By Brian Roewe for Earthbeat.Broadcast version by Deborah Van Fleet for Missouri News Service for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration. The oldest building at Rockhurst University is now the greenest on campus. When the doors of Sedgwick Hall first opened in 1914, the four-story, stone-block structure along Troost Avenue housed the college, the high school and residence for the Society of Jesus at the Jesuit institution here in Kansas City. .
Climate resiliency could soon play a greater role in how cities in Washington plan for population growth. House Bill 1181 would update the state s Growth Management Act so that cities and counties must consider climate change in their comprehensive planning. "This would require all of those plans to take into account climate resiliency, climate-change impacts, planning for those hazards, making communities safer and protected and more resilient to the impacts," said Jamie Stroble, climate director for The Nature Conservancy in Washington. " .
The Keystone State s largest coal-burning power plant is set to begin decommissioning on July 1. Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter Director Thomas Schuster said the Homer City Generating Station, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, has experienced some financial issues, and hasn t operated above 50% of its capacity since 2015. Last year, it was less than 20% of capacity. .
Investment money pouring into farmland markets is shrinking the land-acquisition prospects for small farmers. The hefty price tag for good farmland is one of the biggest challenges facing beginning farmers and farmers of color. Savi Horne, executive director of the North Carolina Association of Black lawyers Land Loss Prevention Project, said since the start of the pandemic there has been more pressure for financial institutions and investors to acquire land, driving up costs and complicating the struggle for racial equity in agriculture. .
By Caroline Tracey for Civil Eats.Broadcast version by Deborah Van Fleet for Missouri News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration Jack Southworth’s ranch sits at 4,600 feet in elevation outside Seneca, Oregon, near the Strawberry and Blue mountain ranges. Like many ranchers, his cattle graze private, deeded land in the winter and leased National Forest land in the summer, including a high mountain plateau filled with bluebunch wheatgrass and Idaho fescue and surrounded by Ponderosa Pine forest. Since the valley is “good at collecting cold air,” as Southworth put it, it has a short growing season, and if cattle stay too long in any given place, they will eat the grass down to bare ground, creating conditions for soil erosion. .