Author

James Bruggers, Inside Climate News

James Bruggers, Inside Climate News

James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of Inside Climate News’ National Environment Reporting Network. He previously covered energy and the environment for Louisville’s Courier Journal, where he worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky in 1999, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California. Bruggers’ work has won numerous recognitions, including best beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Press Foundation’s Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting. He served on the board of directors of the SEJ for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Bruggers.

States, citizens suing plastics industry, alleging greenwashing, misleading claims about recycling

By: - June 19, 2024

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

By: - June 11, 2024

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

By: - April 3, 2024

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 […]

Aerial view of an abandoned coal mine

Congressional office agrees to investigate ‘zombie’ coal mines in Kentucky

By: - January 12, 2024

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

By: - October 20, 2023

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’

By: - September 5, 2023

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

By: - July 5, 2023

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

By: - May 24, 2023

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

By: - April 19, 2023

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

By: and - April 3, 2023

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 […]