Two scientists who sought permission to speak with U.S. Right to Know were silenced last month by officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Jeff Ruch, Pacific director of the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said that the First Amendment rights of ...

I am sympathetic to the concern for the budgetary health of Point Reyes National Seashore, as expressed by Jerry Meral in his recently published Marin Voice commentary (“Lack of income is pushing Point Reyes National Seashore into disrepair,” April 24). However, I don’t understand ...

The recent Marin Voice by Jerry Meral (“Lack of income is pushing Point Reyes National Seashore into disrepair,” April 25) made the case for instituting parking fees in the park to raise funds for needed maintenance. I have a better, far more appropriate and effective way to raise ...

Senior managers at both the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be held  to account for allowing the misuse of federal grants to facilitate logging in Minnesota’s wildlife management areas and aquatic management areas. In 2020, U.S. ...

Ranchers here say their cattle, fish and horses are dying and getting sick because of a fertilizer spread on nearby farmland. Rancher Tony Coleman’s cattle roam 300 acres just outside Grandview. He said what was found on his land has turned it toxic. Late last year, he contacted Johnson ...

Haskell, a boarding school known for its harsh conditions and stern discipline, is now the Haskell Indian Nations University. It is a federal facility and the only university of its kind. Operated by the Bureau of Indian Education, it is the Harvard of Native American education — and, ...

Kansas Senator Jerry Moran is calling for changes to the oversight of Native American educational institutions. Sen. Moran sent a letter to the Department of the Interior upon the release of a report detailing the lack of safeguards against sexual assault, misconduct by leadership, and ...

Our Jeff Ruch wrote a letter to the editor in response to the Los Angeles Times’s climate columnist Sammy Roth’s column, Changing our lives is scary. But the climate crisis is way scarier: The “jarring lifestyle changes” that will be forced on us by unchecked climate change ...

“Forever chemicals” might be lurking again in Westfield, this time behind a proposed synthetic turf field for Westfield High School, a renovation that many in the community say is decades overdue. City councilors are set to vote Tuesday on whether to approve new athletic fields at ...

A “frivolous” investigation of a former cross country coach. Improperly handled sexual assault allegations. An athletic department “in disarray.” These are just some of the findings in a report about a wide-ranging investigation of misconduct at Haskell Indian Nations University, ...

In February, five farmers in Johnson County, Texas, sued Synagro, a biosolids management company based in Maryland, and its subsidiary in Texas. Synagro has contracts with more than 1,000 municipal wastewater plants in North America and handles millions of tons of waste every year. The ...

A multiagency study in the US has found limited potential for human exposure to chemicals from tire crumbs, concluding an eight-year federal project to examine the safety of recycled crumb rubber used on playgrounds and synthetic turf fields. Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at ...

The National Park Service has a toxic problem that no one wants to talk about, and that’s the problem. Across the agency there may be hundreds, possibly many hundreds, of employees claiming they’ve endured some form of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation. The overriding problem ...

With headlines drawing public attention to the contamination of drinking water after years of federal government neglect, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on April 10 new standards to reduce public exposure to PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly ...

The long-awaited US standard for PFAS in drinking water has been met with a lukewarm response from experts and environmental bodies, who say there is still a “fundamental problem” with the industry legislation. PEER said that the “fundamental problem” with the EPA’s approach is ...

What do you do when an employee comes forward, exposing their company for wrongdoing? Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility can help whistleblowers, said Kyla Bennett, who is a director with that organization. As a previous whistleblower herself, she understands the importance ...

EPA isn’t looking to keep farmers from spreading sludge as fertilizer as regulators clamp down on “forever” chemicals that work their way into the material, the agency’s top agriculture official said Monday. Farmers in Texas are suing a biosolids management company ...

In December, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered a Texas-based company to halt a manufacturing process that used toxic chemicals. That ban has been overturned. “The court did not dispute EPA’s underlying decision that this is a danger to human health. What they did was ...

A preliminary experiment conducted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reveals concerning levels of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances on the skin of soccer players and coaches after playing on artificial turf fields. The Washington Post reported March 12 on the ...

Strong new limits for some PFAS compounds in drinking water set by the US Environmental Protection Agency this week are being celebrated for how far they go in reducing exposures to the dangerous chemicals. But public health advocates say the rules merely represent a first step that is ...