Publication: Seattle Times

Millions of migrating birds are traveling through Oregon over the next few weeks, and they could use some help to safely make it to their breeding grounds. As the birds fly over cities at night, light pollution can blot out the stars and disrupt their natural navigation systems. They can get trapped in the city, … Read more

Washington is one step closer to eliminating a major blind spot for potential contaminants in crops grown across the state using human waste as fertilizer.

In an executive order last week, the president sought to block clean energy laws across the country, calling them forms of “state overreach.”

“If democracy didn’t matter so much, powerful people wouldn’t be fighting so hard to destroy it. While we stay distracted trying to fill the holes in the road ahead of us, they are dismantling the car we are driving.”

“I come to work every day. There are folks who worry about those things,” one of the employees says about the privatization talk. “But it doesn’t change what we do: Protection of life and property. That’s what we do.”

Washington state lawmakers are struggling to find money to pay for work on the state’s many transportation needs, from ferries to highways and bridge repair. But the chair of the state Senate Transportation Committee says financing a statewide bikeway system is worth the relatively low cost.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has ordered state officials to scrutinize all projects that received federal grant spending over the past four years on bike lanes, electric vehicle charging stations and other “green infrastructure,” with an eye toward potentially canceling any project that doesn’t align with the administration’s goals.

As the state rushes to clean up the grid and phase out fossil fuel electricity generation, one family — through the use of solar panels — shows a way farmers and ranchers can find new paths forward on their land strained by drought or economic forces.