"A string of unexpected impediments could delay the administration’s timeline on an issue that is central to its effort to address racial disparities."
"The largest dam removal project in United States history is underway along the California-Oregon border. The project will remove four dams on the Klamath River. Work has already begun on removing the smallest of the four dams."
"Torrential downpours that caused flash flooding in New York City on Friday reflect a "new normal" due to the effects of climate change, New York Governor Kathy Hochul warned on Saturday, as the city began drying out after one of its wettest days ever."
In the Coachella Valley east of Los Angeles, the massive Salton Sea is rapidly drying up, threatening vulnerable immigrant communities in a growing toxic environment. The Living Downstream podcast reported extensively on these hazards, winning third place in the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Awards for Reporting on the Environment’s explanatory reporting, small, category, in 2022. Inside Story spoke with one of the prizewinners.
"A warming planet is creating a booming and loosely-regulated disaster restoration industry fueled by immigrant labor. Without protection, workers are exposed to lethal toxins making them sick long after the cleanup."
"Climate change-driven heat waves, droughts, and floods will push vulnerable people into more extreme poverty, Harvard researcher says."
"Faced with more frequent flooding and worse to come, the Philadelphia environmental justice community of Eastwick is grappling with difficult questions about its future: Will levees and flood walls protect them, or should residents abandon their homes and move to higher ground?"
"A Swiss Academy of Sciences panel is reporting a dramatic acceleration of glacier melt in the Alpine country, which has lost 10% of its ice volume in just two years after high summer heat and low snow volumes in winter."
"The Biden administration is charting plans to sell offshore oil-drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years, while trimming the program to its smallest level ever.
The oil leasing plan being released by the Interior Department on Friday will contain only a low number of sales, according to people familiar with the deliberations who declined to be named because the blueprint isn’t yet public. That’s far from the 11 sales the agency proposed last year, and it would be the lowest in history.
"The White House declared an emergency Wednesday for four Louisiana parishes threatened by salt intrusion in drinking water and officials warned that barges would be insufficient to deal with the problem on the east bank of New Orleans and Jefferson, prompting an urgent plan to build a pipeline."
