In his more than a decade at the helm of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, Samuel Fromartz was instrumental in shaping a new way of covering food, agriculture and environmental issues. As he prepares to turn over the top editor’s job to his successor, Fromartz talks about FERN’s innovative business model and the power of narrative.
"The U.S. nuclear energy regulator on Tuesday issued a license to Holtec International to build and operate a temporary facility to store nuclear waste from power plants, despite a New Mexico state law that could present a hurdle to the project."
"Officials in Alabama discriminated against Black residents in a rural county by denying them access to adequate sanitation systems, imposing burdensome fines and liens and ignoring the serious health risks plaguing the community, according to a landmark environmental justice agreement announced Thursday by the Biden administration."
"The plastics industry says heating and treating plastic waste with chemicals enables it to make new plastics. But environmentalists say that process, emitting large amounts of climate and air pollution, isn’t recycling and isn’t green."
"Unsterilized laboratory wastewater from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, spewed out the top of a rusty 50,000-gallon outdoor holding tank, the pressure catapulting it over the short concrete wall that was supposed to contain hazardous spills."
"The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to step up enforcement in Pennsylvania to ensure that it meets targets for reducing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, state and environmental officials announced Thursday."
"The cavernous Maryland warehouse housing Community Forklift bulges with doors, windows, flooring and light fixtures, some lightly used, some more so, but all for sale at big discounts."
"New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been locked in a multiyear war with millions of his constituents. "Everyone that knows me knows one thing: I hate rats," he said in an October 2022 press conference."
"After firefighters spent two days battling an inferno fueled by plastics in eastern Indiana, the fire has been fully extinguished, officials said. “We’re now able to turn our attention to collecting air and water samples to determine when the evacuation order can be lifted,” Richmond Mayor Dave Smith told CNN Thursday night."
"An evacuation order affecting more than 1,000 people remained in place Wednesday night around a large industrial fire in an Indiana city near the Ohio border where crews worked to douse piles of burning plastics."
