"Group Rates Minneapolis as Top U.S. City Park System"
"Minneapolis, where 94% of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, has the U.S.' best park system, according to new rankings by a national non-profit conservation group."
"Minneapolis, where 94% of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, has the U.S.' best park system, according to new rankings by a national non-profit conservation group."
"With two schools near a plant storing ammonium nitrate -- the fertilizer used in the Oklahoma City bombing -- West, Texas, Superintendent Marty Crawford said he had always worried about an explosion like the one that happened last week."
Seattle-based InvestigateWest published a feature package last summer documenting illegal parkland conversions in Michigan, New York City, and Oklahoma. They could not cover all the other states — that was left for you to do, with the assistance of their database of some 40,000 federal grants under the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
News stories about the April 17, 2013, explosion of a fertilizer storage plant in the town of West, Texas that killed 15 people have so far focused on the plant operator's risk-disclosure failure, instead of the likely fact that government agencies knew the nature and magnitude of the hazard — or should have known. The bigger story is the regulatory failure — and industry's decades-long campaign to keep the public ignorant of the threats they face. Photo: AP/LM Otero/Available through Creative Commons.
"CLEARWATER -- Despite warnings from scientists, rising sea levels still seem little more than a distant, imperceptible threat, a phenomenon whose change is measured in centimeters over decades."
In this issue: Special report on energy and climate change; first installment of new column 'Freelance Files' on goal setting; database helps track illegal parkland conversions; members cover sprawl, science and chickens; annual Sundance Film Festival report; and six book reviews.