Category: Environment

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Critically Overdrafted Subbasins in the San Joaquin Valley

California’s Dual Water Crisis

Record-breaking storms are wreaking havoc – compounding, not erasing, the difficulties of multi-year drought. The renter’s home in Sanger, just outside Fresno, went dry in the spring. The well at one house in Madera has been on and off since January 2021. The homeowners in

Large livestock operations, like this one in Arizona, are given broad discretion by states for managing and spreading a deluge of manure. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

New U.S. Climate Law Could Make Midwest Water Contamination Worse

Billions in clean energy incentives rely on raw materials from polluting corn and livestock. This report was made possible by an investigative reporting fellowship awarded by the Alicia Patterson Foundation. A version of this article was co-published by Circle of Blue, The New Lede and

A “No Pipeline” sticker adorns a sign near where the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have crossed a mountain near Wintergreen Resort, just below Reids Gap in Nelson County, Virginia.

New Dominion

How a grassroots groundswell, legal challenges and political and technological sea changes combined to force Virginia’s most powerful company to abandon the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, pivot from natural gas and onto a cleaner energy path. “Hung up in the mountains” Tom Hadwin took a sip

“A view of the cleared right-of-way for the Constitution Pipeline on the property of the Holleran family of New Milford, PA. Tree-fellers authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission used chain-saws to destroy 90 percent of the family’s maple trees that produced syrup for their business, North Harford Maple.”

The Limits of Disturbance

With its permitting authority over natural gas infrastructure, the little-known Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has sweeping power over individual citizens’ property and our collective climate trajectory. Critics say that reforming its pipeline review process should be high on President Joe Biden’s agenda.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager Brenda Barber, overlooking the site of the Loughlin’s former home in the Spring Valley section of Washington, D.C.

The House Over Hades

In June of 1996, Kathi Loughlin’s phone rang at work. It was her child’s nanny, and she was frantic. “Something is going on here, you need to come home,” the nanny said, a note of panic in her voice. Loughlin had trouble understanding what exactly