New Mexico Attorney General Faces Fraud, Corruption Allegations Amid Power Company Merger

Civic and environmental groups accuse AG Hector Balderas of improper dealings with a lawyer and longtime friend.

Should California Turn Contaminated Land Into Affordable Housing?

Questions over DTSC competency complicate taxpayer-funded plans to rehabilitate polluted properties.

Can California Avoid Another Toxic Waste Disaster?

Lax enforcement and major permitting problems plague hazardous waste facilities in Los Angeles.

Can Recycled Glass Help Save Louisiana’s Vanishing Coast?

A new initiative to turn bottles from New Orleans’ drinking spots into tiny particles of sand has raised hopes of a green transformation.

From The Guardian and Covering Climate Now

How Climate Change Is Pushing Out Californians

After living through a spate of record-breaking wildfires, some Californians are opting to leave the state.

From Covering Climate Now and The Nation

Inside the Dirty, Dangerous World of Carbon Flooding

Energy companies use a greenhouse gas to force out more oil in a little-known process that can bring headaches to rural communities.

PFAS Water Lawsuits Expose Financial Impacts on State’s Poor Communities

How Sacramento deals with polluted wells is quickly, if quietly, defining how seriously California takes the issue of clean drinking water.

Hands Across the Water: Catherine Flowers’ Quest to Drain the Septic Swamp

A book written by the “Erin Brockovich of sewage” is a call to find common ground for clean water and other environmental justice causes.

How a Polluter’s Bankruptcy Has Put Californians on the Hook for Millions

An October bankruptcy settlement let Exide Technologies walk away from a multimillion dollar cleanup in L.A. Could California have done more to secure recovery costs?

Audit Slams State Agency’s Botched Exide Cleanup

Who was watching the watchdogs as the cleanup of lead contamination on L.A.’s Eastside ran out of money?

California’s Lakes Are Not “Magic Ponds”

Young environmental activists from Extinction Rebellion rally for clean water in downtown Los Angeles.

Gov. Newsom Pledges to Ban Fracking in California – Then Greenlights More of It

The Newsom administration has established a pattern of approving permits during busy news cycles.

Exide’s ‘Forgotten of the Forgotten’: Housing Project Still Waiting for Lead Testing

Estrada Courts sits within the Exide contamination zone, but the state has yet to test the homes there for lead.

Fact-Checking the Climate Change Claims of the First Presidential Debate

Trump and Biden exchanged words over climate change on Tuesday night. How many of them were accurate?

California Takes a Big Step Toward Making Polluters Pay for Their Messes

A bill to reform the Department of Toxic Substances Control has been a long time coming, but will Governor Newsom sign it?

New Questions Plague State’s Slow-Motion Exide Cleanup

Budget overruns, conflicts of interest and bankruptcy hound the quarter-billion-dollar Exide cleanup.

Gavin Newsom Hands Out Fracking Permits to Connected Driller

While California was convulsed by COVID-19 and George Floyd’s death, the governor gave Big Oil a big gift.

The Human Toll of L.A.’s Slow Exide Cleanup

The five-year cleanup of a lead-contamination zone is a story of confusion, shifting goalposts, missed deadlines and bloated budgets.
Co-published by KPCC

Topic of Cancer: How PFAS Threaten Our Water

A family of toxins known as PFAS has gotten its closeup on the silver screen via Dark Waters. Will regulators take note?