Planning & Growth

Infrastructure is much in the news these days, with battles over politics and funding yielding stories for environment reporters. In play are a Trump plan, who gets to pick projects, who pays and much more. But in an election year, how likely are infrastructure plans to move forward? The backstory, with angles for environment and energy, plus what to watch for in 2018, in our Backgrounder on infrastructure.

Covering local infrastructure projects often means covering energy and the environment. This week’s TipSheet offers a companion to our special backgrounder on the national infrastructure story emerging out of Washington. We’ve got dozens of resources and links for finding infrastructure news and information from Congress, executive agencies, infrastructure organizations and environmental groups.

For decades, federal law has required environmental impact statements for big federal actions, like the building of dams, highways and more. Those impact statements, a valued reporting tool, may now be under threat. This week’s TipSheet explains how journalists can find them and use them, and why they could be at risk.

Floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other human-caused disasters made 2017 a hard year to beat. But environmental journalists would do well to be prepared for 2018. This week's TipSheet explains why predicting weather-related disasters may not be as hard you think, and provides resources to get reporters ready.