"A cluster of wildfires scorched the Texas Panhandle on Wednesday, including a blaze that grew into one of the largest in state history, as flames moved with alarming speed and blackened the landscape across a vast stretch of small towns and cattle ranches."
"Texas regulators recently authorized a company to operate ponds to store and recycle millions of gallons of oilfield wastewater laced with toxic chemicals next to a Baptist summer camp in the Permian Basin."
"Two Texas farm families have seen their health decline, their pets and livestock sickened and killed, their water poisoned and and their property values wiped out due to high levels of chemical contamination linked to a company marketing treated sewage sludge as a fertilizer and soil conditioner, according to a lawsuit filed by the families."
"Drought and last winter’s hard freeze have caused a massive shortage, driving up prices by 500 percent or more."
Research, collaboration, human-centered storytelling and the ineluctable element of time — all these were among the facets of a complex, award-winning investigative report run by a team of students at Arizona State University on excessive and harmful natural gas flaring. How the project came together, and the lessons learned, in the new EJ Academy from column co-editor and longtime educator Bob Wyss.
"Exxon’s Baytown complex in the Houston-area has the third largest oil refinery in the U.S. and is requesting permit renewal for its olefins plant despite repeated violations to the Clean Air Act."
"Opponents of a sprawling national monument surrounding the Grand Canyon National Park on Monday launched a pair of lawsuits challenging the site, opening another front in a Republican effort to roll back presidential authority to protect federal lands."
"On the 30th anniversary of the first presidential executive order on environmental justice, a report from the fencelines in the booming Southeast Texas petrochemical corridor."
For years, high-risk U.S. industrial facilities fell under a federal anti-terrorism program to ensure their potentially lethal chemicals would not become terrorist targets. But when the program expired last year, something unexpected happened. Veteran chemical industry reporter Jeff Johnson has a behind-the-scenes look at the maneuvering over how best to secure the country’s dangerous chemical stores.
