With the federal government now requiring that states pay closer attention to cybersecurity risks in their regular audits of public drinking water systems, environmental journalists should be doing the same, suggests the latest TipSheet. Here’s how to gauge the cyber risk and to understand the current safe drinking water regulatory regime, plus story ideas and resources to bolster your local reporting.
"Thousands of acres of cropland have been inundated in this heavily farmed swath of the San Joaquin Valley. And the water just keeps rising."
"A corporate conservation project in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has sold carbon credits from publicly owned land without state authorization, a Context investigation has found, highlighting concerns about the credibility of offsets from areas with disputed land ownership."
"A new report found that companies in Texas have had 21,000 unexpected pollution releases that emitted 400,000 tons of air pollution over six years, but only 1% of them prompted action by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality."
"Amid lawsuits filed by thousands of farmers linking the herbicide to Parkinson’s disease, the EPA is reconsidering its analysis of paraquat’s risks."
"Next week, the House is expected to take up a major energy package that Republicans in the chamber are putting forward as the party’s top priority."
"First it was the eerie images of barrels leaking on the seafloor not far from Catalina Island. Then the shocking realization that the nation's largest manufacturer of DDT had once used the ocean as a huge dumping ground—and that as many as half a million barrels of its acid waste had been poured straight into the water."
"Canada has pledged a significant increase in spending to improve water quality in the Great Lakes following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration also has boosted funding for the shared waters."
"As drought dried up rivers that carry California’s newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years resorted to loading up the fish by the millions onto trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific."
"Climate science is among a wide range of “controversial matters” included in the Higher Education Enhancement Act, which seeks to police classroom speech on abortion, immigration, diversity, and other issues."
"Ohio college and university instructors could be barred from teaching climate science without also including false or misleading counterpoints under a sprawling higher education bill that received its first hearing Wednesday.
