Laura Bliss

“It was just one fire after another… And it’s still like that today.”

“I don’t want to stay at a park service that looks like this. But I don’t want to give up on it, either.”

“Trump’s probably the best union organizer we have”

www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Park service staff have long joked that they’re “paid in sunsets,” sometimes relying on food banks. Supervisor told one, “seasonals are to be seen, not heard.” Staff often have to share bedrooms with co-workers, or the mice who keep infesting the housing. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

How Trump Pushed US Park Rangers to the Breaking Point—and a Union Drive Galvanized by cuts to the federal workforce, park workers are organizing to protect their jobs and some of America’s most iconic places.

The old joke in the National Park Service is that rangers are “paid in sunsets.” Spurred by the Trump administration’s chainsaw cuts to the federal workforce, now many workers are hoping to change that, by unionizing. My latest, with @josheidelson.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

How Trump Pushed US Park Rangers to the Breaking Point—and a Union Drive Galvanized by cuts to the federal workforce, park workers are organizing to protect their jobs and some of America’s most iconic places.

New BW feature: While federal unions play defense elsewhere, a unionization wave is building in the National Park Service, driven by slash-and-burn Trump Admin. cuts, decades of prior bipartisan neglect, and worker-to-worker organizing www.bloomberg.com/news/feature... w/ @mslaurabliss.bsky.social

Parks Service Union Movement Spreads to Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree Employees in dozens of park units are organizing to fight attempts by the Trump administration to downsize the agency.

Scoop with @josheidelson.bsky.social: 24 US national parks (including Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Grand Teton and Olympic) are petitioning to unionize, following successful union elections in Yosemite earlier this summer. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

California has proposed new regulations to avoid landfill fires that would address some of the problems highlighted my and
@rachaeldottle.bsky.social's investigation into America's hot garbage problem for @bloomberg.com. Read about our impact here: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Thank you for sharing KSJ fam!

America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.

Literal "hot garbage." @mslaurabliss.bsky.social (KSJ '23) and Rachael Dottle's reporting on US landfills is excellent, but what they found stinks
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202... (article from July)

National Parks Told to Remain Open During Shutdown Despite Risks Sites were damaged when they remained open to the public during the last government shut down in 2018.

National parks will remain open during the government shutdown, per NPS memo www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Firefighters question leaders’ role in ICE raid near Bear Gulch Fire - High Country News Firefighting veterans believe the management team overseeing fire crews played a key role in handing team members over to immigration authorities.

Holy shit:

Stateline spoke to nearly a dozen firefighters, agency staffers and contractors, who said that top officials assigned to the fire deployed the crews to a remote location under false pretenses so federal agents could check their immigration status.

www.hcn.org/articles/fir...

Yosemite Employee Fired After Flying Trans Pride Flag Shannon “SJ” Joslin says they were fired for exercising freedom of speech.

SCOOP: A federal employee at Yosemite National Park was fired last week after flying a trans pride flag from El Capitan earlier this year www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.

US trash dumps produce emissions that endanger residents—due to physical & chemical processes that are not well understood—but that neither federal nor state regulations adequately address, explain @mslaurabliss.bsky.social & @rachaeldottle.bsky.social

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202... #sanitation

thank you Liz 🔥

America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.

long loud 👏👏👏👏👏 to @mslaurabliss.bsky.social for this literal and figurative garbage fires ... "or the industry’s preferred phrase is 'elevated temperature landfill,' or ETLF, which operators say has nothing to do with fire." www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

Why Access to Running Water Is a Luxury in Wealthy US Cities “Plumbing poverty” is surging in Houston, Phoenix, Portland, Oregon and other urban areas.

As housing costs soar, running water has become a luxury in Portland, Phoenix and other wealthy US cities. Latest for @bloomberg.com with Klara Auerbach, gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Absolutely incredible, groundbreaking piece of investigative reporting— these reporters deserve every single journalism award coming their way (there will be many!)

Gift link below in the QT (fyi kind of a long read, so save it for later if you must)

Thank you Deb!

America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.

12/ Advocates say there are simple fixes to improve safety. I hope you'll read: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

11/ Meanwhile the data for predicting these underground reactions – fires or otherwise – isn’t easy to track, leaving the millions who live near these waste sites in the dark about what’s happening there

10/ As America’s landfills grow and more flammable stuff enters the waste stream, several scientists told me they think the risk of fires and dangerously hot landfills is increasing.

Yet the waste industry has successfully pushed to roll back EPA rules designed to prevent fires

9/ Many residents say they feel gaslit when told they can’t trust their own senses. “The waste industry does not want to call it burning, even though it smells like burning,” one landfill neighbor in Virginia told me. “Even though you see smoke.”

8/ Since 2006, landfills in Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee and beyond have undergone similarly noxious reactions, spurring debate about what exactly is driving them, what to call them and how to put them out

7/ But the operator disputes the state’s findings and says nothing is on fire. The company calls Chiquita Canyon an "elevated temperature landfill," one of many ETLFs the US has seen in recent years

6/ Regulators suspect that a flameless fire, or smolder, is burning below the surface of Chiquita Canyon due to the operator letting too much oxygen into the landfill – a problem that is known to start fires, which goes against federal regulations

5/ Over the next three years, officials say, hot temperatures consumed about 90 acres of the landfill, which spewed out toxic gases including benzene and carbon monoxide. Residents of nearby Val Verde say they’re getting heart problems, nose bleeds, hand tremors and even cancer

4/ Chiquita Canyon Landfill is one of the country’s largest waste sites. In 2022, according to CalEPA, buried pockets of waste at the landfill started climbing to broiling temperatures well above safety standards

America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.

3/ For @bloomberg.com, @rachaeldottle.bsky.social and I dove into one dangerously hot landfill near LA that shows the problems that can arise as waste piles higher and deeper. “Garbage fire,” at the very least, is an apt metaphor for what we found. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

2/ I wondered what was happening in the final resting place for so much waste, landfills?

Turns out, a lot. Several have been overheating to 200F+ temperatures, leading to toxic gases, geysers of trash juice and sick neighbors who say they feel gaslit about what's going on

AMERICA HAS A HOT GARBAGE PROBLEM. LITERALLY. A THREAD

1/ Last year, I spotted some data on LinkedIn that caught my attention. Fires at recycling facilities were skyrocketing as more vape pens, smartphones and electric toothbrushes enter America’s blue bins

America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.

My colleagues @mslaurabliss.bsky.social and @rachaeldottle.bsky.social did a deep dive into the toxic landfill problem making communities across the US sick.

Free gift link: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...