Education

New York state has fallen woefully behind in passing legislation to achieve its renewable-energy goals. As representatives of environmental justice organizations across the state, we are sounding the alarm on this lack of legislative action, because emissions from fossil fuels disproportionately harm New Yorkers of color. And we are calling on lawmakers to include the…

From a distance, it is hard to tell whether the three figures walking the salt playa are human, bird or some other animal. Through binoculars, I see they are pelicans, juveniles, gaunt and emaciated without water or food. In feathered robes, they walk with the focus of fasting monks toward enlightenment or death. This was…

HAZARD, Ky. — Gerry Roll lets out a sigh when she thinks about the endless pleas that have poured into her inbox over the past six months. “I am desperately seeking help,” one man wrote this winter, saying the floods that devastated Eastern Kentucky in late July had knocked out his heating system. “Are there…

Sixth Avenue used to cut through miles of farmland. Now, the road has disappeared under muddy water, its path marked by sodden telephone poles that protrude from the swelling lake. Water laps just below the windows of a lone farmhouse that sits alongside the submerged route. Thousands of acres of cropland have been inundated in…

First it was the eerie images of barrels leaking on the seafloor not far from Catalina Island. Then the shocking realization that the nation’s largest manufacturer of DDT had once used the ocean as a huge dumping ground — and that as many as half a million barrels of its acid waste had been poured…

Last week, when it rained for days and floodwaters poured onto roads, the people of Allensworth grabbed shovels and revved up tractors. The makeshift barriers they built with sandbags, gravel and loose sand kept the water back. Now, the town of nearly 600 people northwest of Bakersfield faces another threat — a broken levee, along…

The southern Sierra Nevada is covered with the deepest snowpack in recorded history, and the rest of the range is not far behind. When all that snow melts, where will it go? You can read the answer in the landscape of the Central Valley. To the eye it is nearly flat, covered by layers of…

HOOSICK FALLS- Federal regulators Tuesday called for stringent new limits on PFAS substances — including a variant that a decade ago threw this Rensselaer County community into a health crisis over water pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency said that no amount of PFAS or polyfluoroalkyl substances is safe for drinking water. They are calling for…

ALBANY — A breakaway group of Glenmont residents seeking to block the Port of Albany’s wind turbine tower factory from being built near their homes has also filed a lawsuit against government agencies involved in the project’s approval. Sylvia Rowlands, along with her husband, Phillip, and another Glenmont couple, Joanne and Daniel Maier, filed an…

Veronica Mota marched under the sweltering sun, hoisting a cloth banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe above her head for miles. “Sí, se puede,” she chanted in unison with dozens of other farmworkers, who waved U.S. and Mexican flags as they walked along two-lane roads lined by dense orange groves in the Central Valley of…