"While the economy in Texas has boomed over the last 20 years, along the border with Mexico about a half million people live in clusters of cinderblock dwellings, home-built shacks, dilapidated trailers and small houses."
"Ten states from Nevada to Texas have weighed in to support two water agencies in their fight with an Indian tribe over control of groundwater in the California desert."
"They were called 'frequent flyers,' children flown from their village homes to the hospital in Anchorage for treatment for coughs, wheezes and trouble breathing, then sent back home — only to return again with the same symptoms."
"One warm spring day a year ago, Griselda Barrera, a Mexican-born mother of three, went to a middle school auditorium in Thermal, California, an unincorporated community in the desert east of Los Angeles, to square off against a panel of regulators. Barrera, who is just 5 feet tall, wore a black pencil skirt and platform pumps, the kind of shoes she favors now that she no longer works in the fields. She was flanked by mothers like herself, there to give public comment to the South Coast Air Quality Management District."
Mosquitoes are not just annoyances. They also bring disease. But is the current patchwork of mosquito-control efforts effective? Or are the remedies, particularly pesticide spraying, worse than the problem? This week's Tipsheet has resources to help you report on balancing the risks of disease against those of spraying.
"As many as 10 workers in Yellowstone National Park's maintenance division will be disciplined after an investigation found female employees were subjected to sexual harassment and other problems."
Author Lisa Palmer tackles a question many experts in the natural and social sciences are also pondering: How can we feed a growing world population in the coming decades when climate change is stressing global food production systems?
"If the levee wall is constructed, it will essentially destroy the refuge, a federal official told the Observer."
"California’s five-year drought made worldwide headlines as wells went dry and thousands of people were left without water. But many of those whose taps still flow face an even more insidious threat. The state estimates that 1.5 million Californians rely on drinking water that has violated health standards."
"Boone County claims to be the birthplace of America’s coal industry, the rich and abundant black rock discovered in these verdant hills almost three centuries ago. Coal gives name to nearly everything in these parts — the Big and Little Coal rivers, the weekly Coal Valley News, the wondrous Bituminous Coal Heritage Foundation Museum and the West Virginia Coal Festival, celebrating, as we arrive in town, its 24th year."
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