New Environment Hub underscores commitment to impact journalism
That's why we're announcing the creation of the Environment Hub at the Tampa Bay Times, where we've defined the topic as a core area of coverage for you. We want to ensure we always have the reporting firepower to produce distinctive and meaningful journalism to serve Floridians.
To start, the hub includes a team of four primary reporters and a coordinating editor, who work at the Times. Other journalists in our newsroom will contribute to build deeper and sustained coverage of the environment. We'd love to see this team get even bigger. The more journalists we have devoted to the subject, the more news and information we can deliver.
How important is environmental coverage in our view?
We devoted more than a year to our latest investigation, Wasting Away, published this week. It shows the immense toll that pollution takes on Florida's waterways. Reporters Zachary T. Sampson, Shreya Vuttaluru and Bethany Barnes found that the state has failed to control pollution seeping into rivers, lagoons, lakes and bays. Millions of dollars spent to reduce contamination has proven ineffective, and the ramifications have been immense. More than 89,000 acres of seagrass has withered and died, our reporters found, because of excessive amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen emanating from farms, developments and golf courses. The decimation of seagrass spawned a 'die off' of the state's beloved manatees. They starved because algae blooms caused by excessive pollution destroyed their main food source.
Or consider the drumbeat of stories from Max Chesnes and Emily L. Mahoney in 2024, exposing the state's secret efforts to transform state parkland into golf courses, pickleball courts, hotels and disc golf. Our coverage mattered, leading to the rarest of things in Florida — strenuous bipartisan opposition. After Gov. Ron DeSantis ultimately backed down, his former director of state parks praised our reporters, noting that 'without the light of good journalism, bad decisions are easily made.'
If not for the Times, the state's treasured parks might have begun to look a lot different. And readers recognized this. 'I am so glad for your hard work, tenacity and excellent reporting,' wrote one Times reader, 'that led to a win for the people!'
Chesnes is one of the leading environment reporters in the Southeast, and Mahoney is the only dedicated energy reporter in Florida. They are key members of our Environment Hub along with Jack Prator and Michaela Mulligan, who have produced compelling enterprise reporting on climate, hurricanes, heat and local development over the past year.
The Times has a strong track record of covering environmental perils. Our coverage of the Piney Point catastrophe detailed neglectful practices by industry and by regulators. Our coverage of a Tampa company that poisoned its workers and contaminated the surrounding community won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. Our 2022 series Rising Threat foreshadowed the increasing dangers posed by storm surge, which played out in horrifying fashion this past hurricane season. After Helene and Milton, a team of Times journalists chronicled widespread breakdowns of local sewage and stormwater infrastructure and how those failures impacted our communities.
With sustained funding, our team will continue to report on environmental issues around Tampa Bay and extending into farmland, lakes, springs and inland streams, where pollution and threats to species and habitat are front and center. Water quality is verging on a crisis across the state.
The Times relies on community support to continue our mission of informing the public and holding powerful interests accountable. Increasingly, this support to help further our mission comes from community grants and donations.
To help support the roughly $500,000 annual budget of our core team, we are raising funds from local family foundations and large philanthropic organizations.
'We believe that the Times, with its skilled journalists and commitment to local news, is a critical voice in protecting our fragile Florida environment,' said St. Petersburg resident Naomi Rutenberg, who along with her husband, Robert Burn, made a significant contribution. 'That's why we're supporting the new Environmental Hub.'
There's much work ahead.
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Miami Herald
17 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Fear of ICE raids is making heat intolerable for Southern California families
For the last 16 years, Isabel has worked harvesting carrots, lemons and grapes in the Coachella Valley. The undocumented mother of three - who, like others The Times spoke with, declined to give her last name out of fear for her family's safety - says the heat in recent summers has been increasingly difficult to manage. And now, with fewer workers showing up due to fears of ongoing immigration enforcement raids across California, Isabel says she and those who remain have to endure fewer breaks and more physical strain. Crews that once numbered five groups of 18 workers each are down to three groups of 18. The demands, however, haven't changed. "You have to pack so many boxes in a day," Isabel said in Spanish. "If it takes you a while to get water, you'll neglect the boxes you're packing. You have to put in more effort." California's outdoor heat standard- which applies to all workers, legal or undocumented - guarantees breaks for shade and water. But the fear of falling behind often discourages workers from taking advantage, labor advocates say. And with fewer workers in the fields, employers have begun asking those who do show up to stay later into the day; some who used to be home by 1 p.m. are now in the fields during the hottest parts of the afternoon, they say. Isabel described a recent incident of a woman on her crew who appeared to be suffering from heatstroke. The supervisors did help her, "but it took them a while to call 911," Isabel said. Sandra Reyes, a program manager at TODEC Legal Center, which works with immigrants and their families in the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley, said she has seen the same pattern unfold across California's agricultural communities. Fewer workers means greater physical strain for those who remain. And in the fields, that strain compounds rapidly under high heat. "There are times when the body just gives out," Reyes said. "All of this is derived from fear." :::: Across Southern California, from fields to homes, parks to markets, the fear of immigration enforcement is making it harder for individuals and families to stay safe as temperatures rise. Early on June 18 in the eastern Coachella Valley, word spread among the agricultural workers that unmarked cars and SUVS - and, later on, helicopters and convoys of military vehicles - that they rightly guessed carried federal agents were converging on the fields. Anticipating a raid by Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the reaction was immediate. Workers - many undocumented - fled, some going into the fields, hiding beneath grapevines or climbing up date palm trees. Local organizers began to get calls from frightened workers and their families. Making matters worse was the heat. Inland Congregations United for Change, a nonprofit community organization in San Bernardino, sent out teams with water and ice. They found a number of people who had been in the blazing sun for hours, afraid to return home. Some had run out of water as temperatures soared to 113 degrees, eating grapes off the vine in an attempt to stay hydrated. "There [were] people who are elderly, who need medication," said J. Reyes Lopez, who works with the organization. Officials later confirmed that the multiple-agency operation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration had detained 70 to 75 undocumented individuals - part of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement effort. In the days that followed, there were lasting impacts in the fields. "Many [workers] have not returned to work, especially those with small children," said TODEC's Reyes. And for those who did return, it soon became clear that they were expected to do the same amount of work, only now with fewer people. The summer of 2024 saw record-breaking heat in Southern California, and experts predict 2025 will be just as bad, if not worse. These rising temperatures - largely due to climate change - have serious effects on the health of workers and their families, said Arturo Vargas Bustamante, a UCLA professor of health policy and management. Exposure to extreme heat can trigger or exacerbate a raft of health issues such as cramps, strokes and cardiovascular and kidney disease, as well as mental health issues. :::: It's not just agricultural workers who are affected. Car wash employees often are exposed to direct heat without regular access to water or breaks, said Flor Rodriguez, executive director of the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. Because that industry has become a target for enforcement operations, car wash owners have had to hire staff to replace workers who have been apprehended or who no longer come in because they fear they could be next. That often means hiring younger or less experienced people who are unfamiliar with workplace conditions and protections. "The most dangerous day for you at work is your first day," said Sheheryar Kaoosji, executive director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. Even when workers feel physically unsafe, Kaoosji said, they may fail to speak up, due to fears about job security. When that happens, he said, "preventative tactics like breaks, cooling down, drinking water, don't happen." Itzel - a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy whose family lives in Long Beach - has seen the same patterns among her co-workers in the landscaping industry. "They wanna get to the job site early and they want to leave as early as they can," she said. "They're not taking their breaks. … They're not taking their lunches." When they do, it's often for 30 minutes or less, with many choosing to eat behind closed gates rather than under the shade of a tree if it means they can remain better hidden. Overexertion under peak heat, noted Javier Hernandez, executive director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, is becoming a survival strategy - a way to reduce exposure to ICE, even at the cost of physical health. Heat, unlike more visible workplace hazards, often goes unreported and unrecognized, especially in industries where workers are temporary, undocumented or unfamiliar with their rights. "There's a huge undercount of the number of people who are impacted by heat," Kaoosji said. "Heat is really complicated." And with ICE presence now reported at clinics and hospitals, access to medical care has been compromised. "It's just another way for people - these communities - to be terrorized," Kaoosji said. In the Inland Empire, where summer temperatures regularly climb into the triple digits, Hernandez said many families are now making impossible choices: Do they turn on the air conditioning or buy groceries? Do they stay inside and risk heat exhaustion, or go outside and risk being taken? These questions have reshaped Isabel's life. She now goes to work only a few days a week, when she feels safe enough to leave her children. That means there's not enough money to cover the bills. Isabel and her family now spend most of the day confined to a single room in their mobile home, the only one with air conditioning. Their electricity bill has rocketed from $80 to $250 a month. So far, her family has been able to make partial payments to the utility, but she fears what will happen if their electricity gets cut off, as has happened to some of her neighbors. Before the raids, Isabel's family would cool off at a nearby stream, go to air-conditioned shops or grab a raspado, or shaved ice. But in the face of heightened enforcement, these sorts of routines have largely been abandoned. "Those are very simple things," Hernandez said, "but they are very meaningful to families." Fear also makes it difficult to spend time at public cooling centers, libraries or other public buildings that in theory could offer an escape from the heat. Isabel's youngest child isn't used to staying quiet for long periods, and she worries they'll draw attention in unfamiliar public spaces. "I do my best to keep them cool," Isabel said, explaining that she now resorts to bathing her children regularly as one cooling strategy. Itzel's father, who is undocumented, hasn't left his apartment in over a month out of fear of immigration enforcement actions. He used to make up to $6,000 a month as a trucker - now, he can't afford to turn on his air conditioning. Where once there were weekend walks, family barbecues, trips to the park or the beach to cool down, now there is isolation. "We're basically in a cell," Itzel said. "This is worse than COVID. At least with COVID, we could walk around the block." The same has been true for Mirtha, a naturalized citizen who lives in Maywood with her husband, whose immigration status is uncertain, and their five U.S.-born children. In previous summers, her family - which includes four special needs children - relied on public spaces, such as parks, splash pads, shopping centers and community centers to cool down. Now her family spends most of the time isolated and indoors. Even critical errands such as picking up medications or groceries have shifted to nighttime hours for safety reasons. Meanwhile, her husband, a cook, stopped working altogether in early June due to fear of deportation. Even turning on their one small air conditioner has become a financial decision. Constant fear, confinement and oppressive heat has worsened her children's mental and physical well-being, she said. Staying indoors has also led to serious health challenges for Mirtha herself, who suffers from high blood pressure and other medical conditions. On a particularly hot day on June 21, Mirtha got so sick she ended up in the hospital. "My high blood pressure got too high. I started having tachycardia," she said. Despite Mirtha's citizenship status, she hesitated to call emergency services, and instead had her husband drive her and drop her off at the emergency room entrance. :::: Summer temperatures continue to rise and enforcement operations keep expanding. "We're only seeing the beginning," said Mar Velez, policy director at the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California. "People are suffering silently." Jason De León, a UCLA professor of anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American studies, warns that deportations taking place in the summer will also probably force many to reattempt border crossings under the most dangerous conditions of the year. "We're not only putting people in harm's way in the United States," he said, "but then by deporting them in the summer … those folks are going to now be running this kind of deadly gantlet through the desert again. They are going to attempt to come back to the only life that many folks have, the only life they've ever known." Isabel insists they're here for one thing: to work. "We came here just to work, we want to be allowed to work," she said. "Not to feel like we do now, just going out and hiding." More than anything, "we want to be again like we were before - free." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Editors' Note: July 30, 2025
An article on Friday about people in Gaza suffering from malnutrition and starvation after nearly two years of war with Israel lacked information about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child suffering from severe malnutrition and whose photo was featured prominently in the article. After publication of the article, The Times learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems. Had The Times known the information before publication, it would have been included in the article and the picture caption. An article on Monday about a family who uploaded their father's lengthy reading list after his death in hopes of inspiring readers misstated the name of the high school that the man, Dan Pelzer, attended. It was Detroit Catholic Central High School, not Detroit Central Catholic High School. An article on Monday about the box office earnings for Marvel's 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' misidentified the movie with the lowest box office total in Marvel's history. 'Thunderbolts*' had the second-lowest box office total in Marvel's history, after 'The Marvels,' which had the lowest. A Critic's Notebook article on Monday about the National Ballet of Japan making its British debut referred imprecisely to a debut of the National Ballet of Japan. Its European debut was in Moscow in 2009, not last week. The error was repeated in a capsule summary of the article and a picture caption. A photo caption with an article on Tuesday about NASA's soft drink space race misspelled the surname of an astronaut. He was Karl G. Henize, not Karl Heinz. An obituary on Saturday about Joe Vigil, a renowned coach and leading expert on distance running and altitude training, misstated the branch of the military in which he served. It was the U.S. Navy, not the Army. Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions. To contact the newsroom regarding correction requests, please email nytnews@ To share feedback, please visit Comments on opinion articles may be emailed to letters@ For newspaper delivery questions: 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) or email customercare@
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Months after the Jan. 7 fires, L.A.'s evacuation plans remain untested
Just before sunrise on Nov. 8, 2018, a power line fell from a wind-worn Pacific Gas & Electric transmission tower and whipped into the structure nestled in the Sierra foothills. An electric arc sent molten metal into the dry vegetation below. It ignited. Five minutes later, a PG&E employee spotted the fire while driving on a nearby highway and reported it. Within two hours of the sighting, the town of Paradise, seven miles away, sent its first evacuation order, but it was already too late. Within two minutes, flames were reported at the town's edge. Landing embers quickly ignited dozens of spot fires in town. With only four major roads out of town, the streets quickly gridlocked. Paradise burned. Sixty-four people died in Paradise during the agonizing seven-hour evacuation. Six of them were found in or next to their cars as they tried to evacuate. Marc Levine, a state legislator at the time, listened over radio to the horrific scenes of people, stuck in traffic, abandoning their cars to flee on foot. 'It made me think of the people falling from the World Trade Centers on 9/11,' he said. 'They were going to be incinerated or they were going to jump. … They knew they would die either way.' So, Levine wrote legislation requiring California cities and counties to analyze whether their roads could support a quick evacuation during emergencies such as fires, floods and tsunamis. Assembly Bill 747 passed in 2019. Yet, to date, the city of Los Angeles has failed to publicly report such an analysis, while fire safety advocates say L.A. County's evacuation analysis fails to meet the law's requirements. The Times reached out to nearly a dozen city, county and state agencies involved with evacuation planning. All either did not respond to requests for comment, could not to point to an evacuation analysis in line with the state's guidelines for AB 747 or indicated the responsibility for doing the work lie with other agencies. 'The fact that local government leaders would not do as much as they can to protect human life and safety is just shocking to me,' Levine said. In January, the streets of Pacific Palisades mirrored the scene that distressed Levine in 2018. Traffic was at a standstill on Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive — two of the only routes out of the burning landscape. When a spot fire exploded next to the route, police ran down the street, shouting at evacuees to run for their lives. Every year, dozens of evacuations are ordered in California, organized and completed without any casualties — or even a news story. In these cases, public safety officials have all the lead time that they need to organize a safe and orderly evacuation before a fire reaches a community. But it's the much more dire evacuation scenarios — when the lead time is shorter than the time it takes to evacuate, like in the Palisades — where emergency planning is both most important and often ignored. 'There's no incentive to ever present an evacuation plan that isn't very positive,' said Thomas Cova, a professor at the University of Utah who studies wildfire evacuation analysis. 'Why would an emergency planner — say some young upstart in an emergency operation center — ever want to present a plan to their colleagues that involves some people burning?' The chaos of these worst-case scenario evacuations often look nothing like the orderly phased evacuations cities often focus on. Unlike in 'blue sky' evacuations, smoke can hinder visibility and cause crashes. Often whole towns must leave at once. Power outages can prevent public safety officials from communicating with residents. It's why Marylee Guinon — president of the State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations, an advocacy group aimed at protecting and expanding the state's community fire safety requirements — suspects AB 747 is facing pushback from local governments. 'They don't want data that would tell them that it's going to be a nine-hour evacuation,' she said. All the while, the risk of fast-moving fires is growing. In a 2024 study, researchers from the University of Colorado in Boulder analyzed more than 60,000 fires documented by NASA satellites in the first two decades of the 21st century. By 2020, fires in California were growing, on average, four times faster than they were in 2001. AB 747 requires local governments to include their evacuation analyses in the safety element of their general plan — the long-term blueprint for future development of a city or county. The city of L.A.'s current safety element provides no such analysis. Instead, it simply lists evacuation planning as 'ongoing.' In a statement to The Times, the city's Planning Department, responsible for writing and revising the general plan, said details of evacuation routes are not made publicly available since 'large urban cities such as the City of Los Angeles are high profile targets for terrorist attacks.' The city did not immediately clarify what legal authority it has to keep the analysis private as California law generally requires safety elements to be public. 'It is a mystery how hiding evacuation route capacity and viability can save lives when community members are fleeing a natural disaster,' Levine said in an email to The Times. 'It is a dubious claim that terrorists could possibly be well positioned to take advantage of such a catastrophic situation.' Meanwhile, the county said it complied through an analysis it included in its 2025 safety element. However, fire safety advocates criticized the county's analysis as simplistic and failing to adequately determine whether quick and safe evacuations are feasible. The Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, which provides guidance on state planning laws, recommended that local governments use traffic software to simulate different evacuations to estimate how long they might take. Instead, the county grabbed a list of all roads in unincorporated areas within its borders and listed them as 'evacuation routes' so long as they were paved, public and not a dead end. The intent of the law is 'not 'just list the roads you have,'' Levine said. 'So I'm super disappointed that L.A. County is dismissive in this way. You would expect, particularly post this year's fires, Palisades and Eaton, they would take this far more seriously.' When pressed on their deviations from the state's guidance, both the city and county planning departments passed the buck to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which indicated in assessments that the two departments' safety elements were compliant. Cal Fire, however, said that its assessments were nonbinding and that complying with the law falls on the city and county. Yet, none of the local or state agencies directly responded to an inquiry from The Times asking them to explain the discrepancy between the guidance and the safety elements. The city and county both have detailed evacuation plans that coordinate how public safety officials in the emergency operations, police and fire departments would orchestrate a mass exodus. However, the analysis of roadway networks to estimate how long those evacuations — even if perfectly orchestrated — may take, is different. 'Historically, fire agencies put forth evacuation plans that are operationally driven,' said retired fire Battalion Chief Doug Flaherty. 'They talk about communications. They talk about unified command. … What is missing is an actual detailed, road-by-roadway capacity analysis of the time that it's going to take for people to safely evacuate the area.' For Guinon, the lack of follow-through from cities and counties across the state is indicative of a common trend in wildfire legislation. 'Virtually every piece of legislation that I dig into, I find out it was the result of a tragic catastrophe,' she said. 'This legislation comes out with really, really clear intent over and over, and then it gets forgotten.' Despite the complexity of simulating cars on a computerized network of roads to understand evacuation times, the scientific prowess exists — and the software to do it is widely accessible. When Flaherty, a Tahoe Basin resident, became frustrated with his area's lack of movement on the issue, he commissioned an evacuation study through his nonprofit, The retired fire battalion chief, with 50 years of emergency response planning experience under his belt, partnered with Leo Zlimen, fresh out of UC Berkeley and co-founder of the emergency management software startup Ladris. 'We fell into this wildfire space because everywhere we looked, people were [asking] 'draw a circle on the map and tell me how long it takes to get those people out,'' Zlimen said. 'And it turns out, that's actually a really complicated problem.' Ladris' software simulates realistic fire evacuations. It starts by taking a map of roads in a community and plopping little purple dots at virtually every home. Each one represents a vehicle. A fire starts on the map. It spreads. The purple dots get orders to flee, and the evacuation starts. The computer can play out a multihour evacuation in mere seconds, and it can account for an excruciating amount of detail. A roadblock, representing a falling tree or car crash, can stop purple dots from using a portion of the road. Some purple dots, not realizing how dire the situation is, wait an extra few minutes — or hours — to evacuate. The dots even wait their turn at stop signs, crosswalks and traffic lights. Ladris' program almost looks like a video game. Officials can test evacuation scenarios far in advance or in real time during an emergency. The company is also working to use artificial intelligence to help quickly configure scenarios so users can almost literally 'draw a circle on the map' and get an evacuation time. Flaherty said his detailed Tahoe Basin study, a comprehensive analysis based on Ladris' simulations, had a price tag just shy of $100,000 — roughly equivalent to the cost of installing one traffic light in town. 'In the scheme of things, it's very cost effective and reasonably priced,' he said. Another piece of software from Old Dominion University — simpler than Ladris' — is available to the public for free. It takes less than half an hour to set up a simulation in the program, called FLEET (for 'Fast Local Emergency Evacuation Times'). Consequently, it's been used not only by local governments making fire evacuation plans, but also by Scouting America troops interested in flood hazards and event planners wondering how bad the postgame traffic may be. Among those using FLEET simulations for evacuation planning: the town of Paradise. After the Camp fire, Paradise became an inadvertent experiment in how towns can better prepare for evacuations. After the disaster, it won a $199-million federal grant for infrastructure projects designed to rebuild Paradise into a more fire-safe town. Before the fire, the town's entire yearly budget was around $12 million. After the Camp fire, Paradise hired a traffic consulting firm that used FLEET. It found an evacuation would take over five hours under perfect conditions while utilizing all traffic lanes. It then used the modeling to understand what could be done to alter traffic flow to reduce that time. For Paradise — as is the case for many towns — a big problem is traffic bottlenecks: To evacuate, virtually the entire town has to use one of four main roads. The seemingly most straight-forward solution? Build more roads. However, these projects get complicated fast, said Marc Mattox, Paradise's public works director and town engineer. Often the roads that a municipality needs to improve evacuation would have to go through private property — a nonstarter for residents in the proposed path. Or, it's simply too costly. Although Paradise has received funds to widen two evacuation routes and connect three dead ends with the rest of town, a new evacuation route out of town would be prohibitively expensive. Mattox estimated such a route, navigating Paradise's steep ridges and canyons, would cost in excess of half a billion dollars. So, Paradise has also invested in a much cheaper, yet still effective tool to speed up evacuations: clear communication. Paradise installed signs all over town that proclaim when residents enter and exit different evacuation zones. The town is also looking into using a different color sign for private or dead-end roads that warn drivers to avoid them, as well as digital signs above key roadways that can display real-time evacuation information. In Southern California, Malibu — which completed an evacuation analysis after it suffered the Woolsey fire the same day as the Camp fire — has similar plans. Malibu is adding reflective markers to roadways to reduce the chances of crashes amid thick smoke. For neighborhoods with few evacuation routes and individuals with limited mobility, the city encourages evacuating whenever the National Weather Service warns of dangerous fire weather — well before a possible ignition. Los Angeles is much bigger than Malibu and Paradise — L.A. has a population of 3.9 million; Paradise's is just over 9,100. But evacuation experts said it's no excuse for letting California's rural towns take the lead on evacuation planning. Asked whether the sprawling labyrinth of L.A. roads would make doing these analyses more difficult, Zlimen smiled. 'Not really — no,' he said, noting Ladris has completed analyses in the San Francisco Bay Area. 'It's totally possible.' Guinon hopes the results of evacuation analyses can also help — or force — cities to make more responsible residential development plans in the first place. 'It's not rocket science,' she said. 'Let's just take on protection of our existing communities and let the chips fall where they may with new development: If it's unsafe, don't build it.'
