Pennsylvania received more than $51 million in EPA grants to cleanup brownfields and Superfund sites over the last five years. But those funds are now in jeopardy.
For decades, chemical companies used Toms River as their private dumping ground for their toxic waste. Then the town's residents started asking questions.
Pittsburgh group Scrap the Trap commissioned street artist Bordalo II to create this raccoon piece, made from trash, to draw attention to their cause: more humane treatment of urban wildlife.
A long legacy of industrial pollution has made the Ohio the archetype of a "working" river. But the National Wildlife Federation thinks the Ohio could be transformed into a recreation destination.
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.
