"MENDOTA, Calif. — Driving down Highway 33 through California's Central Valley, signs of the state's ongoing drought — and water wars — are everywhere. Fields of green winter wheat and diagonal rows of almond trees alternate with brown fields. Billboards every few miles read, 'No water = No jobs.'"
"When you live on what’s essentially a sandbar, pollution, septic systems, and political roadblocks add up to one tough challenge."
"When the sickening odor swept across Matt Heissinger's farmstead, his daughter would sprint from their home to the car. Clinging to the girl's clothes and hair, the smell drove her to tears as she feared becoming a high school outcast."
"A tiny South Texas town is continuing to fight plans for an oil and gas waste site half its size, even after state regulators gave developers the go-ahead to build it."
"More than a dozen states have sued the Obama administration over a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule to limit methane emissions at oil and natural gas sites."
"Australia's re-elected conservative government has announced a U-turn in its climate change policy, reinstating climate science as the bedrock of its peak science body [CSIRO] just months after slashing its funding and axing hundreds of jobs."
"Hurricane Earl is forecast to weaken to a tropical storm later Thursday morning and to a tropical depression by Friday morning as it moves farther inland over Belize, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Thursday."
Previously secret information about the safety and environmental impact of Enbridge pipeline operations was released in July as a result of efforts by journalist Mike De Souza (pictured), managing editor of the National Observer, and an independent Canadian government watchdog.
Consumers learned in late July of a "voluntary" recall of some processed food products due to possible metal fragments in sugar used to make them. The source of the contaminated sugar remains unknown, because federal law protects "trade secrets" — putting protection of companies above protection of the public. Image: © Clipart.com.
Journalists are sometimes competitive — and even secretive about the exclusive "scoops" they may be working on, lest their competitors beat them to publication. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is conducting a survey to get journalists' opinions on the Obama admin's proposed release-to-one-release-to-all policy.
