EPA head shifts makeup of panel science advisers

Nov 1, 2017
Pruitt is installing new science advisors who have a history of being more industry friendly.

Hurricane recovery for an unauthorized immigrant in Houston has added obstacles

Oct 25, 2017
Challenges like housing, transportation and finances are especially difficult.
A truck drives through high water along a street in Orange, Texas, on Sept. 6, more than a week after Hurricane Harvey made landfall.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The $2 billion question: Spend on fighting fires or preventing them?

Oct 24, 2017
A professor of fire ecology discusses the trade-offs in one of the costliest fire seasons in memory.
Renee Hernandez looks over the remains of her Coffey Park home that was destroyed by the Tubbs Fire on Oct. 23 in Santa Rosa, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The emerging demand for "greener" aluminum

Oct 20, 2017
Can U.S. aluminum producers that use hydroelectricity distinguish their products from many Chinese producers, by touting their lower carbon footprint?
The Alcoa Barra Grande hydroelectric power dam in southern Brazil. 
Photo courtesy of Alcoa

China wants nothing to do with America's trash

Oct 17, 2017
It will no longer import recycled scrap from the U.S. So what do we do with it?
Scrap metal in Long Beach, California, waits to be shipped to Asia for recycling.
JOE KLAMAR/AFP/GettyImages

Undocumented residents not eligible for FEMA cash payments after disasters

Oct 17, 2017
After Hurricane Harvey, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented people living in the Houston area will have to find financial relief in other ways.
Flooded homes following Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas.
Win McNamee / Getty Images

Houston is trying to get buyout offers to homeowners quickly

Oct 11, 2017
After hurricanes, government officials buy homes that are "hopelessly at risk" for future flooding and demolish them.
Jean Olson's home in Bellaire is one of many on her street that is inside-out. Even family heirlooms are in her front yard because her house is still uninhabitable.
Filipa Rodrigues/ for Marketplace

For public good, not for profit.

If there has been a war on coal, Obama’s Clean Power Plan was never the main front

Oct 10, 2017
The Environmental Protection Agency has started the process to repeal the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era measure to reduce emissions from power plants. In his announcement, Scott Pruitt characterized the repeal as an end to a “war on coal.” But in the real world of energy markets, not a whole lot is expected to change. […]

Virgin Islands schools set to open as hurricane recovery continues

Oct 9, 2017
The U.S. Virgin Islands remain devastated after two category 5 hurricanes hit within two weeks of each other in September. Many residents are still without shelter, power or internet. But the territory’s roughly 14,000 public school students, who had barely started their school year before Irma hit, will begin returning to their classrooms this week.  […]

Midwestern farmers are tied to a Gulf dead zone

Oct 9, 2017
Minnesota is trying to limit runoff carried by the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.
Soybeans are harvested near Worthington, Minnesota.
Scott Olson/Getty Images