For the first time, Sundance Film Festival spotlighted a single theme, and it was climate change. Documentaries highlighting the issue including a sequel to Al Gore's blockbuster, as well as more than a dozen other films dealing with issues like coral reefs, recyling, changing landscapes and rainforest destruction.
The latest WatchDog TipSheet details an open-records case against U.S. EPA nominee Scott Pruitt (shown), the scoop on an Agriculture Department animal welfare database that vanished then returned, a reporter busted at Standing Rock, plus items on whistleblowers, coal-ash and more.
"For years, when spring rolled around in St. Louis, Mich., songbirds dropped to the ground, dead."
Oil pipelines like the Keystone XL and Dakota Access are back at the center of a political firestorm, with a new executive order from President Trump just a few days into his new administration giving them the go-ahead. But it's just the beginning — many other pipelines, for both gas and oil, have been proposed.
"Hundreds of construction workers will be put to work in Fremont over the next couple summers building a massive $275 million facility for producing broiler chickens, and the utility lines and roads to serve it, as well as upgrading the city’s water treatment plant."
"The people of Hendricks, Minn., thought they had won the feedlot war two years ago when they sued to stop a mega-dairy slated for a hilltop just across the border in South Dakota."
"Almost all of North and South Dakota were under blizzard, ice storm or winter storm warnings on Sunday as wintry weather was forecast to hit the Central U.S., meteorologists said."
"U.S. pipeline regulators on Wednesday ordered Belle Fourche Pipeline Co to improve leak detection, along with other actions, after a Dec. 5 incident that spilled about 4,200 barrels of oil in North Dakota."
"Roughly 288,000 Iowans rely on private water supplies but may not know what is in their water because their wells’ water quality is unregulated."
"Three years and three months later, a massive oil spill in North Dakota still isn't fully cleaned up. The company responsible hasn't even set a date for completion."
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