For more than a century, oil and gas companies have been drilling — and abandoning — wells across the country, leaving hundreds of thousands to potentially leak pollutants into the air, water and soil. Climate and environment reporter Martha Pskowski looks at how funding and regulatory issues are impacting efforts to identify and plug these wells, and offers resources for drilling into their story.
"News deserts are widening. Newspaper closures continue unabated. Independent publishers are calling it quits at an alarming rate. Yet local digital-only news sites are multiplying. Many are even thriving."
"A new legal petition filed by a dozen public health and farm worker groups demands the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stop allowing farms to spray antibiotics on food crops in the US because they are probably causing superbugs to flourish and sickening farm workers."
"Environmentalists and former agency employees warn of increased workloads for park employees at a time when park staffing is already low." "U.S. citizenship will determine how expensive it is to access America’s national parks beginning next year, the Interior Department announced yesterday."
"Shifting politics, intensive lobbying and surging disinformation online have undermined international efforts to respond to the threat."
"When the Trump administration began freezing federal funding for climate and ecosystem research, one of the programs hit hard was ours: the U.S. Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers." "The centers have been helping to track invasive species, protect water supplies and make agriculture more sustainable in the face of increasing drought conditions. They’re improving wildfire forecasting, protecting shorelines and saving Alaska salmon, among many other projects."
"The scores aimed to predict a property’s risk from a fires, floods and storms, but some in the real estate industry as well as homeowners have called them inaccurate."
UPDATE: As of Dec. 1, NPR reports funding for USDA's Beltsville, Md., research center has been resored. No link available.
"Industry groups and scientists have urged the Trump administration to reconsider its plan to close a renowned Agriculture Department center in Maryland and disperse its work around the country."
"A recent decision by President Donald Trump to deny disaster aid to two electric utilities in rural northern Michigan could cost residents tens of millions of dollars."
"The Trump administration is withdrawing a proposal to require cosmetic companies to test their talc-containing products for asbestos, according to a public notice Tuesday."
