If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you — but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add...
‘People would die’: As summer approaches, Trump is jeopardizing funding for AC
The summer of 2021 was brutal for residents of the Pacific Northwest. Cities across the region from Portland, Oregon, to Quillayute, Washington, broke temperature records by several degrees. In Washington, as the searing heat wave settled over the state, 125 people died from heat-related illnesses such as strokes and heart...
What do climate protests actually achieve? More than you think.
An estimated 5 million people around the world took to the streets last weekend in the largest show of resistance yet to President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The “Hands Off!” protesters expressed outrage over Elon Musk’s dismantling of federal agencies and programs through the so-called Department of...
Trump said cuts wouldn’t affect public safety. Then he fired hundreds of workers who help fight wildfires.
President Donald Trump’s executive orders shrinking the federal workforce make a notable exception for public safety staff, including those who fight wildland fires. But ongoing cuts, funding freezes, and hiring pauses have weakened the nation’s already strained firefighting force by hitting support staff who play crucial roles in preventing and...
Massachusetts home-electrification pilot could offer a national model
A first-of-its-kind pilot to electrify homes on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard is set to finish construction in the coming weeks — and it could offer a blueprint for decarbonizing low- and moderate-income households in Massachusetts and beyond. The Cape and Vineyard Electrification Offering is designed to be a turnkey program that...
Millions of Americans don’t speak English. Now they won’t be warned before weather disasters.
When an outbreak of deadly tornadoes tore through the small town of Mayfield, Kentucky, in December 2021, one family was slow to act, not because they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know that they should do anything. The family of Guatemalan immigrants only spoke Spanish, so they didn’t understand the...
Global warming is melting Arctic sea ice. Can science refreeze it?
In the dim twilight of an Arctic winter’s day, with the low sun stretching its orange fingers across the frozen sea, a group of researchers drill a hole through the ice and insert a hydrogen-powered pump. It looks unremarkable — a piece of pipe protruding from a metal cylinder — but it...
Why the Forest Service is logging after Hurricane Helene — and why some say it’s a mistake
In the months after Hurricane Helene leveled thousands of acres in Pisgah National Forest, John Beaudet and other volunteers cleared downed trees from the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. Chopping them up and moving them aside was back-breaking work, but essential to ensuring safe passage for hikers. So he was dismayed...
Public lands, private profits: Inside the Trump plan to offload federal land
The Trump administration is poised to begin offloading public land, achieving a long-held conservative goal of reducing the government’s footprint in the West. Federal agencies manage around 640 million acres, or about 28 percent of the nation’s land, an invaluable resource Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has called “America’s balance sheet.”...
In New England, Canadian hydropower has slowed to an ominous trickle
On March 6, at the start of the still-simmering trade war between the U.S. and Canada, hydropower generator Hydro‑Québec quietly stopped exporting electricity to New England. At a time of year when Canadian hydropower typically supplies up to a tenth of New England’s power, the region has instead gone almost a month with virtually...