Environment
Weekend America's coverage of the environment.
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Letters: Ocean Pollution and Goodbyes
We open the Weekend America mailbag to hear your responses to recent stories. Weekend America's last episode is January 31, and listeners have been writing us to say goodbye. We also revisit our story on ocean pollution from earlier this month, which prompted questions from listeners about the pharmaceutical pollution entering U.S. waterways.
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Garageland: Hydrogen in the Garage
President Obama and Congress are promising to kick into serious negotiations this week over the proposed $800 billion economic stimulus package. The stimulus might provide $100 billion to alternative energy and energy efficiency. In New Jersey, Mike Strizki is already living the energy-efficient dream. He's turned the garage at his house into a hydrogen and solar power plant.
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Gas in Them Thar Hills
Over the past few years, prospectors have been combing the hills of Pennsylvania. The mineral that's setting off the frenzy is shale. It's a mile or more below ground, and it's full of natural gas - maybe enough to fuel the entire United States for two years. The "gas rush" could make some Pennsylvanians rich. But it could also pollute the state's air and water.
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Pollution Smells Like Pumpkin Pie
The holidays are over. Maybe you've joined a gym, started a new, healthy diet. It's been a week since you touched that plate of stale holiday cookies. But for the salmon in Puget Sound, the feast is just beginning. And their diet has been getting much worse. From Seattle, Joshua McNichols explains.
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Economy Down, Environment Up
President-Elect Obama announced his picks for the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency administration this week. He has also been touting a plan that will jump start the economy through green jobs. We spoke about one of the recessions' few bright spots with the president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown.
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America's Infrastructure: Urban Drains
This week in Missouri, a constitutional amendment goes into effect to help cities access more money for drainage projects. In an effort to get to the bottom of what the amendment aimed to do, reporter Adam Allington did a little urban spelunking into the miles of storm water drains running underneath the city of Columbia, Mo. He met up with a guide to help him find his way.
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The New American Car
Auto industry CEOs and union leaders are back in Detroit empty-handed this weekend. They spent the week on Capitol Hill begging, unsuccessfully, for help to avoid possible bankruptcy and even more layoffs. Congress has refused to bail them out, at least so far. But in the meantime, we thought we'd offer our own bailout. Not in dollars, but in ideas. How should we re-imagine the American car?
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Saved by a Succulent Garden
When the fierce Santa Ana winds died down last Tuesday, fire fighters quickly gained control of the huge blazes that left most of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Orange and Ventura counties shrouded in smoke last weekend. One of the only surviving houses in a posh Santa Barbara neighborhood was saved, perhaps, by its garden. Ben Adair explains.
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Politics on the Spot: The Houston Ship Channel
For the final installment of our series Politics on the Spot, we head to the industrial heart of Houston, the Ship Channel. Texas has some of the weakest environmental enforcement in the country, and the city of Houston has no zoning codes at all to regulate its large number of oil refineries. As Weekend America's Michael May reports, it all adds up to a bad situation for families and children living right on refinery row.
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America's Infrastructure: Delaware Aqueduct
The longest tunnel in the world supplies New York City with drinking water. And it's leaking: Just in the amount of time that this show is on the air, the Delaware Aqueduct will leak at least enough to put a football field under three and a half feet of water. It's just one part of America's infrastructure that's falling apart. Reporter Rick Karr has the story of the catastrophe that's unfolding several hundred feet underground.
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Hurricane Ike
The city of Austin has been taking in evacuees fleeing Hurricane Ike from Galveston for days now. We hear an update from Mayor Will Wynn as the storm passes through Texas.
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Hurricane Crisis
We hear from Mark Reeves, chaplain for the Disaster Medical Assistance Medical 4 team from San Diego. The team is on the ground today in Texas helping recovery from Hurricane Ike. Reeves talks with host John Moe about the immediate mental and spiritual needs of evacuees.
