A conversation with the journalist who wrote the Rolling Stone article based on his two-year investigation into the industry, worker safety and the regulatory blackhole that leaves people at risk.
One thing the report found was that the information system to track impacts dates back to the 1990s. Another finding is that coal companies are buying up land that they are mining under.
We discuss the settlement of a class action lawsuit against U.S. Steel and how the Christmas temperature inversion that made Pittsburgh's air smell like "rotten eggs, sewer backup, burning plastic and hospital waste."
Daniel Rossi-Keen, the group's executive director, says the debate around the ethane cracker being built in his county is predictable. Instead of being for or against it, his group is ready to "do the hard work of developing healthy and creative community together."
Some Pittsburgh restaurants are collecting oyster shells for new homes for baby oysters. More than eight billion 'spat on shell' have been added to the bay in the effort.
Kara Holsopple likes to tell environmental stories that surprise listeners, and connect them to people and places nearby, and in the wider world. Kara is a lifelong resident of southwestern Pennsylvania, except for her undergraduate years at Sarah Lawrence College. She earned a masters degree in professional writing from Chatham University, and has been a features writer for regional magazines. Kara got her start in radio working with Pittsburgh Indymedia’s Rustbelt Radio. She produced "The Allegheny Front Rewind" series, celebrating the show's 20th anniversary, and her work has been heard on The Environment Report, Inside Appalachia and Here & Now. One summer she read all of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple & Poirot detective novels.
