Keeping Track of Pennsylvania’s Resurgent Black Bear Population
Meet Pennsylvania's bear biologist as she gathers data on one of the state's 16,000 black bears. The population has rebounded in the last 30 years.
Reid Frazier
Community meeting for new hot strip mill in Braddock gets heated
Health department officials said their modeling showed the project wouldn’t cause Allegheny County to exceed federal air pollution limits.
As black lung surges in Appalachia, Trump administration halts enforcement of new dust rules for coal mines
One in three Appalachian coal miners surveyed by federal researchers are now testing positive for black lung disease, the highest level since the late 1970s.
In Upper Burrell, where fracking and AI industries converge, residents look to regulate data center
Residents of Upper Burrell in Western Pennsylvania already living with the environmental burdens of fracking now have a data center.
Inadequate safety and training led to 2025 blast at Shell’s ethane cracker, federal safety board finds
The agency found one of the engineers who initiated the procedure that precipitated the explosion “had never previously performed the task.”
EPA announces rollback of climate pollution rules for power plants
The announcement is the latest in a back-and-forth between Democratic and Republican administrations over whether or not to limit power plants’ greenhouse gas pollution.
Pa. fines Shell $15 million for air pollution from its Beaver County plastics plant
The plant went over the allowable limit for benzene, a carcinogen, and it failed to perform testing required by the state.
Archaeologists dig in Lake Erie, looking for relics of the Ice Age
Underwater archaeology may hold the keys to discovering how ancient humans lived before seas rose. “Everywhere people have looked, they've found...preserved things left behind.”
State to study whether area in Laurel Highlands is ‘unsuitable’ for coal mine
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection will conduct an expansive technical review of the Rustic Ridge coal mine, studying impacts to drinking water, wildlife, and tourism.
U.S. Steel’s ‘ineffective’ safety procedures led to explosion that killed two, federal chemical safety board concludes
U.S. Steel failed to follow industry guidelines that could have prevented or reduced the severity of the explosion, a federal agency found.
