers up a dozen story ideas, questions to ask and reporting resources to help environmental journalists spot the dam dangers nearest them.
Hazardous sites around the United States are supposed to have disaster plans, which make for a localizable story environmental journalists can tell to help protect their communities. The problem, reports TipSheet, is that a key federal database of these plans may be shut down by the Trump administration. More on the Risk Management Program, efforts to protect the data and how reporters can use it.
While extreme cold has made much news this winter, environmental journalists have another way into climate-related stories as spring approaches — through gardening. That’s because this time of year, gardeners are already buying and nursing seeds in readiness for planting. Ideas for reporting the topic, including a government plant hardiness zone map that offers a window into the climate change story, from the latest TipSheet.
It’s not just the heads of Trump administration environmental agencies who come from the industries they now are entrusted to regulate. The latest TipSheet explains that it’s also the political appointees below them — officials responsible for overseeing air, water, toxic chemicals, Superfund, forests and drilling — who are now likely examples of regulatory capture. A short list. Plus, more from our new Trump 2.0 EJWatch special section.
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