After Congressional Democrats criticized them for suppressing a report on toxic substances in the Great Lakes, and after an independent investigative journalism group published excerpts, the Centers for Disease Control finally published it March 12, 2008.
For more than seven months, the nation's top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states.
A Congressional Research Service report on terrorism and security issues facing sewage treatment and drinking water plants, dams and reservoirs, and other water infrastructure is full of ideas that reporters could turn into local stories — if only they were allowed to see it.
A series of drinking-water contamination incidents have raised doubts about EPA's safety claims regarding hydraulic fracturing in domestic gas wells. And it's hard for people to get to the bottom of those claims when the identity of the chemicals injected during the process is protected as a "trade secret."