"House Democrats are sweeping into power this week on a campaign promise of improving government for ordinary Americans. But first, they’ll have to get government reopened from the partial shutdown."
SEJournal looks ahead to key issues in the coming year with this "2019 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment" special report. Stay tuned as we continue to add elements to the report up through and beyond its formal launch Jan. 25 at an annual roundtable, organized by the Society of Environmental Journalists with the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
"Kay Behrensmeyer was supposed to be preparing for a three-week expedition to look for evidence of ancient humans in Kenya. Instead, she spent Thursday packing her research permits, her fossil-collecting supplies, and maps she’d spent weeks compiling and annotating by hand into a FedEx box, which she shipped to a junior colleague on the project. Behrensmeyer, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History, wasn’t going anywhere. The federal government was shut down."
"Some lawmakers and environmental activists say the state of Vermont needs to act faster to test water in schools for the presence of lead."
"California's Joshua Tree National Park on Wednesday will become the latest casualty of the federal government's partial shutdown, closing campgrounds amid health and safety concerns over near-capacity pit toilets."
"Set to run out of carryover funds tonight [Friday], EPA will soon close and send thousands of employees home without pay."
"The Trump administration proposed on Friday major changes to the way the federal government calculates the benefits, in human health and safety, of restricting mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants."
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly folded its Climate and Health Program into a branch that studies asthma and expunged the word climate from the name of the newly consolidated office, the agency confirmed on Thursday."
"Elmira High School is one of 1,290 active and 220 potential toxic legacy sites statewide, according to an analysis of state records by the Elmira Star-Gazette."
"The results landed on Nikolai Vitti’s desk on a late summer afternoon, days before Detroit’s nearly 50,000 public school students would return to class. The findings were definitive and disturbing: In initial tests, two-thirds of schools showed alarming levels of lead in the water."
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