It’s not at all clear to me how frequently — or is it rather “infrequently”? — the word “Chafee” appears in the stories written by environmental reporters toiling at the local level. You clearly know that far better than I.

What is clear from this perspective “in the Nation’s Capital,” as they say, is that in the environmental field at least, there for sure is a potential BC/AD aspect to the death this past October 24 of the Rhode Island Republican Senator.

Chafee, of course, for the past five years had chaired the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. And, for years before that, he had been among the most influential members of the U.S. Senate on all-things-environmental.

Wait there. This is, after all, to be a column on environmental journalism. NOT on environmental politics or environmental policy.

So why the focus on the late Senator and the impact it will have on environmental and pollution control policies themselves?

Chafee’s name, of course, need never have appeared in the environmental news stories of the Daily Jebip for his influence to have been pervasive in shaping Jebipville’s air and water quality. In fact, there isn’t a Jebipville on this continent not to have somehow felt the imprint of the late Senator (known to his admirers to his left, of course, as a “moderate” and a “consensus builder,” to his critics from the right as a “liberal”).

One can point to the scores of pages of this nation’s environmental legislation over the past three decades that clearly show Chafee’s legacy. And, indeed, that of the other fellow New England “moderates,” from both sides of the aisle, who with him helped establish the past three decades’ environmental signature in Washington, D.C.

But equally importantly, one can point too to the legislation not enacted that reflect his presence — the truly bad ideas that never got to a committee or floor vote because of the respect his presence commanded, the influence he wielded.

The most important act of legislating, after all, sometimes involves NOT legislating in the first place. Chafee in that sense was a two-way standout, playing both offense and defense, as the situation demanded.

Chafee will be missed on the Environment and Public Works Committee, in the Senate overall, in his party, and in all-things-environmental.

None of which is to suggest that broad audiences would be best served if environmental reporters were to spend lots or much of their time watching Capitol Hill political shenanigans at the expense of watching other venues, too often ignored.

Just one example here, though one among many.

The U.S. Supreme Court this session is expected to rule on an issue of far greater import than any bills the coming-election year congressional session could possibly pass into law. The Court is considering a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Friends of the Earth appeal in Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, No. 98-822.

The ruling comes after a series of important court rebuffs to the citizens’ suits provisions critical to implementation in particular of the Clean Water Act over the past three decades.

As The New York Times reported, the case “has galvanized the environmental movement as have few Supreme Court cases in recent years.” Few others in the media have yet taken note.

Sure, reporters could get all caught-up in the clearly dramatic shift from Chairman Chafee to Chairman Anyone-Else-on-the-Committee. Nothing suggests that won’t be an important and fascinating story with major significance for federal environmental legislation in years to come.

But they should do so only with an open eye and mind to issues such as that going on just across the street from the U.S. Capitol building, in the Supreme Court.

And, ultimately, well beyond that… to goings on in the local communities.

Environmental issues and interest didn’t begin with John Chafee’s ascent within the U.S. Senate. And, despite the void he leaves, they won’t end with his passing.

Not even in Washington.

Journalists can get help in covering urban sprawl and endocrine disrupters from two meaty new “resource guides” published by the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF).

The guides address two of the hottest – and most complex – topics on the environmental beat, and they do justice to both the complexity and the controversy the issues inspire. They are full of sources’ names and phone numbers, as well as organizational “players,” Web site addresses, further reading, and story ideas.

While RTNDF’s Environmental Journalism Center, which produced the books, focuses mainly on broadcast journalism, print reporters also will find them valuable.

David Goldberg wrote Covering Urban Sprawl: Rethinking the American Dream. He covered transportation, environmental, and land use issues rising from metro-area growth for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for six years. He helped create the paper’s weekly “Horizon” section spotlighting growth issues.

Janet Raloff wrote and edited Environmental Hormones: Threats to Health & Reproduction? She is senior editor at Science News, where she has covered environment, food and nutrition, and other issues for some 20 years. She has been writing about environmental hormones since 1993.

Each guide is available to working journalists for $6 ($3 for RTNDA members) to cover shipping costs. Costs for non-journalists is $10. To order, contact Michelle T. Loesch at (202) 467-5206 or michellet@rtndf.org. The guides can also be found on the RTNDF Web site at: http://www.rtndf.org.

Urban Sprawl Guide

Growth issues “touch a number of political hot buttons,” Goldberg writes in RTNDF’s sprawl guide. He notes that presidential candidates are already jockeying for advantage on the issue and that at least 37 governors mentioned it in their “State of the State” addresses. Both major parties and independents have embraced the sprawl issue.

Sprawl is an important story, the book observes, because it is key to people’s “quality of life.” It is about two-commuter marriages and how many miles soccer moms have to drive to the soccerplex.

Goldberg identifies sprawl as “a catchall term for many inter-related issues with hundreds of potential story lines.” In 48 pages, the book does justice to the issue’s complexity. It emphasizes the automobile’s central role in American life and the resulting impact on sprawl. Suburbs exploded, the book notes sympathetically, in post-war decades when millions of people were looking for a better life beyond crowded and dirty cities. But the rapid and often unplanned growth of suburbs caused traffic jams, loss of neighborhood ties, and other new problems.

The book looks in depth at the environmental costs of sprawl – air pollution from increased auto traffic, stormwater runoff from acres of pesticide-treated lawns, and the loss of open land valuable for both wildlife habitat and farm production. It also looks in depth at the economic causes and consequences of sprawl – particularly the tax burdens sprawl imposes, and the funding of roads, water and sewer lines, and schoolbus routes which feed sprawl.

RTNDF’s sprawl guide is full of for-instances and case studies, with the Atlanta examples being the most substantial.

Endocrine Disrupters Guide

Toxic pollution concerns before the 1990s focused mainly on how pollutants might cause cancer, birth defects, and other disorders. It was not until the mid-1990s, with publication of the book Our Stolen Future, that public attention turned to a whole host of harmful effects pollutants could have on human and animal endocrine systems.

The potential consequences included reproductive and developmental disorders ranging from breast and testicular cancer to declining male birth rates, falling sperm counts, and children with congenitally malformed penises and lower IQs.

The chemicals involved are numerous and widespread in the environment – including many pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and dioxins. These chemical pollutants imitate natural hormones (usually estrogens, which are key to reproduction and sexual development) and can interfere with the processes those hormones normally govern.

“The science of hormone mimics is in its infancy,” Raloff notes. Although much of the science, especially the part involving effects on humans, is inconclusive or controversial, the book describes with considerable precision what is and is not known, and the strengths and weaknesses of particular studies.

Much media attention, for example, was inspired by research in the mid-1990s suggesting that men’s sperm counts worldwide had fallen to roughly half of what they were in 1940. Raloff explains in detail what data those findings were based on – and also the limitations of the data and other studies which failed to support such findings.

The hormone guidebook includes a rich list of experts amenable to interviews, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The list of printed references is also especially strong, but reporters who pursue this subject in detail will need to read articles in scientific journals.

State of U.S. Ecosystems…

The goal is an admittedly aggressive one … “lay the groundwork for comprehensive, credible, and regular reporting on the state of America’s ecosystems.”

But at the same time, the new report from the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment is very much a “work in progress,” as made clear on the opening page of the 119-page spiral-bound report. A prelude or prototype to an ecosystems report due out in about two years, the newly available report addresses “selected measurements for croplands, forests, and coasts and oceans.” It seeks to provide “a suite of measures that show the condition and use of the nation’s natural resources,” but insights on fresh water, on arid/grasslands (rangelands), and on urban areas will have to await the expected 2001 version of the report.

“Americans rely on a familiar set of indicators to gauge the performance of the national economy: rates of unemployment and inflation, growth of gross domestic product, size of business inventories, surveys of consumer confidence,” the report notes. “These indicators influence home buying decisions, business investments, and focus debate on national policy.”

“No such measures describe the nation’s environment,” the report continues, and it’s filling that void that the report adopts as an ambitious goal, hoping to overcome the “conflicting views” the public often faces in evaluating environmental progress.

“Reporting on a core set of indicators of the use and condition of the nation’s ecosystems provides a consistent and comprehensive way to track broad environmental conditions — and of telling the American people about the natural resources they use and cherish,” the report’s authors write.

The report itself was developed with funding from a number of independent and corporate foundations and from several federal departments and agencies. Under the direction of a report Design Committee chaired by William J. Clark, of the JFK School of Government at Harvard University, the report drew on experts from industry, the environmental community, academia, government, and nonprofit institutions.* Experts on croplands, on forestry, and on coasts and oceans contributed in their own specialty areas.

For more information or a copy of the report — full text of which is available online at www.us-ecosystems.org — journalists can contact Heinz Center Program Manager Robin O’Malley at The Heinz Center, Suite 735 South, 1001 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004. Tel: (202) 737-6007; e-mail omalley@heinzctr.org.

*Editor’s note: The executive director of the National Safety Council’s Environmental Health Center (EHC), publisher of this newsletter, served as a member of the Design Committee for this report.

You, too, can wow your editor with near-magic feats of online reporting. What you need, at least for starters, is Wired Journalist: Newsroom Guide to the Internet.

A new 1999 edition, the third revision since the guidebook was first published in 1996, offers signposts to a World Wide Web whose users have more than doubled in that time.

The book was written by Mike Wendland, who worked as an investigative reporter for the Detroit News from 1970 to 1980, and as senior investigative reporter for Detroit’s WDIV-TV from 1980 to 1998. Wendland has won 20 Emmys, has been involved with computer-assisted reporting (CAR) since 1985, and is now teaching it.

The guidebook is usable by beginners, but also has much to offer the Web guru. Beginners may get the most from how-to-do-it sections, heavy with case-study examples. Gurus, however large their list of bookmarks may be, will probably still find many new good ones. The book includes categorized lists of informative Web links on everything from accounting, advertising, and agriculture to journalism, the justice system, unions, weather, and women’s concerns.

It is strong with links on CAR in particular. But it also goes into Web-realms few might have thought about as journalistic resources, such as Web-rings and newsgroups. Wendland says the free-form discussion on newsgroups has served him well as a place to find people with “It-happened-to-me” stories. And he tells you how to search the newsgroups to find them.

To receive/order this publication, please contact Jamshid Mousavinezhad at (202) 467-5250; jamshidm@rtndf.org. This guide can also be found on the RTNDF web site at: www.rtndf.org.

Environmental stories, unlike major political news and disasters, rarely get the same play on the East and West Coasts – or in the Midwest and the South.

Environmental coverage can be influenced by proximity to an endangered natural resource, regional severity of the problem, regional economic interests, and regional Presidential candidates.

With those differences, regional coverage makes good reading – and presents some surprises. Here are a few examples.

Environmentalists Endorse Gore

• “Gore Begins ‘Smog-Slingin’ In Assault on Bush’s Policy”

  “Vice President Al Gore pushed Houston’s ozone smog problem to center stage in the presidential campaign Thursday, accusing Gov. George W. Bush of siding with polluters.

  “A Bush spokesman responded that Gore is an environmental extremist. He added that the governor has worked to reduce pollution in Texas overall.

  “Gore, in a speech to environmentalists at a campaign fund-raising luncheon in New York City, cited a story in Wednesday’s Houston Chronicle that Houston was poised to overtake Los Angeles as the nation’s worst metropolitan area for ozone smog. A few hours after Gore spoke, new pollution measurement put Houston ahead.” – The Houston Chronicle’s front-page story devoted 20 paragraphs to Gore’s attack on Bush’s environmental record, with the environmentalists’ endorsement mentioned in the last three paragraphs.

• “Leading Environmentalists Put Support and Money Behind Gore”

  “Vice President Al Gore, who prides himself for his environmental record, was stung last month when an environmental group, Friends of the Earth, endorsed former Senator Bill Bradley, his rival for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Yesterday some of Mr. Gore’s supporters struck back, holding a fund-raising lunch in midtown Manhattan that featured endorsements from some leading New York environmentalists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Lawrence Rockefeller.” – The New York Times’ 20-graph story was on page 24.

• “Environmentalists Endorse Gore, Who Swipes at Bush”

  “Vice President Al Gore accepted the endorsement of environmental activists and accused Texas Gov. George W. Bush on Thursday of allowing his state to become the most polluted in the nation.

  “‘It is a Texas-sized tragedy, and that kind of approach cannot be taken into the White House, because our children deserve better than to have their environment and their health given to a person who carries water – dirty water – for the special interests,’” Gore said.

  “Gore, referring to rankings from the 1999 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Toxics Release Inventory Report, said Texas ranks ‘No. 1 for toxic releases into the air, into the water and into the soil. For the first time ever, Houston, Texas, is taking over the top spot as the city with the worst smog pollution in America.’” – The Portland Oregonian placed a five-graph story as the third item in a “Campaign Notebook” column on page 9.

• “Bradley Focuses on Working Families; While Dole Issues

  Anti-Drug Message, Gore Gains Environmentalists’ Support”

  “In New York, Vice President Gore appeared with prominent environmentalists to collect their endorsements. He took the chance to accuse Texas Gov. George W. Bush of ‘carrying water – dirty water – for the special interests’ and polluters.” – The Washington Post’s first reference to the endorsement was in the third paragraph of a 24-graph story wrapping up news from all the Presidential candidates, on page 8. The last two paragraphs also covered the endorsement.

EPA Proposes Tough Emission Standards for Heavy-Duty Trucks

• “EPA Aims at Truck Pollution; Big SUVs Also Targeted in Bid to Close Loophole”

  “The Environmental Protection Agency announced a two-phased plan Wednesday to cut pollution from heavy-duty trucks and super-large sport-utility vehicles.

  “EPA regulations, some of which may not be formally proposed until early next year, would require new pollution controls on tractor-trailer rigs and other heavy-duty trucks and direct refiners to cut sulfur in diesel fuel by up to 90 percent.

  “The new truck requirements and the cleaner diesel fuel would kick in beginning in 2007.” – The Chicago Tribune put its 12-graph story on page 4.

• “EPA Pushes to Cut SUV Emissions”

  “Heavy-duty trucks and the largest sport-utility vehicles would have to meet tougher tailpipe pollution standards starting 2004 under a proposal released Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

  “The agency aims to reduce smog-causing nitrogen oxides and soot by more than 90 percent in the next millennium by requiring better engine designs for big rigs, SUVs, vans and pickups that weigh more than 8,500 pounds. Regulators also may call for cleaner diesel fuels, most commonly used by heavy duty trucks ....

  “The strategy meshes with President Clinton’s earlier proposal to hold cars and light trucks to the same pollution standards starting in 2004.” – The Detroit News’ nine-graph story was in the Autos Section.

• “Plan to Require Cleaner Diesel Trucks Unveiled”

  “New diesel trucks and other vehicles would be virtually exhaust-free beginning in 2007 under proposals announced Wednesday by the Clinton administration’s top environmental official and California’s air board chairman.

  “The proposed standards are designed to address rising concerns about the danger that diesel exhaust poses to people’s health. Diesel engines spew large quantities of tiny, soot-like particles that can lodge deeply in lungs and have been linked to cancer and respiratory disease. They also are a major contributor to California’s smog.

  “State Air Resources Board Chairman Alan Lloyd, while attending a symposium in Irvine on clean-air technologies, said near-zero emission trucks and other heavy duty vehicles are within reach.” – The Los Angeles Times’ 24-graph story was on the front page.

• “EPA Plans Tougher Emissions Standards; Heavy Trucks, Big SUVs Targeted”

  “The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday proposed new rules designed to cut the emissions of soot and other smog-causing pollutants by 90 percent in super-large sport-utility vehicles and heavy-duty commercial trucks.

  “In addition, the agency said it also plans to force the nation’s petroleum industry to produce cleaner diesel fuels.

  “The actions target the heaviest passenger trucks, such as Ford Motor Co.’s jumbo Excursion sport-utility and General Motors Corp.’s traditionally large and weighty Chevrolet Suburban sport-utility models. It also takes aim at big, over-the-road haulers, such as those made by Mack Trucks Inc. and DaimlerChrysler AG’s Freightliner Corp. subsidiary.” – The Washington Post’s 12-graph story was on the first page of the Business Section.

Clinton Proposes Forest Protection

• “Clinton Seeks Forest Protections”

  “Calling national forests ‘places of renewal of the human spirit,’ President Clinton today announced steps to preserve 40 million acres of federally owned forest – an area the size of Virginia and West Virginia combined – as roadless areas protected from development.

  “The president stood on a sun-washed ridge in the George Washington National Forest, surrounded by trees turning shades of russet and gold, to announce details of the preservation plan, which is already under attack from Western Republican lawmakers.” – The Associated Press’ story was 19 graphs.

• “President Clinton Does Not Discuss Protecting Alaska Forests”

  “President Clinton won’t say whether undeveloped or ‘roadless’ areas in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska should be permanently protected from logging.

  “The president announced in a speech Wednesday in George Washington National Forest in Virginia that he wants to preserve 40 million acres of wild lands in national forests across the country from development. Whether to include the Tongass, the country’s largest national forest, will be decided through an environmental review expected to be complete by December 2000. Public hearings will be held in Alaska and elsewhere on the policy.” – The Anchorage Daily’s16-graph story was on the front page.

• “Clinton Proposes Wider Protection for U.S. Forests”

  “President Clinton said today that he would permanently protect at least 40 million acres of Federal forest land from road building, logging and mining, using administrative actions meant to out maneuver powerful opponents in Congress.

  “Standing in front of a spectacular fall vista not far from the Shenandoah Valley – and next to the grandson of Gifford Pinchot, who mapped out the first protected forests under Theodore Roosevelt – Mr. Clinton said, ‘We’re going to have a big fight on this for about a year.’

  “‘In the end,’ he said later, “we’re going to protect all this before it’s too late.’” — The New York Times’ front-page story was 26 graphs.

• “Clinton Acts to Protect Forests; The President Promises to Bar Road-Building and Limit Logging in 40 Million Acres of Roadless National Forest Land”

  “President Clinton said Wednesday that he would ban new road-building on at least 40 million acres of federal forest, a move that would be one of the largest land-preservation efforts in the nation’s history.

  “‘We want this for our children forever,’ Clinton said, standing on a hilltop overlooking the brilliant fall colors of Virginia’s George Washington National Forest.

  “The roadless area protections would be accomplished through an administrative action that would bypass the scrutiny of the Republican-controlled Congress. ‘We’re going to have a big fight on this for about a year,’ Clinton said. ‘In the end, we’re going to protect all this before it’s too late.’

  “Clinton aides said Wednesday that the U.S. Forest Service will try to speed through hearings and issue regulations that by year’s end would gain protection for all roadless forest tracts 5,000 acres or larger and perhaps some smaller roadless areas within the agency’s 192 million acres nationwide.” – The Portland Oregonian’s front-page story was 37 graphs.

• “Clinton’s Plan to Protect U.S. Forests/No Logging or Mining on 40 Million Acres, Including 4 Million Acres in California”

  “In a move that would have a far-reaching impact in California and the West, President Clinton yesterday proposed placing 40 million acres of federal forest beyond the reach of loggers, miners, and road-builders.

  “Clinton’s plan would permanently protect close to 4 million acres in the state, an area more than five times the size of Yosemite National Park, including some of California’s last wild rivers and largest swaths of old-growth trees.

  “The response to the proposal, one of the most significant conservation actions taken by the administration, was predictable. Environmentalists were thrilled, while timber industry representatives were dispirited.” – The San Francisco Chronicle’s 24-graph story was on the front page, with a chart of the state forests that would be protected.

• “Forest Protection Plan Is Unveiled; Clinton Initiative Aims to Ban Road-Building, Logging on 40 Million Acres”

  “President Clinton announced plans today to ban road-building and logging on at least 40 million acres of national forest wilderness, a move some environmental groups hailed as the biggest conservation initiative since Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.

  “Standing before a spectacular vista of the Shenandoah Valley west of Harrisonburg, the president directed the Forest Service to being a year-long process of soliciting public comments and devising plans to ‘permanently protect’ at least 40 million acres of roadless national forest lands throughout the county. Timber companies have pressed the government to open such areas to logging, a practice Clinton seeks to sharply restrict or to eliminate.” – The Washington Post put its 11-graph story on page 23, the Federal Page.

Note: Formerly published by the National Safety Council. Reprinted with permission.