InvestigateWest's Robert McClure and Jason Alcorn explain how to spin the local angle about how parks built or improved with money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund are increasingly being illegally privatized or converted to something other than parks — including sharing their searchable database of almost 40,000 park grants.
In this issue: Special report on energy and climate change; first installment of new column 'Freelance Files' on goal setting; database helps track illegal parkland conversions; members cover sprawl, science and chickens; annual Sundance Film Festival report; and six book reviews.
"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Coal operators can and should take more aggressive steps to reduce dust emissions from blasting and heavy equipment at mountaintop removal mines, according to new studies released this week as part of a controversial industry-funded research project."
The potential resurgence of uranium mining in the U.S. raises questions of both national and local interest.
One of the six winners of the prestigious Goldman Prize, Azzam Alwash, played a key role in restoring the marshes in Southern Iraq that had been drained by Saddam Hussein as punishment of the people who lived there.
"Before Disney World, Silver Springs in Central Florida was for decades one of the state's most popular tourist destinations."
"Cleanup costs at a single northern mine next to Great Slave Lake are ballooning so high they are forcing Ottawa to rethink plans for thousands of contaminated sites across the country."
"STE. GENEVIEVE, Mo. -- Ameren Missouri has spent the past four years engaged in a bitter fight with Labadie-area residents over a proposal to pile millions of cubic yards of coal ash on a plot of cropland by the Missouri River."
"President Obama on Monday designated five new national monuments, including one in Maryland dedicated to anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman and another setting aside Washington state's San Juan Islands."
"Teck Coal Ltd. is facing a massive pollution problem in the Elk Valley, where a metal-like element known as selenium is leaching out of mine sites and collecting in the eggs of fish, frogs and water birds."
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