Environment

February 5, 2025

How some Alaska Natives lost their right to fish commercially

A permitting system designed in the 1970s was supposed to make Alaska’s commercial fishing industry more sustainable and more profitable. But over the past 50 years, it has hollowed out many Indigenous coastal villages where residents no longer can earn a living by harvesting salmon.

December 16, 2024

Iowa invests in industry-favored farm pollution fix that doesn’t fix much

Instead of regulating fertilizer, Iowa backs a voluntary program that has little impact.

May 6, 2024

This oil platform stopped pumping 30 years ago. Alaska still won’t make the owner tear it down.

Once offshore oil platforms drain their wells, the government has the power to force the companies that own them to tear the structures down. But the owners can put off that costly process using a strategy one critic calls “delay, deny and diddle around.” And in Alaska, the state has let them do it — for decades.

September 26, 2023

Tesla needs graphite. Alaska has plenty. But mining it raises fears in nearby Native villages.

Graphite is a critical ingredient in the batteries needed to power America’s electric vehicle revolution. But every ounce of it is imported. A proposed mine in a remote part of Alaska would change that. But some of the people who live nearby fear it will endanger their way of life.

September 3, 2021

In Deep: One City's Year of Climate Chaos

Most scientists believe climate change is increasing the severity of the storms we experience, and how quickly they intensify. After suffering two hurricanes, a winter storm, and devastating flooding in less than a year, Lake Charles, Louisiana, offers a troubling view of the wrenching, disturbingly inequitable effects of climate change.

January 13, 2021

Thousands of public housing residents live near the most polluted places in the nation — and the government has done little to protect them

An investigation reveals that more than 9,000 federally subsidized housing properties sit within a mile of a Superfund site, and the government has failed to inform many residents of the potential threats they face. As a result, low-income renters are paying for government inaction with their health.

May 26, 2020

11 highlights from our investigation into the dangers of lead pipes

Current and former EPA scientists say the Trump administration is pushing rule changes that could leave Americans exposed to lead in drinking water.

May 4, 2020

How the EPA has left Americans exposed to lead in drinking water

Millions of people still get water through lead pipes. For decades, lax EPA rules missed hazardous lead levels and allowed some utilities to remain indifferent. Today the Trump administration is rushing to finalize a plan that might make things worse.

May 21, 2019

New Chicago mayor to end water shutoffs

Following an APM Reports investigation of rising water rates, Lori Lightfoot says the city will no longer deprive people of "a basic human right."

February 7, 2019

How we did it: Inside our investigation of water rates in six cities around the Great Lakes

It was a long, slow hunt for data with variables aplenty: gallons, cubic feet, billing and meter sizes.

February 7, 2019

In cities on the Great Lakes, water pipes are crumbling and poor people are paying the price

Americans are struggling to afford their rising water bills, and thousands of poor families have had their service shut off. This growing crisis has a dark irony: It's especially acute in a region where water is most abundant — the Great Lakes.

$EPA reverses course, highlights fracking contamination of drinking water$

December 13, 2016

EPA reverses course, highlights fracking contamination of drinking water

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today issued a final report on the connection between hydraulic fracturing and contamination in drinking water. After stressing in June 2015 that there was no "widespread, systematic impact" on water, the agency now is emphasizing that fracking can affect drinking water under some circumstances.

$EPA's late changes to fracking study downplayed risk of polluted drinking water$

November 30, 2016

EPA's late changes to fracking study downplayed risk of polluted drinking water

Early versions highlighted contaminated drinking water and vulnerabilities from fracking. The final version turned out differently: Fracking had not "led to widespread, systemic impacts." Oil and gas cheered the findings.

May 12, 2016

Israel: Using technology, engineering to cut reliance on Galilee

Water has been a matter of national security for Israel since the nation's inception. Drought and growth have pushed the country to use desalination, wastewater recycling and other technology and engineering feats to address the demand. But it's a different picture where Palestinians are involved.

May 12, 2016

India: Delivering water by hand

In much of India, getting enough water is a low-tech affair. In some places, women draw water by hand; in others suicide rates among farmers have risen because drought and dropping water tables make their lives difficult.

February 12, 2011

Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal

The production of electricity in America pumps out more greenhouse gases than all of our cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined, and half of our electricity comes from burning coal.

November 12, 2006

Reports from a Warming Planet

The early signs of climate change are showing up across vastly differing landscapes: from melting outposts near the Arctic Circle to disappearing glaciers high in the Andes; from the rising water in the deltas of Bangladesh to the "sinking" atolls of the Pacific. Reports from a Warming Planet takes you to parts of the planet where global warming is already making changes to life and landscape, and demonstrates how climate change is no longer restricted to scientific modeling about the future. It's happening now.

August 12, 2006

Rebuilding Biloxi

Hurricane Katrina devastated the lives of thousands of Mississippi Gulf Coast residents. Rebuilding Biloxi tells the stories of several families in the coastal community of Biloxi, Miss., and their struggle to survive and then recover from the storm.