Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded with fury after Corpus Christi officials announced in March that this Gulf Coast region of more than 500,000 people could face unprecedented restrictions as its water supply dried up.

The state had already committed over $750 million in low-interest loans to the city’s plans for a desalination plant, a project that would add 30 million gallons a day to the region’s water supply. But the project had gone nowhere.

“You know what they did? They squandered it, and then they changed their plan and then they were indecisive about what to do,” Abbott said of city officials in a heated response to a reporter’s question at an unrelated March press conference.

“What Corpus Christi leaders have to do is make a decision,” Abbott said. “We can only give them a little time more before the state of Texas has to take over and micromanage that city and run that city to make sure that every resident who goes to the water tap and turns it on, they are going to be getting water out of their faucet, not because of what local leaders are doing but because of what the state of Texas will do.”

Even as Abbott was demanding that Corpus Christi get its act together, another agency, whose entire board Abbott appoints, was also coming undone.

In late June, board members of the Nueces River Authority learned that funding for a desalination plant the agency hopes to build, separate from the city’s, is months from running out. Additionally, the agency was spending more than it was taking in, and other contracts that had kept the authority financially afloat had been canceled.

Although the river authority’s project is a critical part of efforts to expand the region’s water supply, so far, the governor hasn’t threatened to take over the agency’s day-to-day operations. He’s consistently placed the burden of responsibility on the NRA board.

But Abbott has previously demonstrated that he can use his authority to compel other agencies to act: In March, he instructed a different river authority not to reduce Corpus Christi’s water allocation from Lake Texana. He also had the state’s environmental agency waive regulations so the city could move groundwater from Nueces County, which includes Corpus Christi, to its water treatment plant.

As far back as October 2022, while he was campaigning for reelection, Abbott said in an interview with KRIS 6 News that the state was working with the city and Nueces County on a desalination plan. If the city did not pursue the project, “then the state of Texas will do it for them,” the governor said. But the state is not currently involved in the city’s desalination project.

The governor appoints all 21 members of the NRA’s board and designates its president. With a majority vote of the river authority board, Abbott also can remove any board member for inefficiency, neglect of duty or misconduct. He has no such control over the Corpus Christi City Council.

Political scientists and water policy researchers who reviewed the situation told KRIS 6 News that Abbott’s decision to pressure Corpus Christi while leaving the NRA to address its problems largely on its own reflects a selective use of power. While recent rains have helped delay, though not prevent, an immediate water emergency for Corpus Christi, experts say the region still needs to develop new infrastructure projects to secure its long-term water supply.

Should water supplies drop below certain levels, Corpus Christi residents and businesses — including oil refineries and petrochemical plans — would be required to cut water use by 25 % under the city’s current Level 1 water emergency plan. Households would be capped at using 6,000 gallons of water per month, landscape watering would be banned and there would be surcharges imposed on those who exceed their allotments.

“The city of Corpus Christi needs a lot of help, it doesn’t need threats, and the Nueces River Authority is in way over its head,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “The water crisis in Corpus Christi and beyond in Southeast Texas is serious, and it’s not clear that anyone has the breadth of authority and resources to deal with it.”

What Power Does Abbott Have?

The public troubles for the NRA bubbled up as far back as March, when the agency’s then-chief operating officer sent a letter to board members accusing Executive Director John Byrum of making “materially inaccurate” statements about the authority’s finances related to the planned desalination project.

KRIS 6 reached out to the governor’s office in the spring about the accusations.

“Every member of a Texas board or commission should uphold the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and accountability in service of the people of Texas,” Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris wrote in a statement. “Governor Abbott expects a thorough investigation into the allegations brought forth and for the Board to act swiftly once the investigation is complete.”

The board eventually cleared Byrum of “intentional wrongdoing,” but the NRA declined to release a copy of the investigation to KRIS 6 in response to a public information request; the Texas office of the attorney general has not yet ruled on whether the report can be withheld. The news organization asked the governor’s office for his response to the investigation and the board’s decision, but he did not respond.

The river authority’s unstable finances became even more apparent at a board meeting in late June, when the agency’s chief financial officer confirmed the NRA could be out of money for the desalination project by the end of August if certain contracts didn’t materialize. Since then, three of the agency’s desalination contracts, which the authority was depending on to stay afloat, expired and have not yet been renewed. KRIS 6 News asked the governor’s office whether it was aware of the agency’s continuing problems. Mahaleris again referred the news organization back to board members.

“The NRA Board oversees the agency’s operations and finances,” Mahaleris wrote June 27. “The Governor appoints board members to the state’s water authorities but does not manage their day-to-day operations. …The Governor expects accountability from appointed boards.”

While Abbott has no direct legal authority over the NRA’s policy decisions, he can use the power of his office to publicly pressure them, Ron Beal, a retired Baylor University School of Law professor whose work on Texas administrative procedure has been routinely cited by the Texas Supreme Court, wrote in a response to KRIS 6 News.

“He can say that when each member’s term ends, if the water project is not on its way, they will absolutely NOT be re-appointed to the job!” Beal wrote. “In other words, he cannot force them legally to follow his orders, but there is no doubt he has the bully pulpit and if anyone can pressure everyone to work together NOW and get it done ASAP, it is the Governor!!!!”

In a written statement to KRIS 6 News for this story, Abbott again placed responsibility on both the Corpus Christi City Council and the NRA board but did not address most of the specific questions asked.

“Despite the temporary reprieve granted by recent rain, the Governor’s expectations for the region have not changed. … The Corpus Christi City Council created this crisis through repeated failure to act on desalination,” Mahaleris wrote. “The Council remains responsible for securing reliable water for their citizens. The Nueces River Authority Board is responsible for the agency’s finances” and the desalination project.

The governor’s office did not answer questions about whether Abbott has taken steps to coordinate among the city, the NRA and other stakeholders, or about what “accountability from appointed boards” looks like in practice.

Even as the governor’s office has publicly distanced itself from the NRA’s operations, it has fought to keep from releasing its own communications with the river authority’s leadership.

KRIS 6 News filed a public information request on July 2 seeking emails, text messages, meeting notes and correspondence between the governor and members of his staff and Byrum, the NRA executive director, and NRA board President Eric Burnett. The request covered the river authority’s desalination project and any state funding, grants or loan guarantees related to those efforts.

The governor’s office confirmed on July 17 that it had records that met the parameters of the request. It did not release them. Instead, the office asked the attorney general’s office for permission to withhold the documents. The office argued that the records relate to a proposed water facility project for which state funding may be sought and that releasing them would “seriously disadvantage Texas,” but did not explain how. Abbott’s office also said the records reflect policy advice between the governor’s office and representatives of another state agency; this type of communication can sometimes be withheld under the state’s public information law.

The river authority has struggled to keep up with the demands of the desalination project, which is estimated to cost $6.4 billion. Design work on the pipeline that’s supposed to deliver the desalinated water stalled because the river authority hasn’t offered the company building it a new contract. Byrum, the executive director, has claimed President Donald Trump promised funding for the project, but the river authority has never actually made a formal request to the White House.

Jillson pointed to a fundamental mismatch between the NRA and the scale of the desalination project it’s trying to complete. The NRA staff is small, with an annual budget of up to about $5 million. It’s governed by unpaid, part-time board members who historically meet quarterly to provide broad direction.

He said the governor should direct someone in his office to determine whether the NRA has the personnel and expertise to execute a project of this scale and, if it doesn’t, to act on that finding. Without that kind of direct link between the governor’s office and the agency, Jillson said, “what you’re saying is, ‘We expect these guys to oversee themselves.’”

Byrum wrote in a response to KRIS 6 News that the authority “has the experience to oversee” the project and the option to hire additional staff if required.

The river authority did recently secure one large contract for the project: In May, the NRA selected Israel-based IDE Technologies as its development partner for the desalination plant.

Abbott toured a desalination facility in Israel run by IDE in January 2016. At the time, IDE said Abbott “expressed his intention to partner with Israeli technology companies such as IDE to develop and deploy water solutions for Texas,” as reported by Wastewater Digest.

KRIS 6 News asked if the governor, or anyone in his office, was involved in the NRA’s selection of IDE.

Byrum wrote that the “Governor’s office was not involved.” KRIS 6 News asked the governor the same question, but his spokesperson did not respond.

The Takeover Question

Abbott has a record of curbing the power of Texas cities like Corpus Christi to govern themselves. In 2015, he signed a bill that overrode a voter-approved fracking ban in Denton in North Texas and blocked cities from banning or restricting oil and gas drilling. In 2023, he signed the so-called “Death Star” bill, which preempted city authority over eight policy areas, including labor, natural resources, insurance and property.

Republican state Rep. Denise Villalobos, who represents the Corpus Christi region, previously told KRIS 6 that Abbott directed her to draft a bill that would create a state-level water infrastructure authority, something she compared to the state’s highway department.

If adopted by the Legislature when it meets next year, such an authority would take many decisions about future water supplies away from locals.

Villalobos did not comment for this story. Abbott’s office did not answer questions about the proposed legislation.

Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni told KRIS 6 this summer that his office had looked into how a takeover would work and found no examples in Texas of the state stepping in to run a water operation or water corporation. The closest parallel, he said, is the state’s ability to take over ailing school districts.

Abbott’s threat to take over Corpus Christi’s desalination project runs into other unsettled legal territory the governor’s office has not addressed publicly, said Gabriel Collins, a lawyer and research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy who studies water and energy policy.

Under Texas law, surface water, meaning rivers and lakes, is public property, giving the state a clear line of authority. Water pumped from the ground is considered private property, belonging to the person who owns the land above it, and is regulated locally.

Desalinated seawater fits into neither category. Collins said a legal case could theoretically be made that water drawn from within 3 miles of shore falls under state jurisdiction, but he said he isn’t aware of anyone making that argument in this context.

“That would be a massive shift in water policy in the state of Texas,” Collins said.

But the legal question may be less important than a practical one, Collins said. Would a state takeover of Corpus Christi water regulators, even if it could be done, actually make a difference?

“Or would you be better off resolving those fundamental problems by having the state be a catalyst and a facilitator financially that helps the local political authorities solve a problem?” Collins said.

The post Greg Abbott Blasted Corpus Christi for Its Water Crisis. A River Authority He Has Power Over Is Falling Apart. appeared first on ProPublica.

Decades after the last plume of lead-laced smoke rose from a smelting plant in Omaha, Nebraska, the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica found lead in concentrations that pose a threat to people’s health in soil throughout east Omaha. 

Our investigation began more than two years ago, when Leah Keinama, who previously worked for a food security nonprofit, could not find up-to-date information about lead contamination for gardeners in Omaha. Keinama, now the director of civic journalism at the Nebraska Journalism Trust, and reporters at the Flatwater Free Press knew about the city’s refining history, so they teamed up to find out whether concerns about lead exposure were still warranted all these years later.  

The Environmental Protection Agency declared a 27-square-mile area within the city a hazardous waste zone, known as a Superfund site, after the American Smelting and Refining Company closed in the 1990s. That prompted a lengthy period of testing and remediation. Today, unless Omaha residents pay for private testing, there aren’t many avenues to find out how much lead is in their soil if their property had been tested by the city and EPA in the past.

A Community-Informed Investigation 

Throughout our reporting, we heard from hundreds of Omaha residents who said they didn’t know about the city’s lead history. Some said they believed that because the EPA had already cleaned up thousands of properties that had high concentrations of lead in the soil, there was nothing to worry about. 

Our goal was to reach people in every neighborhood in and around the Superfund site. So we knocked on doors, hung up flyers around town, visited a community health center, attended multiple events, partnered with local libraries, and spoke to a college classroom to invite people to sign up for free soil testing. We also posted our online form in various social media channels and shared the news with other local media. We made our reporting available in Spanish, as roughly 10% of residents living within the Superfund site don’t speak English.

Flatwater Free Press initially partnered with local libraries and a community-based organization to distribute do-it-yourself kits with instructions on how to collect a soil sample. We received fewer than 100 samples using this method before switching to a sign-up system in which residents indicated they wanted our team to collect soil from their yard.

After a resident signed up for testing, a member of the reporting team (usually Keinama or Flatwater Free Press reporter Chris Bowling) went to their home, put on latex gloves, wiped down a stainless steel spoon with an unscented wipe and scooped about 3 to 4 tablespoons of soil from the middle of the yard into a sealable vial. We made sure not to collect samples too close to the house or too close to the road, which the EPA has found can be overly contaminated by paint or the remnants of leaded gasoline, respectively. When demand for testing increased, we hired two part-time soil collectors.

We sent labeled samples to Accurate Analytical Testing, an EPA-accredited lab, for $10 per test. Once we received the results from the lab, we informed residents (unless they had opted out of receiving their result) and put together a guide to answer some of their top questions. 

Our soil collection process differed from the EPA’s method of taking multiple composite samples from five sections of the yard. We chose to take a single sample from one area of each yard to reach more people and keep costs reasonable. In a few cases, we took multiple samples from the same yard and tested each sample individually but used only the highest result for our analysis.

The EPA said sampling a single area “can be strongly biased high or low” compared to composite sampling. However, several of the nine environmental contamination experts we spoke to said single samples can offer broad conclusions about contamination in an area when enough are collected, which several experts felt we had achieved. Some said our sampling would likely underestimate contamination on a property. 

Other experts said our testing method would not accurately depict lead levels across a particular yard because of how variable the contamination can be. At the same time, experts also told us the EPA’s method of gathering multiple composite samples can still miss hot spots or underestimate contamination. 

What We Found

Over the past two years, we used the EPA’s sampling protocol as guidance to collect soil from 620 homes in and just outside of the Omaha Superfund site. (We’re continuing to collect samples from the nearby cities of Bellevue, Nebraska; Carter Lake, Iowa; and Council Bluffs, Iowa.)

We matched each home at which we took a soil sample with Omaha’s lead registry, which includes details like the address’ remediation status and results of the EPA’s testing, and compared our test results with historic data. Some homes that had previously undergone the EPA’s remediation process had high levels of lead contamination, our analysis found.  

• We tested 150 previously remediated yards. One in 10 of those yards’ results came back with a concentration greater than 400 parts per million, the level the EPA used to decide which yards to clean up.
• Nearly all of the previously remediated yards that tested above 400 parts per million are within 100 yards of another property that originally tested above the EPA cleanup threshold but was never remediated. A third had two such neighboring properties. That proximity could mean that the previously cleaned-up yards we tested were recontaminated by properties where the soil was never replaced, one expert said.
• Many of the 241 homes we tested within the Superfund site that had never been remediated also showed high levels of lead. Of those homes, 1 in 20 had a concentration higher than 400 parts per million, according to our test results.
• Across Omaha, 41% of the 620 yards we tested had more than 100 parts per million in their soil sample, a level that an EPA model shows could cause high blood-lead levels in children. Within the Superfund site, more than half of the almost 390 yards we tested had more than 100 parts per million. 

Our testing shows that lead contamination at levels that pose a risk to residents’ health is fairly widespread — even in sites that the EPA previously addressed.

Throughout our reporting, we spoke to nine experts in environmental and lead contamination to make sense of our findings. Several said the EPA should do more testing and possibly cleanup in Omaha.

We asked the EPA about our findings. The agency said it will work with the city of Omaha to “investigate the outcomes you have noted” and work with the city and property owners to take corrective action if needed in accordance with 2009 cleanup guidelines.

The post The EPA Doesn’t Typically Retest Homes in the Country’s Largest Residential Lead Superfund Site. So We Did. appeared first on ProPublica.

Shortly after buying her house in 2022, Mary Royers learned from a man across the street that her Omaha, Nebraska, neighborhood was contaminated with lead. But her yard, like thousands of others, had been cleaned up, the neighbor said.

Royers wanted to be sure. So the 36-year-old educator checked a website where the city tracks the soil test results of every home in a 27-square-mile area surrounding the site of an old lead smelter. She saw “remediated” written in bright green letters. The federal government had completed the work two decades ago. An expert must have tested the dirt and determined the problem was solved, she thought.

Relieved, Royers set about sowing the garden of her dreams. Hours disappeared as she thrust her hands into the soil, tearing up the grass and planting purple coneflower for bees to harvest and prairie grass to sway in the breeze.

“You have the green light from the city. That means everything’s safe,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘Thank God I don’t have to worry about that.’”

But a soil test conducted last fall by the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica found otherwise: Royers’ yard still has more than 1.5 times the level of lead that the Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanup was supposed to have eliminated.

Reading the emailed results, she felt “gut-wrenching disbelief,” she said.

“All I could think about was the dirt under my nails and all over my face,” said Royers, who has largely given up gardening for now. She explained later, “It felt like a betrayal of that trust.”

Since 1999, the EPA has spent $273 million digging up and backfilling nearly 14,000 yards across east Omaha to address contamination left from the smelter and other factories downtown. It’s the largest residential lead cleanup in the country. And the agency’s Superfund program has repeatedly heralded it as a success.

But, it turns out, Omaha’s soil might not be as safe as officials have advertised. The news organizations tested soil from more than 600 properties, including 150 that the EPA said had been cleaned up. In those tests, 1 in 10 yards marked as remediated still had enough lead to qualify for cleanup under the original guidelines. And nearly a quarter of the properties we tested in east Omaha could qualify for further study under new guidance released by the Trump administration last fall.

The results suggest the EPA has more work to do, said Howard Mielke, a longtime researcher of lead-contaminated soil who’s considered one of the field’s foremost experts. Not only should the agency clean up the areas that tested above the remediation level, he said, but it also should test other homes.

“If you find a couple of high results, chances are many high results will be nearby,” said Mielke, an adjunct professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine.

Some experts and environmental advocates said our findings reflect weaknesses in the EPA’s approach to cleaning up residential lead sites, which can leave a lot of lead behind.

Jeff Tittel, former director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey, the state with the most Superfund sites, said he repeatedly watched the EPA declare its work done after wrongly assuming everything had been cleaned up.

“On paper, everything’s wonderful,” he said, “but at the sites, there’s still chaos.”

The EPA declined an interview request with senior officials overseeing the Omaha cleanup.

In an emailed response, spokesperson Kellen Ashford said the EPA is committed to cleaning up contaminated sites to protect residents and the environment. “The diligent cleanup efforts have led to a dramatic decrease in elevated blood lead levels” in Omaha, he said. (While the percentage of kids testing high for lead has dropped significantly, as it has nationally, kids in the Omaha site still test high for lead at rates above the national average.)

Ashford said the EPA could not assess the news organizations’ results without further investigation, but property owners can reach out to the EPA or the city of Omaha, which now manages the site for the federal government, if they have concerns.

“Because it would not be possible to completely remove all lead,” Ashford said, the EPA and the city also try to educate the community about lead risks and precautions.

The city is already responding to the news organization’s findings.

The day after receiving her results, Royers forwarded them to the city’s lead office, asking if anything could be done. An employee tested her dirt and found even higher levels than the news organizations did. The city plans to clean the yard up again in August, Royers said.

But the EPA and the city have refused to clean up or test properties of others who have reached out about their high lead results.

The agency has also not said what it plans to do about properties that are below the current cleanup level but above President Donald Trump’s new screening level, which could prompt further action. Any update would come after a new site study the agency plans to release in October 2027, Ashford said.

Royers and her partner, Stephen Matthews, are thankful for the new cleanup, but they wonder: How many other Omahans may be misled or unaware about lead contamination in their yards?

“We’re one house out of thousands,” Matthews said.

What Might Have Gone Wrong

It’s difficult to identify why some cleaned-up properties still test high for lead.

That’s in part because Omaha’s lead problem is almost as old as the city itself. The American Smelting and Refining Company produced lead to make batteries, cover cables and enrich gasoline for more than a century. After the smelter closed in 1997, the EPA estimated the plant and other factories had dumped 200,000 tons of lead dust — enough to fill at least 1,600 rail cars — across Omaha’s east side.

At the time, the Superfund program, which had started only a decade before, was still trying to figure out how to clean up residential sites like Omaha’s, then home to 125,000 people. Old factory sites could be bulldozed and excavated, the contaminated material carted away. But the Omaha site involved people’s homes and yards.

The agency tested nearly every yard in east Omaha and came up with a plan: It would dig up and replace parts of yards that had a concentration of more than 400 parts per million of lead — the equivalent of a marble in a 10-pound bucket of dirt.

But that meant that some properties were cleaned up while neighboring ones that had only slightly lower levels of lead were not.

Hewing to that kind of strict standard doesn’t make sense, said Gabriel Filippelli, an Indiana University earth sciences professor and longtime lead researcher.

“From a scientific standpoint, a 390 is the same as a 410,” Filippelli said. “It’s the same as a 400. They’re all about the same value.”

Failing to clean up neighboring properties can also lead to recontamination over time. When it’s windy and the ground is dry, tiny lead particles in the dirt — generally about one-hundredth the width of a human hair — become airborne and spread, Filippelli said.

When the Superfund program started, the agency cleaned an entire yard if its average lead level among multiple samples was over the limit.

But by the time the Omaha cleanup started, the method had changed. In Omaha, it divided yards into five sections: two in the backyard, two in the front yard and a thin ring around the home’s perimeter called the dripline, which often contains the most contaminated dirt but can also contain remnants of lead paint.

The agency took multiple samples per section of yard and replaced a section’s soil only if the average was over 400 parts per million. This approach could lead them to miss hot spots or leave behind areas that have high lead levels but are just under the cleanup threshold. Contractors also did not dig up the driplines if another part of the yard wasn’t over the limit.

This could explain why the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica’s testing found that about 1 in 20 homes that didn’t qualify for cleanup originally now tested above the cleanup threshold. In addition, the news outlets found several properties outside the Superfund site that were over the limit.

In the early days of the cleanup, Don Preister, a longtime Omaha lead advocate and former state senator, argued for the EPA to clean up entire yards and to lower the level of lead that would qualify for remediation, calling the agency’s solution a half-measure.

But the EPA decided that its approach made the most of limited money and prioritized the highest-risk areas. One EPA manager told Omahans in 2004 that the choice to remove only sections of yards was “economical,” according to meeting records.

“It brought out feelings of hurt,” Preister said of the EPA’s choice. “Children are likely to still be impacted, and their health affected.”

The EPA’s national guidelines did advise against “‘patchwork clean-up’ patterns which are prone to recontamination” when adjacent sections are high. But the agency didn’t give clear guidance on how to implement that, several former site managers said, and some felt they had to follow the rules strictly or risk violating federal law or agreements with companies paying to clean up their pollution.

Ashford acknowledged that the agency has to adhere strictly to its cleanup plans but said in some cases, like an industrial site near a residential area, the EPA may clean up to a lower level to prevent recontamination.

Another problem was that east Omaha was full of older homes that contained lead paint that could recontaminate cleaned soil over time. Following local pressure, the EPA agreed to test homes’ paint. If it contained lead, the agency repainted the outside. But the EPA did not repaint houses whose soil did not also qualify for cleanup. Studies in urban areas have found homes with deteriorating paint have contaminated nearby gardens.

Ashford said an EPA study found most lead-based paint contamination in Omaha was within 6 feet of the house.

Brenda González Rocha, who has lived in her south Omaha home since 2020, thinks both soil and paint are to blame for the lead that doctors found in her 4-year-old daughter’s blood. Her basement had lead paint, which she hired a company to fix.

But although the EPA cleaned up her yard in 2012, the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica tests found levels of lead that are higher than before the agency remediated it. González is surrounded by properties with lingering lead. A yard down the street that had high lead levels was never remediated. The banks of the nearby highway were never dug up and replaced. The house next door has lead paint on it, according to the city lead website.

Ashford said it’s unlikely that wind-blown dust from one house to another would recontaminate cleaned areas with enough lead to surpass the cleanup level.

But nearly all the remediated properties the newsrooms tested that were over the cleanup threshold are within 100 yards of a property that originally qualified for remediation but wasn’t cleaned up. A third had two such neighboring properties.

González’s eight kids, between 8 months and 22 years old, love to play outside. They jump on the trampoline, ride bikes and play soccer. Now González is anxious whenever they’re in the yard.

“I worry that this could affect their quality of life,” she said. “I would feel bad if something happened to them during their development. I would feel responsible.”

“Benign Neglect”

Once the EPA chooses a fix for a Superfund site, it is generally required to review the site every five years to update the public on the progress of the cleanup. But the ways those reviews are done leave unanswered questions about whether the solution is working and how much lead is in Omaha today, said experts who examined the reports for the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica.

In their reviews, government officials in Omaha track how intact the grass is on top of the new soil. If it is exposed or has been disturbed, it could be a sign that any remaining lead is no longer safely underground and could blow around.

But they don’t retest a representative sample of properties.

Cleanups often take several tries to get right, said Tittel, the former New Jersey Sierra Club director, and recontamination or missed contamination can be a huge problem.

Tittel said he has seen similar patterns in New Jersey. In 1979, Tittel helped show EPA employees where the Ford Motor Company dumped industrial waste into abandoned mine pits. Since then, he has seen the mess declared a Superfund site, marked safe, become a Superfund site again and spawn a lawsuit that Ford settled in 2009 as locals continued discovering more hazards.

“It’s sort of a benign neglect when it comes to these sites,” Tittel said. “Government just wants to get it over with because it’s taking so long. They end up cutting corners or looking the other way.”

A Ford spokesperson said the company takes its environmental responsibility seriously and has been working with state and federal officials to clean up the site.

Retesting soil does not appear to be standard at other sites, according to reviews examined by the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica. But it should be, said Debbie Chizewer, a managing attorney with the environmental law group Earthjustice. Without ongoing testing, the EPA can’t really know if its solution is working, she said, and residents won’t know how toxins in the environment are impacting their health.

“I think for the five-year review to be meaningful, you need to do testing,” she said.

Ashford said the EPA retests properties on a case-by-case basis, such as when construction disturbs the soil. The periodic reviews, which in Omaha have led to an ongoing reevaluation of the site’s cleanup level, allow the EPA to ensure these unique, complex sites protect people and the environment over time, he said.

Steve Zivny, who leads Omaha’s Lead Information Office, also said new testing and cleanup decisions depend on factors such as whether kids live at the home and whether they have tested for a high lead exposure.

The EPA’s reviews of the Omaha site do point to some potential problems. In 2024, inspectors found 98% of the lawns had been disturbed, indicating a risk that buried lead could be exposed. That includes having weeds, bare soil or demolished buildings. But the EPA tested only 32 sites where homes had been demolished and found six exceeded the cleanup level. To them, that indicated the solution was “generally protective; however, more data should be collected to support this conclusion,” according to the report.

Those figures, however, trouble Ian von Lindern, who oversaw lead cleanup at an Idaho Superfund site for more than 30 years. He doesn’t doubt the federal government did a good job hauling away tons of toxins in Omaha. But he’s sure they couldn’t get all of it.

At the Idaho site, the EPA requires people to request permits from a local health district before digging in their yards. Local health employees can also test residents’ dirt, and, if it’s above the cleanup level, it may qualify for further remediation.

Without someone keeping a close eye on the fixes, recontamination can occur as people dig up lead-contaminated soil or unremediated soil is allowed to blow around.

“Those remedies are, I don’t want to use the word failing, but they’re becoming less effective,” he said.

Royers worries many homes in Omaha fit that description.

This summer, the educator is letting the weeds grow freely in her garden. Pretty soon, the city is going to replace it anyway.

The thought makes her feel guilty. More people should know about potential lead in their yard and have access to tests and cleanups. But that would require acknowledging that after decades and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, there are cracks in the cleanup. Royers isn’t sure that will happen.

“The priority is pretending like things are OK,” she said. “Clearly it’s not.”

The post The EPA Spent Millions Cleaning Up a Massive Superfund Site. Our Tests Found Toxic Levels of Lead in Many Yards. appeared first on ProPublica.

Two government watchdog groups have demanded investigations into whether Federal Communications Commission members violated ethics requirements by accepting luxury gala tickets from Paramount as the company sought government approval for its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The complaints filed by Democracy Defenders Fund and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington cite a recent ProPublica investigation that detailed how CBS or its parent company, now Paramount, have for years given FCC commissioners tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala, which the television network sponsors. The commissioners accepted the gifts even as the FCC was reviewing or about to review major Paramount business decisions, including two megamergers.

Commissioner Olivia Trusty’s most recent financial disclosure said Paramount gave her two tickets to the December 2025 honors gala that together were worth more than $12,000. Trusty was one of two commissioners who voted last year to approve Paramount’s merger with another media company, Skydance.

ProPublica’s investigation found FCC members had long enjoyed a night out at the Kennedy Center courtesy of CBS or its parent company. Seven of the 10 commissioners who served since 2016 accepted tickets worth more than $260,000, according to a ProPublica analysis of ethics disclosures.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s financial statements show he has reported accepting honors gala tickets from CBS or its parent company eight times since his 2017 appointment to the commission, totaling over $75,000 in gifts.

Carr, who also voted in favor of the Paramount-Skydance merger last year, sat with his wife in a private skybox at the December gala with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other executives from Paramount and CBS. Such seats sold for $125,000 a ticket, according to Kennedy Center guidelines.

Carr disclosed on his latest financial statement that he accepted tickets from Paramount for himself and a guest to the 2025 gala and reception worth $12,390. Carr did not respond to a request from ProPublica to clarify the apparent difference in value between those tickets and the skybox seats. 

The FCC only released Carr’s disclosure late on Friday, more than a month after ProPublica had first requested it. The document says the agency certified it on June 22. 

Federal ethics rules ban employees from taking gifts from any entity that does business with, is regulated by or seeks official action from their agency.

“The federal gift regulations and the gratuities statute exist to ensure that government decisions are made on the merits, free from the influence of private benefits,” the Democracy Defenders Fund said in its complaint. “The public must have confidence that the FCC’s merger review process is not compromised by self-dealing or the appearance of impropriety.”

Carr, Trusty and the FCC did not respond to requests for comment. The agency’s inspector general declined to comment. An FCC spokesperson previously told ProPublica that agency ethics officers have for years cleared commissioners to accept the tickets, finding it consistent with ethics law. And Paramount’s chief of communications said it was a decades-long “CBS practice to invite government officials from both parties” to the Kennedy Center show. Carr last year defended the FCC’s approval of the Paramount merger with Skydance, saying it “advances the public interest.”

The FCC’s review of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is one of the final federal hurdles facing a historic consolidation of two of the five largest film studios in Hollywood. The deal would unite Paramount Skydance with Warner Bros., bringing under the control of one company Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services; CBS and CNN; and scores of other major broadcast channels, cable networks and digital platforms.

Four ethics experts told ProPublica that by accepting the tickets, Trusty and Carr had compromised the FCC’s impartiality and should not take part in any upcoming decision on Paramount’s proposed merger.

The Democracy Defenders Fund — led by Norman Eisen, former ambassador to the Czech Republic and White House ethics czar under President Barack Obama — filed its grievance on Thursday with the federal Office of Government Ethics, the FCC’s inspector general and the FCC’s ethics office.

The group said the investigation should examine whether Carr and Trusty broke rules on accepting gifts or broke criminal laws prohibiting federal officials from accepting illegal gratuities.

Carr and Trusty should be required to repay Paramount the “fair market value” of any improper gifts and the federal ethics agency should refrain from certifying Carr’s annual disclosure report until he can prove that he has complied with ethics laws, Democracy Defenders Fund wrote. Its letter to the FCC and the Office of Government Ethics also requests that Carr be disqualified from further participation in the commission’s decision on the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

The nonprofit organization noted that hours after last year’s honors gala ended, Paramount announced it was launching its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery, a move that would later result in a merger agreement that requires FCC approval. About three months later, Carr publicly endorsed the deal on CNBC, promising swift approval.

“The facts that have been reported raise serious questions about the integrity and impartiality of FCC Chairman Carr in particular matters involving Paramount,” including the attempted merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, the letter said.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the other group that filed a written protest, requested an FCC inspector general probe of the luxury gifts.

“The reported gifts to FCC officials from businesses that are not only subject to agency regulation but presently engaged in billion-dollar mergers and acquisitions that must be approved by the commissioners themselves are extremely concerning threats to the integrity of FCC operations,” the CREW letter stated.

CREW, founded in 2003 as a nonpartisan organization dedicated to government accountability and ethics, is headed by Donald K. Sherman, a former House Ethics Committee attorney and special assistant to President Joseph Biden.

“Government officials have the power to make decisions that impact huge swaths of the American people,” Sherman said in a statement about the organization’s demand for an inspector general investigation. “With this tremendous power comes a higher ethical standard that apparently wasn’t met. The IG can and must get answers for the public.”

The proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery has drawn a flurry of legal opposition.

California, New York and 10 other states filed a lawsuit seeking to block the merger under federal and state antimonopoly laws. The Writers Guild of America, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Public Interest Project filed similar court challenges in recent weeks.

Paramount has recently agreed to pause its merger until the litigation is resolved or until June 1, 2027, whichever comes first.

The post FCC Commissioners Face Ethics Complaints for Taking Luxury Gifts From Paramount appeared first on ProPublica.

A renewable energy developer has pulled its controversial permit application to build an industrial-scale solar facility on an Eastern Washington mountain sacred to Indigenous nations.

Avangrid, a powerful player in the Northwest’s push for green energy development, sought for at least five years to build a solar plant on Badger Mountain. The project site straddled private as well as public lands. The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation have protected rights to practice cultural traditions, such as food gathering and ceremonies, on Badger Mountain and other ancestral public lands.

A 2024 investigation by High Country News and ProPublica found that Avangrid and a consultant it retained, Tetra Tech, had omitted key archaeological and cultural information from a state-mandated review of the site, which would have been used for a solar farm. Avangrid continued pushing the project despite a state archaeologist’s warning that the planned development would threaten significant historic sites and current ceremonial activity. An elected member of the Colville Tribal Business Council told the newsrooms at the time that the project would destroy roughly half the root vegetable harvest in the area.

An Avangrid spokesperson said then that the company had followed “all relevant law and regulation” with regard to the Badger Mountain solar project and had “taken additional steps to accommodate stakeholder feedback where possible.”

It’s unclear whether the company’s decision to cancel the project had anything to do with Indigenous rights. Avangrid declined to clarify its reasoning to HCN.

The Colville Tribes chair, Cindy Marchand, praised the decision in a statement last week. “While the Colville Tribes certainly appreciates the value of renewable energy such as solar power, sacred sites must remain pristine to pass down to future generations.”

After the publication of HCN and ProPublica’s investigation, some members of the Wenatchi-P’squosa, one of the 12 Confederated Colville Tribes, held a demonstration on Badger Mountain, saying that while they support renewable energy, they’re against facilities being built on important cultural sites. Following the demonstration, Avangrid announced that it would pause development to reconsider tribal input and public response. The public comment process is one of the only avenues available for tribal nations to advocate for their rights regarding land development.

At a meeting of the state’s permitting authority council in July, an Avangrid senior director sought a continued pause of the permitting work, pointing to anticipated construction delays affecting the power grid. At the same meeting, the council chair, Kurt Beckett, characterized concerns over the project’s environmental and cultural impacts as “noise,” but he also said tribal objections should be considered in the state’s permitting decision.

Five days later, Avangrid filed a request to completely withdraw its proposal. And last week, the permitting council formally announced the withdrawal and said it was “closing out existing financial arrangements and notifying interested and agency partners.” It did not provide further comment, referring questions to the developer. The state Department of Natural Resources, which owns the public parcel on Badger Mountain, said it had not received any other requests to develop it for clean energy projects at this time, and a spokesperson did not have additional information about future plans for the site.

No matter the reason for the project’s cancellation at Badger Mountain, the outcome is a good one, said Steven Wynecoop, vice chair of the Wenatchi Advisory Group, an independent body that advises the Colville Tribal Business Council and that organized the 2024 Badger Mountain demonstration.

The mountain is a “very sacred site to us,” said Wynecoop, grandson of the Wenatchi Advisory Group founder Matthew Dick. “Generations, we’ve been going to that mountain for plenty of reasons: medicines, foods like roots and berries.”

The post Solar Developer Cancels Washington State Project on Sacred Indigenous Land appeared first on ProPublica.

A last-ditch legislative attempt to help California school districts keep problematic teachers out of the classroom has collapsed following opposition from unions and the state teacher licensing agency that a proposed searchable database would violate privacy and subject educators to unfair treatment. 

The proposed database, introduced by a Democratic member of the State Assembly in June, would have allowed schools to see if applicants for public school teaching positions had been reported to the state after they were fired or resigned over claims of misconduct. 

The California Federation of Teachers pushed back, warning that teachers could land in the database even if schools had not determined they committed serious misconduct. 

“We would support legislation that targets substantiated reports of egregious misconduct,” said Tristan Brown, a lobbyist with the California Federation of Teachers. “We live in a state with Silicon Valley. The state should be able to support a system that is up to date and tracking substantiated reports of misconduct.” 

Democratic Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi had proposed to make it easier for schools to screen teacher applicants after a KQED-ProPublica investigation published in May. The news outlets revealed how delays and inaction, combined with a lack of transparency, allowed educators to get new jobs after school districts reported them to the state teacher licensing agency for sexual harassment or other misconduct.  

A similar effort by Republican lawmakers to address the issue also hit roadblocks earlier this year. 

“When the safety of a child does not meet a legislative priority, that’s a head-scratcher for me,” said Republican Assemblymember Tom Lackey, who co-authored the first attempt to create the teacher database. “I think being sympathetic to the offender is on the wrong side of this issue.”

Both bills were modeled on a law the Legislature passed in 2025 mandating the creation of a database by next summer that will allow employers to search the names of school support staff, such as bus drivers, custodians and teaching assistants, who are under investigation by their schools or have substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct. 

The database for school support staff passed after months of tense negotiations. Under that system, employees’ names would be removed from the database if school investigations fail to substantiate claims of egregious misconduct. The bill passed despite opposition from unions, but the system that will be put in place is still being refined. 

But that law explicitly does not apply to public school teachers. 

The system currently in place for public school educators is a patchwork with a fair number of gaps. School districts have long been required to report to the state any teacher who is fired or who resigns due to misconduct. But the state’s teacher licensing agency, which collects all of those reports, is restricted by state law in what information the agency can share while it investigates. The state’s disciplinary process typically takes one year, and teachers could be hired during the investigation period without schools knowing about the claims against them.

California’s publicly accessible online database of credentialed educators does indicate, with a red-flag icon, whether those public school teachers have been disciplined by the state. But it does not explain the reason for the sanction or provide a link to any documents. It is only after the state licensing agency recommends an educator be disciplined that prospective employers can request a summary of the case and the agency’s findings.

Without such details, California school administrators must rely on teachers themselves or their previous employers to provide key information. A law passed in 2024 requires teacher candidates to share their complete job history in education and mandates that school districts ask every previous employer whether a candidate had been reported to the credentialing agency for credible or substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct. If so, previous schools must share the relevant information. But that law keeps bad actors out of schools only if teachers and schools keep — and provide — accurate records.

For more than a year, California school administrators have lobbied lawmakers for a better way to protect students from those with a history of misconduct. “A database is needed to provide more complete, timely information so that schools can fulfill their responsibility to put trusted adults in positions that work with students,” said Dorothy Johnson, a lobbyist with the Association of California School Administrators, whose members include superintendents, principals and human resources officials. 

Under the original bill authored by Muratsuchi and sponsored by the school administrators association, teachers would be added to a new database if their school districts have reported them to the state for misconduct. Before making job offers, schools would be required to check the database, accessible only to employers, for names of teachers with substantiated and credible complaints of egregious misconduct. Then, schools would be required to request records about misconduct from the districts that reported them.

Muratsuchi said his office was “immediately confronted with a lot of resistance,” with teachers unions raising concerns over fair treatment of the accused. 

Brown, the lobbyist for the California Federation of Teachers, said the language in the measure was too broad. He said the union would not object to a database that identifies only teachers with substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct, but the bill also states that reports of “possible misconduct” would be included. 

“Our opposition is really focused on making sure we’re looking at dangerous conduct that we can definitively say happened,” Brown said.

Muratsuchi, who pulled language for his bill directly from the previous effort by Republican Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, said his intent was for the database to focus on egregious misconduct reports that were substantiated and credible. Had he had more time, he said, he would have clarified the language through the legislative process and addressed the unions’ concerns. 

But he introduced the bill with just weeks left in the legislative session. 

Seth Bramble, a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association, the state’s most powerful teachers union, wrote in a statement that the proposed database would lead to “employment consequences for innocent teachers based on allegations later determined to be unfounded.” 

“CTA unequivocally supports protecting students, ensuring that credible misconduct information is shared with prospective school employers, and preventing individuals who commit egregious misconduct from moving from school to school,” Bramble wrote.

The Trump administration singled out teachers unions as obstructions to legislative reforms to protect children when it announced a national crackdown in July on how school districts handle accusations of sexual misconduct by teachers.

“Teachers’ unions’ demonstrated commitment to shield their members from disciplinary action for gross misconduct cannot trump basic moral and legal responsibilities to students and families,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote in the open letter to state school chiefs. 

McMahon cited KQED and ProPublica’s finding that California’s teacher licensing agency has not revoked the professional credentials of at least 67 educators who school districts determined had sexually harassed students or committed other sexual misconduct. At least 14 of those educators were rehired by other schools. That included San Francisco Bay Area math teacher Jason Agan, who was hired by two schools despite having been fired after an independent panel determined he sexually harassed female students and massaged their shoulders after he’d been warned to stop. Agan was removed from the classroom the day after the story was published. He was replaced by a substitute for the remainder of the school year. 

Agan has denied any sexual motivation in touching students and said during his dismissal hearing at his first school that he touched students only to offer them support.

The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, California’s educator licensing agency, joined the unions in objecting to the bill to add teachers to the misconduct database. Jonathon Howard, the government relations manager for the credentialing agency, told Muratsuchi in a June 19 email obtained by KQED and ProPublica that complying with the proposed legislation would “require Commission staff to commit crimes.” Howard cited state laws restricting what information the teacher licensing agency is allowed to share. 

Muratsuchi’s bill, Howard warned, would expose the agency to “significant liability.” “The Commission does not oppose the goal of ensuring that credentialed educators with substantiated histories of serious misconduct cannot move undetected between schools,” Howard wrote. “However, achieving that goal requires legislation that is legally sound, operationally workable, and fair to the educators whose livelihoods and professional reputations are at stake.”  

Anita Fitzhugh, a spokesperson for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, previously told KQED and ProPublica that the agency “stands ready to implement any additional public protections that the Legislature authorizes.” 

Within weeks of introducing the bill and following opposition, Muratsuchi scrapped the idea of adding teachers reported to the state for egregious misconduct to the database and instead amended the bill to clarify that the teacher licensing agency may penalize administrators who don’t thoroughly vet applicants. The school administrators association withdrew its sponsorship.

Muratsuchi, whose term expires in December, said he still supports more access to information about educators disciplined for serious misconduct. But with the legislative session ending Aug. 31, time is running out.

“I tried,” Muratsuchi said. “I hope future Legislatures pick up the ball.”

The post For the Second Time, Lawmakers Failed to Fix California’s Warning System for Teacher Misconduct appeared first on ProPublica.

On the northeast edge of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, nearly 1,100 people gathered in late June for the International Bridge Walk across the long span that links two cities with the same name: Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Both the sun and the sentiments were bright.

“We don’t like to say there’s a border there, because we’re twin cities. We’re one family, the countries of Canada and the United States,” Don Gerrie, mayor of the Michigan Sault (pronounced “Soo”), told the crowd ahead of the annual walk.

He sported a black ballcap that he said was given to him by his counterpart in the Ontario Sault. It featured flags from both nations with the words “Stronger Together” and “Allies and Friends.”

Canadians in cheerful patriotic attire joined the bridge walk, with maple leaves tagging their scarves and socks, shirts and shorts. Americans came out in star-spangled T-shirts heralding the nation’s 250th birthday. But this lively tradition is clouded by an increasingly hostile relationship between the U.S. and Canada.

Traffic over the bridge is way down. And, in recent weeks, President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs in retaliation for thick wildfire smoke wafting into the U.S. When his administration announced an additional 50% tariff on an array of Canadian products, the White House cited “Canada’s discriminatory treatment of American products.” Then, using a separate mechanism, it hit Canada with a further 10% in tariffs.

Following pressure from the Trump administration that delayed it, a new publicly owned bridge, the Gordie Howe, opened Monday between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. Canada hosted a Canada-only opening ceremony.

Trump wasn’t present for the bridge’s ribbon-cutting, even though he used to cheer the project. Up at the Sault bridge, there was no sign of the region’s congressional representative at the celebration of international friendship, even though, during Trump’s first term, Rep. Jack Bergman, a Republican, hailed relations with Canada.

In 2020, when Bergman was appointed to an interparliamentary group that provides a forum for exchange between Canadian and American legislators, he boasted of the Sault bridge as a point where “millions” cross every year “to conduct business, shop, work and enjoy what each country has to offer.”

Yet Bergman, who is endorsed by Trump in an upcoming contested primary, has been virtually silent on the new tariffs and their blowback in local communities, even as he’s prodded to speak out by many of his constituents. The only references to Sault Ste. Marie in the news items on his website during Trump’s second term are a mention of an infrastructure project and a February 2025 letter to the president about a purported member of a Venezuelan gang crossing the border.

As Canada responds to Trump’s moves with emergency interventions and “buy local” boosterism, significantly fewer Canadians are crossing the border for once-ordinary activities: shopping, eating, fueling vehicles, vacationing or visiting family and friends.

The Sault area lost at least $82.9 million last year in local spending because of decreased crossings, according to an estimate from the International Bridge Administration, which manages the span: $62.7 million on the Michigan side and $20.2 million on the Ontario side.

There were 270,000 fewer total crossings last year at the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge — nearly a 24% drop from 2024, exceeding similar declines at Michigan’s other border crossings. Based on the currency used to pay bridge fares and information from the Canadian prime minister’s office, the drop is largely due to the loss of Canadian travelers. Halfway into 2026, auto traffic has lingered at the same lower volume, according to the bridge director, while commercial traffic has fallen nearly 15% further. 

Nationwide, the total number of Canadians returning from the United States last year dropped by more than 25%, according to data from the Canadian government.

“What Canadians have done, of course, is they’re boycotting the U.S.,” said Michael Broadway, a geographer and professor emeritus at Northern Michigan University who has researched the travel trends (and joined the bridge walk). Ordinary people can only do so much about federal politics, he said, “but what they can do is they can vote with their feet.”

The Sault bridge spans the St. Mary’s River, just west of the historic Soo Locks that serve as a hinge between two of the largest Great Lakes, Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Soaring high above the water to clear the thousand-foot freighters, it’s a critical gateway for commerce. And it’s the only vehicular border crossing for hundreds of miles in either direction.

The drop in traffic reversed a post-pandemic uptick, said Peter Petainen, bridge director and an Ontario Sault native. Just as the numbers were recovering, he told ProPublica, “the federal tariff dispute occurred and we’ve fallen off.”

Others noted that the turn in how the U.S. approaches noncitizens may have also chilled travel. Stories of Canadians detained in the U.S. are recurring headlines up north. And the Canadian dollar also doesn’t go as far as it once did in the U.S.

Altogether, it’s a problem for Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula — and also for the publicly owned bridge, which depends on tolls for maintenance and operations. As the bridge authority put it in its five-year plan, issued in December: “Border challenges negatively affecting bridge traffic, trade and tourism may significantly reduce bridge revenue or increase expenditures beyond operational sustainability.”

Wilda Hopper, co-owner of Bird’s Eye Outfitters in the Michigan Sault, feels the change. She said that the drop-off in Canadian visitors was most noticeable in the off-season, when her gear shop and cafe relies on the local community — including those from the Ontario Sault — to carry it through the snowy months.

Between fewer Canadian customers and rising costs, Hopper said, business is down about 27% compared with what it was last summer.

“I can tell you that I’ve spoken to business after business up in the Sault Ste. Marie area, and in the eastern Upper Peninsula, and they’re all feeling the pressure from this,” said Michigan state Sen. John Damoose, a Republican who represents the community in Lansing. “Mackinac Island’s feeling the pressure, everybody is feeling the heat from this deterioration in our relationship with Canada.”

It’s a bewildering fallout, he said. After a brutal ice storm last year, he remembered Canadians crossing the Sault bridge to help Michiganders repair the electrical grid. “This is our best friend in the entire world,” Damoose said.

Only so much can be done about it from the statehouse, though, when it’s Republicans in Washington in the power position. Two of Michigan’s voices in Washington are the Democratic Sens. Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin. They don’t flatly oppose tariffs, but they have challenged Trump’s approach, calling it, respectively, “chaotic” and “sloppy.” Slotkin has said that, constitutionally, only Congress can levy tariffs or raise taxes. Peters introduced bipartisan legislation that seeks more tariff transparency.

Bergman, who has represented a district that encompasses the Upper Peninsula and an additional northern swath of the state’s “mitten” since 2017, once stressed the critical role Canada plays in Michigan’s economy. He vowed to work with the Canadian Parliament to “expand market access between both our nations” during Trump’s first term. And he championed the president’s new North American trade deal with Canada and Mexico, citing the benefits for Michigan’s farmers, small businesses and consumers.

But Trump’s trade policies have made it hard on many Republicans who once touted free trade. Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada and a former Michigan congressman, pivoted dramatically on trade in the Trump era, as ProPublica reported.

Since Trump started his second term, there’s been no mention of tariffs in the press releases, articles and op-eds on Bergman’s website. Along with three of his colleagues in Congress, he criticized Canada’s handling of wildfires that sent thick smoke into Michigan in a recent letter to the prime minister.

ProPublica reached out to Bergman, his office and his campaign multiple times for comment on what’s happening in his district and received no response. Besides Trump’s endorsement, his reelection is supported by the Michigan and U.S. chambers of commerce.

He’s facing two challengers in the Republican primary on Aug. 4. Both of them told ProPublica that the district benefits from sustainable trading relationships.

They also echoed what many of Bergman’s constituents told ProPublica: that residents have had scarce opportunities to connect with the congressman in person. Bergman doesn’t appear to have hosted a public town hall in the district since his first year in office.

Bergman, who has a house in Louisiana, has faced long-standing allegations that he doesn’t even make Michigan his true home. Julie Hoffmeyer, a former member of Bergman’s staff who supports one of his primary challengers, told ProPublica that the congressman refers to his property in the western Upper Peninsula as a “cabin” or a “camp.”

Bergman, responding to past challenges to his Michigan residency, has called his home there his primary residence and noted that he’s a registered voter in the state.

Trump’s quick-shifting trade policies are especially difficult for Michigan’s agriculture industry, the state’s second-largest sector, according to a recent report from the state’s agriculture department. The report, which hasn’t yet been publicly released, said that exports to Canada fell 12.3% last year, “signalling severe strain with a country that is our strongest trading partner.”

Meanwhile, the relationship between the U.S. and Canada is fraying ever further. A White House fact sheet on the new 50% tariff acknowledged the ways that Canadians have changed how they do business.

The White House said that Canadian imports of U.S. motor vehicles dropped by about 22% between April 2025 and March 2026, compared with the same period the year before. And, it said, due to provincial restrictions, Canadian imports of U.S. alcoholic beverages have plummeted.

Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, said in a letter posted on social media that the series of tariffs imposed by the U.S. began with ones that were “in direct violation” of the standing North American trade deal — the deal from Trump’s first term that he once celebrated, and that Bergman described as a great economic victory for Michigan.

With the deal up for review this year, the Trump administration declined a long-term extension of the pact. Carney has also widely signaled that Canada is looking beyond its near neighbor for trading partners.

Carney said, in an April video posted on his YouTube channel: “Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become our weaknesses — weaknesses that we must correct.”

The post As Trump’s Tariff War With Canada Drags On, This Border Community Suffers Without a Voice appeared first on ProPublica.

By the end of 2020, Kentucky’s newly elected Gov. Andy Beshear had one goal above all others: Keep people alive. The state was battling two merciless threats. COVID-19 was killing hundreds of people each month, and deadly drug overdoses were among the highest in the nation. Calling addiction a disease that breeds in isolation, Beshear worried people would stop seeking treatment for fear of contracting COVID-19. 

So Beshear set out to make drug treatment easier to access. Kentucky joined more than 40 other states in lifting some restrictions on Medicaid, which served most of the Kentuckians enrolled in substance abuse programs: Recovery centers were allowed to offer expensive treatment to clients without seeking approval from state Medicaid insurers.  

By 2023, as the pandemic waned, other states restored Medicaid requirements that treatment centers gain prior approval before providing addiction treatment. Kentucky stayed the course. That year, providers offered more than 1,100 spots for people seeking long-term treatment that allows them to live in a facility, a state record and more slots per capita than any other state.

But as the Medicaid bills for all that treatment started piling up, so did the warnings. 

In 2024 letters to Beshear’s administration and in at least three public meetings, experts across the health industry said that as a result of the 2020 changes, drug treatment providers were billing too much for subpar care that was leading to worse outcomes. By December 2025, the Kentucky attorney general’s office said Medicaid fraud in drug treatment had become a primary “area of concern.”

Despite the warnings, the Beshear administration did little to rein in the skyrocketing state spending. 

Almost all those warnings came true.

In a February 2025 meeting about soaring Medicaid costs, Kentucky Medicaid Commissioner Lisa Lee said the previous year’s spending on behavioral health and addiction treatment had reached an unprecedented $2.3 billion. Stuart Owen, who works for a Kentucky Medicaid insurer, told a state advisory committee months earlier that much of that spending was driven by the drug treatment industry, including “unscrupulous providers who are exploiting the heck out of that for money.” 

The payout was especially lucrative for one company, Addiction Recovery Care. ARC was Kentucky’s largest drug treatment provider and the largest recipient of state funds between 2019 and 2025. This spring, the Lexington Herald-Leader, in partnership with ProPublica, reported on how ARC exploited Kentucky’s loosened spending controls and may have falsified billing.

Beshear has been unapologetic about state spending on drug treatment. In an interview in early June with ProPublica and the Lexington Herald-Leader, he pointed to the continued decline in drug overdose deaths as proof that he made the right choice when he did not force treatment centers to show that costly drug recovery services were medically necessary before treating people for addiction.

“If we’d gone back in time too early and changed things too drastically, how many more people would have died that we’ve saved? With four straight years of drug overdose decreases, they can throw blame at me,” Beshear said. “We’ll talk about dollars, but there are people’s kids that are still alive today because they were able to get addiction treatment services and get them quickly.”

While Kentucky’s overdose deaths declined significantly between 2020 and 2025, experts said the drop was not unique. Other states hit hard by the opioid epidemic also saw year-over-year decreases in fatal overdoses, including states that didn’t loosen Medicaid billing rules, like Tennessee and West Virginia. 

Academic studies mostly agree that the drop in the death rate around the country had more to do with declining opioid prescriptions, an increase in the use of the drug naloxone to reverse overdoses, and less fentanyl in the drug supply. Medicaid and behavioral health experts in Kentucky have said in state hearings that some of the services drug treatment companies billed the most for were not directly associated with a decline in overdose deaths.

Nonetheless, Kentucky’s policies allowed ARC and other companies to bill more and more for services like peer support groups rather than those led by a licensed doctor or therapist. At one time ARC treated about one-third of the Kentuckians seeking drug treatment in the state; more than half of the services it billed for were the same lower-level services that Medicaid experts warned were being abused, according to state data. 

The FBI has been investigating ARC for two years, and more recently, the company’s troubles have intensified. This week the Department of Justice announced it had reached a $16 million settlement with ARC over Medicaid fraud allegations. The company directed employees to falsely bill Medicaid for services like peer support, according to the allegations, which stem from a 2023 whistleblower lawsuit filed by three former ARC employees. 

The settlement resolved the allegations, the Department of Justice said, and there has been no determination of liability. In another investigation, the DOJ last month indicted ARC’s leader, Tim Robinson, for wire fraud and money laundering for a separate alleged scheme to defraud multiple lenders. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

The company said in April it “has never knowingly or fraudulently billed Medicaid for services, and there is no evidence that the organization encouraged employees to falsify group notes for billing purposes.” 

ARC has over the last two years been forced to close most of its facilities, resulting in a 56% decrease in long-term residential treatment beds statewide, according to the most recent data available.

By 2025, Republicans had seen enough and passed a bill requiring treatment centers to seek approval from insurers before providing treatment services. Beshear vetoed the bill, saying it “will put up barriers to and delay healthcare for Kentuckians.” Republicans overrode the veto, citing waste, fraud and abuse. 

A Raft of Warnings

At public meetings and in letters throughout 2023 and 2024, Medicaid insurers and actuaries warned that Beshear’s decision not to reinstate the spending guardrails sooner had allowed billing abuse by drug treatment providers to proliferate. 

Some of those Medicaid insurers sent warning letters to providers, some who were suspected of  overbilling, on how to appropriately bill. At least one also tried to limit excessive billing by setting its own guidelines for services deemed “intensive, high cost and/or have the potential for overutilization,” according to a memo from Passport by Molina Healthcare, one of Kentucky’s Medicaid insurers, referring to peer support services. Peer support is similar to a 12-step program. 

In August 2024, the Kentucky Association of Health Plans, which represents the state’s Medicaid insurers, sent a letter telling the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services that weak oversight had allowed “unnecessary” spending on treatment and that the services treatment centers were billing the most for weren’t leading to better health outcomes for patients.

The letter warned that addiction treatment providers were overbilling for services that weren’t based on evidence or provided by a licensed doctor or therapist. 

Part of the solution, the association said in subsequent public hearings, was to reinstate the spending guardrails, known as prior authorization, that Beshear had removed during the pandemic. The prior authorization process is supposed to prevent providers from billing fraudulently or excessively for medically unnecessary services by forcing providers to get permission from insurance companies before administering care.

Tom Stephens, president of the group representing Kentucky’s five Medicaid insurers and the letter’s author, said in an interview that it was not the first time Medicaid insurers had shared concerns with the Beshear administration; it was “simply one example of concerns that had been raised over time.” 

Asked about this letter, Beshear spokesperson Scottie Ellis wrote that the governor “monitored the concerns expressed publicly and those shared with his administration” and that the state health agency worked with Medicaid insurers to address them. Ellis declined to answer follow-up questions about what specific measures the administration took during that time. 

More warnings followed. The next month, Somerset Mayor Alan Keck also wrote to the Beshear administration asking it to reinstate Medicaid spending controls.

Keck, whose rural southeastern Kentucky county was hit hard by opioids, told the state health secretary  that treatment centers across his region were recruiting patients from out of state and using company addresses to establish residency for them in order to bill Kentucky Medicaid. He also said some companies were fraudulently billing Medicaid by misrepresenting the services they provided.

“Our communities are seeing an influx of sober living facilities that are taking advantage of Kentucky’s Medicaid system and the lax requirements that linger from the Covid-19 pandemic,” Keck wrote to then-health Secretary Eric Friedlander.

Keck, who lost a Republican primary for governor in 2023, said recently that Friedlander never responded to his letter. He believes Beshear’s administration should’ve done more to rein in the drug treatment industry’s “explosive growth.”

Beshear’s spokesperson didn’t address questions about whether the administration responded to Keck. 

In November and December 2024, officials from Anthem and WellCare, two Medicaid insurers, reinforced their concerns in meetings with legislators and Medicaid officials.

The state’s own data from that period supports the insurers’ claim that the state was paying heavily for services that required little or no time from licensed doctors and therapists: Kentucky behavioral health providers were paid more than $147 million for peer support services in 2023 and 2024, Lee, the state Medicaid commissioner, told lawmakers in February 2025. During that time, Medicaid payments for psychoeducation jumped from $40.4 million to more than $168 million. 

Psychoeducation is normally a part of regular appointment when a clinician explains a diagnosis and treatment plan to a patient. Most of the money spent in Kentucky on psychoeducation went to ARC. Medicaid insurers warned Kentucky was one of the only states that allowed this service to be billed for separately, and providers were abusing it.

At the heart of all of this was the suspension of prior authorization, which had served as the only check on the overuse and overbilling for low-quality care. Without it, Kentucky’s treatment landscape became a Medicaid free-for-all, said Shelby Steuart, a professor who studies health policy at the University of Maryland. 

“It just became an opportunity for people to make money,” she said.  

When asked about these warnings and the reasons Beshear didn’t reinstate Medicaid spending guardrails sooner, the governor’s office said his decision “helped save lives.”

Ellis, the spokesperson for Beshear, said in an email that amid the public warnings, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the state’s health agency, met with Kentucky’s Medicaid insurers “to discuss concerns” about the spike in spending on drug treatment. 

She said that the administration sent a letter in November 2024 to clarify when and how to bill for certain services Medicaid insurers had flagged, which resulted in a more than $100 million decline in billing from 2025 to 2026. But, as the attorney general’s Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control told lawmakers in December 2025, billing increased by $40 million for other services that experts warned were being abused.

Ellis said the policies should be measured by lives saved. “In the end, actions taken by Gov. Beshear and his administration have decreased overdose deaths for four straight years,” she said.

“Willfully Ignorant, Derelict in Their Duties”

In 2024, ARC disclosed what it called billing errors that resulted in overpayments from the state, according to emails obtained through Kentucky’s open records laws. 

About that time, Kentucky’s Medicaid insurers began to raise questions about excessive billing and started to sever contracts with the company. ARC turned to the state’s health agency for help, asking the health secretary to delay reinstating spending controls and to enact a system that would force Medicaid insurers to continue working with ARC.

“Time is of the essence,” ARC founder Robinson wrote in a September 2024 email to Friedlander.

Beshear’s administration balked at forcing insurers to work with the company, but ultimately declined to reinstate tighter spending controls. That year ARC was paid a record $103 million by Kentucky Medicaid, mostly for services Medicaid insurers warned were being abused.

In a June interview, Beshear defended that decision and denied that his 2020 order led to a rise in Medicaid fraud or abuse.

Beshear said that by the time Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature reinstated spending controls in July 2025, he was in the process of coordinating with the state’s health agency to enact some spending guardrails, but acknowledged that “admittedly, the Cabinet was probably taking too long,” he said.

Republicans have accused Beshear of mismanaging the state’s Medicaid program. During the 2025 legislative session, they revoked the governor’s power to make changes to Kentucky Medicaid without their permission. Beshear vetoed that bill, which included a provision to reinstate tighter spending controls, but the legislature overrode his veto. 

Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel, who championed the bill, said in March 2025 that Beshear’s administration “had to be one of three things: willfully ignorant, derelict in their duties, or complicit. It was just too much money in one space for them not to have known better.”

Beshear in June said he’ll take the hit; at the end of the day, he said, the tide of addiction in Kentucky has receded, and it was worth it. 

“If we continue at this pace, there’s a chance we end an epidemic that started in our lifetime,” Beshear said. “Opening up services through Medicaid in general to more people has been one of, if not the, most important things we’ve done to get people back on track.”

The post Andy Beshear Set Out to Make Drug Treatment Widely Available in Kentucky. Fraud and Abuse Followed. appeared first on ProPublica.