SEJ’s Fund for Environmental Journalism has awarded $8,915 for two new story projects selected through the FEJ’s Summer 2016 round of competition. Coverage topic was "The Politics and Economics of Renewable Energy in the U.S."
"A well-known author and conservationist is appealing the Bureau of Land Management's decision last month to reject her purchase of two oil and natural gas leases in Utah on the grounds that she had no intention of developing them."
"NATURAL BRIDGE, Va.— In the Natural Bridge Hotel lobby before a pipeline summit in opposition to two planned fracked-gas pipelines, two words could be heard in almost every conversation: 'Trump' and 'election.'"
"Uranium mines around the Grand Canyon. Oil drilling rigs studding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. New coal and timber leases in the national forests. States divvying up millions of acres of federal land to dispose of as they wish. To environmental groups, it would be a nightmare. To miners, loggers, ranchers and conservative politicians in resource-dependent areas, it would be about time. Either way, Donald J. Trump’s election presages huge potential change on America’s 640 million acres of federal public lands, from the deep seas east of Maine to the volcanic coasts of Hawaii."
"More than 200 people have been hospitalized with breathing difficulties in Tennessee as wildfires scorched the Southeast. Over 30 large fires have burned more than 80,000 acres in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky, according to the US Forest Service."
"The state of Michigan on Thursday challenged a federal court order demanding that officials deliver bottled water to Flint residents who can’t easily pick up their own from distribution sites around the city, calling the requirement 'unnecessary' and saying it would require 'a tremendous expenditure of taxpayer funds.'"
"Donald Trump’s new hires should brace themselves for a full immersion in government ethics school. They’re going to need it given the president-elect’s sprawling business empire and his lack of interest in selling off his companies and properties outright."
"At a time when public mistrust of science runs high, and non-experts are hard-pressed to separate fact from industry-sponsored spin, Sense About Science, a charity based in London with an affiliate in New York, presents itself as a trustworthy arbiter."
"This week’s supermoon was more than a spectacular sight in the night sky. It nudged up sea levels, leading to areas of coastal flooding along the East Coast. Such inundation offered a glimpse of the new normal in certain low-lying areas as sea levels rise because of climate change."
"The U.S. Geological Survey says a deposit in West Texas is the largest continuous oil and gas deposit ever discovered in the United States."
