California

Home Insurance Likely To Be a 2024 Climate Story Near You

In the first of a two-parter for our 2024 Journalists’ Guide to Environment & Energy, TipSheet looks at what climate-driven disasters mean for the home insurance market. Storms, floods and fire rip through communities, yet a federal insurance program falls short, lawmakers shy away from real reform and insurers grow hesitant to cover the risks, while homeowners often attempt to rebuild in the same problematic locales. Plus, see part two on extreme weather and insurance.

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Unique Podcast Team Gives Voice to Troubled Communities Near Declining Salton Sea

In the Coachella Valley east of Los Angeles, the massive Salton Sea is rapidly drying up, threatening vulnerable immigrant communities in a growing toxic environment. The Living Downstream podcast reported extensively on these hazards, winning third place in the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Awards for Reporting on the Environment’s explanatory reporting, small, category, in 2022. Inside Story spoke with one of the prizewinners.

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Calif. Lawmakers Pass Groundbreaking Greenhouse Emissions Disclosure Bill

"California lawmakers have passed a bill that would require large U.S.-based companies doing business in the Golden State to publicly disclose their annual greenhouse gas emissions — the first such requirement in the nation."

Source: LA Times, 09/14/2023

One Grant, Multiple Stories

Seattle-based correspondent Brett Walton has a habit of adding extra days to his reporting schedules. In this FEJ StoryLog, Walton shares how he used one such buffer to stretch a grant and produce not just one story on California’s small drinking water systems, but a second on the aftermath of wildfire on another town’s water system, plus finish a third pending project on household water debt.

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Mindblowing: California Allows More Gas Storage At Aliso Canyon Leak Site

"State officials voted Thursday to let Southern California Gas Co. store far more fuel at the Aliso Canyon gas storage field, eight years after a record-breaking leak spewed more than 100,000 metric tons of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere and prompted thousands of San Fernando Valley residents to evacuate their homes for months."

Source: LA Times, 09/01/2023

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