Author
James Bruggers, Inside Climate News
States, citizens suing plastics industry, alleging greenwashing, misleading claims about recycling
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. The plastic pellets washing up on beaches and in marshes around Charleston, South Carolina, became very obvious about five years ago. Called nurdles, these […]
Louisville moves toward cleaning up ‘Gully of the Drums’ after more than four decades
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. LOUISVILLE — City officials are taking their first public step toward cleaning up hazardous waste in a popular park after a local graduate student […]
EPA cleaned up Valley of the Drums 45 years ago, but left behind Gully of the Drums
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.? LOUISVILLE —When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency responded to a “surface water pollution emergency” on farmland 17 miles south of downtown in 1979, federal […]
Congressional office agrees to investigate ‘zombie’ coal mines in Kentucky
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With a federal investigation into technically active but non-producing “zombie” mines set to begin in March, a citizens law group in Kentucky has found production idled at nearly 40% of all active coal strip mines in the state, with some not mined in more than a decade. In all, these “functionally abandoned” […]
Lawmakers want answers on damage and costs linked to idled ‘zombie’ coal mines
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.? Lawmakers, including Kentucky’s lone Democrat in Congress, are asking for a federal investigation into the full extent of environmental damage caused by what are […]
Q&A: From coal to prisons in Eastern Kentucky and the struggle for a ‘just transition’
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.? Every week, the expressions of love and support pour into Whitesburg, Kentucky’s Mountain Community Radio, WMMT, like messages in a bottle from friends and […]
Methane from underground coal mines upends rural West Virginians’ lives, livelihoods
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. THORNTON, WEST VIRGINIA.—Month-old kittens scamper around, tumbling into one another on the grass. A black-and-white border collie, Maggie, nestles against the side of a […]
EPA narrows loophole by expanding regulation of coal ash dumped at power plants
The Biden administration is taking steps to address a regulatory loophole that public interest groups said allowed at least a half-billion tons of toxic coal ash to go unregulated. The Environmental Protection Agency published a new draft rule last week that the groups said would extend federal oversight to much of the coal ash disposed […]
Kentucky has fourth-most chemical plants subject to proposed new curbs on toxic emissions
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.? The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency recently used the smokestacks of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” as the backdrop to announce new rules aimed at […]
Why Kentucky is dead last for wind and solar production
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.? LOUISVILLE, Ky.—Andy McDonald recalls a decade-old Kentucky legislative hearing on an energy diversification bill with the same sense of frustration that he felt back […]