The reports aren't released to the taxpayers who funded them but the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project publishes leaked copies. Here are 17 of the latest, from air to water, food to fuel, and much more.
Grants and contracts are a key way that the agency extends the reach of its work into the world beyond agency offices. They may include an engineering project to clean up a Superfund site, an environmental education and outreach program, snow-plowing agency parking lots, expert studies, and computer services.
Maine passed a law in 2015 that allowed railroads to keep oil-train routing information from the public — over the governor's veto. In the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting's Pine Tree Watchdog, Dave Sherwood reports how the provision was a bait-and-switch.
Bad as it is, the Flint drinking water disaster is hardly uncommon. Even though the law requires authorities to tell the public of dangerous levels of lead in drinking water, they often don't.
John Keefe, senior editor for Data News & Journalism Technology at WNYC, is your guide for this hands-on, 3-hour evening workshop at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism on how we can use sensors to gather data — on air and water quality, soil pollution, temperatures and more- for engaging environmental stories. Discount for SEJ members.
"In northwestern India, the Himalaya Mountains rise sharply out of pine and cedar forests. The foothills of the Kullu Valley are blanketed with apple trees beginning to bloom. It’s a cool spring morning, and Lihat Ram, a farmer in Nashala village, shows me a small opening in a log hive propped against his house. Stout black-and-yellow native honeybees — Apis cerana — fly in and out."
"The United States will sign the Paris Agreement on climate change this year regardless of the Supreme Court's decision to put a chunk of President Barack Obama's environmental action on hold, the U.S. climate envoy said on Tuesday."
"A bipartisan group of 17 governors today signed the Governors’ Accord for a New Energy Future – a joint commitment to pursuing modern electric grids, as well as cleaner energy and transportation solutions."
"Europe launched a satellite on Tuesday that will help predict weather phenomena such as El Nino and track the progress of global warming as part of the multibillion-euro Copernicus Earth observation project."
Russia and Saudi Arabia have said they will freeze oil production if others do -- but Iran wants to ramp up production after the lifting of sanctions.
