"ELSBERRY -- After driving several miles along a winding rural road west of this Mississippi River town, Denny Mertz finds what he’s looking for. The retired engineer, turned full-time farmer, stops next to a neighbor’s field covered in soybeans — and something sinister."
"As Republicans promote the state’s economic 'miracle,' many climate scientists from Texas say prosperity has come at a steep price. With its dependence on an energy industry that relies on extracting fossil fuels, scientists say Texas has become a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions as well as more vulnerable to its consequences. Texas emits more greenhouse gases than any other state, according to federal data."
"In recent months, as California officials started to calculate the fire danger posed by the state’s prolonged and historic drought, they tucked an extra $23 million into the Cal Fire emergency wildfire budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, bringing its total to $209 million."
"DALLAS -- Texas has stopped inspecting 44% of the dams in the state, following passage last year of a state law that exempted most privately owned dams from safety requirements. Now, as a drought dries up large portions of the Southwest, some dam-safety experts and officials are questioning the law, saying the dry spell is leaving webs of cracks along the surface of earthen dams that may make them weaker—and prone to triggering floods—when rains eventually fill them up again."
"After potentially serious back-to-back laboratory accidents, federal health officials announced Friday that they had temporarily closed the flu and anthrax laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and halted shipments of all infectious agents from the agency’s highest-security labs."
SEJ hosted two sessions at Investigative Reporters and Editors’ June 26-29, 2014 conference in San Francisco – one on the western drought and another on the oceans.
SEJ hosted two sessions at Investigative Reporters and Editors' June 26-29, 2014 conference in San Francisco – one on the oceans and another on the western drought. See the panelists and download the tipsheets.
"On Monday, the Heartland Institute convened its Ninth International Climate Change Conference in Las Vegas. A Chicago-based, non-profit free-market think tank with a $6 million annual budget, Heartland has been hosting conferences for those dubious of the science confirming human-caused climate change since 2008."
"Hauling company that dumped toxic drilling waste over eight miles of road and never told authorities faces formal enforcement action."
"Monsoon rainfall was 41 percent below average for the week ended July 9, the weather office said on its website on Thursday, the fifth straight week of poor rains after a late start to the season."
