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Articles on Oregon

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Housing activists demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on April 22, 2024. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Supreme Court rules cities can ban homeless people from sleeping outdoors – Sotomayor dissent summarizes opinion as ‘stay awake or be arrested’

In a major homelessness ruling, the Supreme Court holds that cities and municipalities can punish people for sleeping outside, even when they have nowhere else to go.
Exxon Mobil Corp.’s campus in East Baton Rouge Parish, left, received millions in tax abatements to the detriment of local schools, right. Barry Lewis/Getty Images, Tjean314/Wikimedia

Students lose out as cities and states give billions in property tax breaks to businesses − draining school budgets and especially hurting the poorest students

An estimated 95% of US cities provide economic development tax incentives to woo corporate investors, taking billions away from schools.
Many of the people caught in the wildfire that swept through Paradise, Calif., in 2018 were older adults. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Wildfire risk is soaring for low-income, elderly and other vulnerable populations in California, Washington and Oregon

Alarmingly, about half the people exposed to wildfires in Washington and Oregon were those least able to afford to protect their homes, evacuate safely and recover.
Water spills over the Copco 1 Dam on the Klamath River near Hornbrook, Calif. AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus

Removing dams from the Klamath River is a step toward justice for Native Americans in Northern California

The largest dam removal project is moving forward on the Klamath River in California and Oregon. Tribal nations there have fought for decades to protect native fish runs and the ecology of the river.
Washington state was home to some of the nation’s first dispensaries for legalized marijuana. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Legalizing recreational pot may have spurred economic activity in first 4 states to do so

Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon all experienced big increases in both deposits and lending shortly after legalizing marijuana for recreational use.
Packaging for consumer products represents a large share of U.S. solid waste, and barely half of it is recycled. iStock via Getty Images

Packaging generates a lot of waste – now Maine and Oregon want manufacturers to foot the bill for getting rid of it

Maine and Oregon have enacted laws that require makers of consumer product packaging to pay for recycling or disposing of it. Will other states follow?
Chlorpyrifos is widely used on crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, corn and soybeans. AP Photo/John Raoux

The EPA is banning chlorpyrifos, a pesticide widely used on food crops, after 14 years of pressure from environmental and labor groups

What kind of evidence does it require to get a widely used chemical banned? A professor of medicine and former state regulator explains how the case for chlorpyrifos as a threat to public health developed.
The Cedar Creek Fire burns in Washington’s Methow Valley in late July 2021. Jessica Kelley

How years of fighting every wildfire helped fuel the Western megafires of today

More than 40 fire scientists and forest ecologists in the US and Canada teamed up to investigate why wildfires are getting more extreme. Climate change is part of the problem, but there’s more.
An orchard near Kettleman City in California’s San Joaquin Valley on April 2, 2021. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Water wells are at risk of going dry in the US and worldwide

The US has one of the highest groundwater use rates in the world. When wells run dry, households may opt to conserve water, find new sources or sell and move.
Wildfire smoke creates an orange glow over San Francisco, Sept. 9, 2020. Burak Arik/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Coping with Western wildfires: 5 essential reads

How climate change and other human actions have combined to create conditions for explosive wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington state.

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