While environmental themes were less prominent at the Sundance Film Festival this year, our correspondent JoAnn Valenti unearthed ecological messages from documentaries that explore the emergence of climate change refugees in the face of sea level rise, the escape from modernity into wilderness and the confrontation of environmental threats by young innovators.
Coal ash can contaminate surface and ground water with toxic heavy metals. But as this week’s TipSheet reports, Trump deregulation aims to loosen EPA rules on its disposal. That may mean a big local pollution story. If journalists can find the data, that is. The latest on the new rules, plus resources for coverage.
"Thousands participated in the anti-pipeline protest, another 200 staged support rally".
"The Trump administration named a new interim U.S. Forest Service chief on Thursday, just days after the prior head of the agency stepped down due to sexual misconduct allegations."
"Less than a month after its release, President Trump's infrastructure plan appears to have crashed and burned in Congress."
"PORT FOURCHON, La. — A dozen miles off the coast, on a rusty, aging platform, workers in hard hats and overalls spend their days extracting oil and gas from the ocean floor before retreating at night into tiny weather-beaten steel cubes that act as dorms."
"U.S. EPA hired Republican campaign consultants to help produce a report touting Administrator Scott Pruitt's accomplishments."
"John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has killed an effort by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to stage public debates challenging climate change science, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, thwarting a plan that had intrigued President Trump even as it set off alarm bells among his top advisers."
"A longtime federal employee who sees 'good news' in rising greenhouse gases was tasked early in the Trump administration with retooling the Interior Department's public positions on climate change, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act."
"Dozens of concerned residents and activists asked a Wisconsin agency on Wednesday to reject an application from the city of Racine to draw 7 million gallons of water daily from Lake Michigan for a proposed Foxconn plant."
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