"It’s not just toxic chemical waste and mysterious barrels that litter the seafloor off the coast of Los Angeles. Oceanographers have now discovered what appears to be a massive dumping ground of military weaponry."
"Officials in Youngstown, Ohio, have dealt a setback to a company’s plan to build and operate a recycled tire waste-to-energy plant near the center of the city and adjacent to a neighborhood of predominantly Black residents, enacting a one-year moratorium on such industrial processes."
Toilet-to-tap water jokes aside, the technology and economics of turning sewage into potable drinking water is increasingly seen as a remedy for water-stressed communities. The new BookShelf review of “Purified: How Recycled Sewage is Transforming Our Water,” explains how water shortages, climate change, unsustainable growth and other factors have led some communities, most recently Los Angeles, to consider going “all in” on purified wastewater.
"An ongoing CalMatters investigation has shown how California companies and governments avoid the Golden State’s strict environmental regulations by shipping toxic waste across state borders. New reporting shows how California exports the risk to Mexico."
"Families near battery recycling plants face “dangerous" levels of lead in their blood and in soil, testing shows."
"West Virginia’s fund to clean up abandoned coal mines is in such dire shape that it threatens to stick taxpayers with hundreds of millions — perhaps even billions — of dollars in cleanup costs. And yet, little is being done to turn things around."
"Plastic trash produced by the company PepsiCo has become a “persistent and dangerous form of plastic pollution” for residents of the Buffalo River watershed in upstate New York, according to a new lawsuit filed Wednesday."
"Thirteen years after a kayaker reported stepping into a stinging patch of muck in the Congaree River, contractors have cleaned up the toxic mess that covered a stretch of the river bottom below the Gervais Street bridge in Columbia, South Carolina."
In our annual look-ahead on the environment and energy beat in 2024, we see a bumpy ride on global climate change talks coupled with more climate-driven disasters, even amid the evolving energy transition. And we see possible risks to ocean life from deep sea mining and continuing risks to human life from pollution of air, water and land. Insights in our overview and our full “2024 Journalists’ Guide to Environment & Energy” special report.
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