Wildfires in the Texas Panhandle are a good reminder that wildfire season now stretches across much of the year, so environmental journalists would do well to look for ways to localize their reporting on wildfire preparedness. The latest TipSheet offers 10 story ideas and half a dozen reporting resources to tell the story of your community’s wildfire risk.
"Sarah Stogner plucked a piece of cement off a rusted steel pipe jutting from the ground on a West Texas ranch. The chunk, part of the plug for a long-dormant oil well, crumbled in her hand."
"Public data from a network of state air monitors around the Houston Ship Channel is hard to interpret and is often inadequate, leaving Latino-majority neighborhoods like Cloverleaf unaware of whether the air they breathe is safe."
The Fund for Environmental Journalism has awarded $47,605 for 11 projects selected through the 2023-24 round of competition for stories on the U.S. Clean Energy Transition. 100% of the story projects focus on under-represented communities or share diverse perspectives on environmental issues.
"Public health officials in Arizona’s most populous county on Wednesday reported they confirmed a staggering 645 heat-associated deaths last year — more than 50% higher than 2022 and another consecutive annual record in arid metro Phoenix."
"The state of Texas on Friday sued the Biden administration over an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule restricting methane emissions finalized earlier Friday morning."
"The state's high plains get a month more fire weather now than they did in the 1970s."
"Leisa Glenn spent decades living in the Fifth Ward, a historically Black neighborhood in Houston, known for having one of the city’s best views of downtown. Every July 4th, Glenn, 65, and her neighbors would stream out of their houses into the summer heat and crowd onto front porches to watch the fireworks display."
"Many Panhandle residents whose dwellings and possessions burned in the region’s ongoing wildfires may never financially recover for one simple reason: Their homes weren’t insured."
"An Apache group that has fought to protect land it considers sacred from a copper mining project in central Arizona suffered a significant blow Friday when a divided federal court panel voted 6-5 to uphold a lower court’s denial of a preliminary injunction to halt the transfer of land for the project."
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