A large and diverse array of businesses have an interest in the environmental and energy laws that state legislatures consider: including coal, oil, plastics, chemicals, mining, forest products, and others. The possible financial stake lawmakers may have in the bills before them is fertile ground for investigation. Here's help in finding story ideas.
"When Pennsylvania passed a state law that stripped local authority over where potentially hazardous natural gas wells could be drilled, cities and townships decided to take matters into their own hands."
"OTTAWA -- Late [Monday] night, Canada's House of Commons passed Bill C-38, the budget of the majority Conservative government, ignoring thousands of Canadians who spoke up for nature and democracy."
The rebellion against commercial and subscription-only publishers over public access to articles based on taxpayer-funded research is gaining ground. The Directory — free, searchable and online — already includes some 819742, full-text, scientific or scholarly articles in 7885 journals.
"The head of the National Weather Service retired last week after an internal investigation found that the agency had reallocated millions of dollars without required congressional approval."
The federal Data.gov, while not perfect, has grown over three years especially strong in datasets from federal agencies that deal with the environment, energy, natural resources, health, and science. Many of them are downloadable, so that you can crunch them on your own computer. Several are map layers or geo-tagged in some way. See a few randomly chosen examples here.
"Florida's top state wetlands expert has been suspended after she refused to issue a permit on a controversial project -- one that she said her boss was willing to bend the rules to approve."
"
"A federal appeals court [Tuesday] upheld a landmark $3.4 billion settlement concerning the Interior Department's mismanagement of American Indian trust accounts."
"An Aug. 30, 2011, e-mail exchange among Environmental Protection Agency officials, obtained by the Center for Progressive Reform under the Freedom of Information Act, provides a glimpse into how agency officials thought the White House failed to adequately capture their work on anti-pollution rules opposed by Republicans and industry officials."
Advertisement 
