Tread by Lee Hedgepeth

10/23/2024

Did you know taxpayers are footing around a $400 million bill so an Alabama mining company with a checkered safety record can extract publicly owned coal and ship it overseas?

Public financial support for the Tuscaloosa County mine and its export of coal to overseas markets may top $400 million and would increase Warrior Met’s production by up to 60 percent.

10/22/2024

I'm so proud to have won second place in the Society of Environmental Journalists' annual awards for beat reporting here in Alabama. Thanks so much to folks like Dianne Bragg, Tim Lockette, Chip Brantley, Tom Arenberg, Eddie Burkhalter, Leah Nelson, Sherri Jackson, Drew Taylor, and the many, many other journalists, friends, and mentors who helped me to hone my craft and better understand Alabama, the beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking place we call home. Also a huge thanks to people like Sandy Pouncey, Warren Alan Tidwell, Clara Riley, Da'Cino Da'Marcus Dees, and others who trusted me to tell their stories, and to Tricia McMullen for putting up with me the whole year. Thank y'all! Here's to another year of strong reporting!

10/08/2024

Journalism matters. Days after my exclusive Inside Climate News investigation and intervention from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the city of Chickasaw has decided to drop criminal charges against its citizens over past-due garbage bills.

Chickasaw, located just outside Mobile, has also agreed to a moratorium on future prosecutions in such cases, which had so far disproportionately impacted women and minorities, according to a lawyer advocating for impacted residents.

09/27/2024

Here's what the family of Kenny Smith, the first person ever executed by nitrogen gas, had to say about tonight's ex*****on of Alan Miller, the second using the method.

Smith was the first person ever put to death by nitrogen suffocation. Miller was the second.

09/26/2024

An Alabama mine has been cited more than 500 times this year, often for "significant and substantial" safety violations, but federal and state regulators have allowed it to continue operation. Now, just months after a fatal home explosion that killed a grandfather atop the same mine, a union miner named Jose Lara, father of three, is dead.

In the past week, the mine was cited for not having proper roof and mine support. The fatality follows a leadership change at the company and a federal lawsuit alleging that leaking methane blew up a home above the mine in March.

09/24/2024

Shaquala Jackson’s three-year-old daughter screamed. A rat was scurrying across the bathroom floor.

“I grabbed the kids and ran out of the house,” she said.

Jackson said that was the day she knew she and her three young children could no longer live in Chickasaw, a small suburb just outside Mobile. The rats, she knew, were likely a result of the trash piling up in the carport adjacent to her rented home. But there was little Jackson felt she could do to fix the root problem.

The city wouldn’t pick up her trash. And it had charged her with “theft of service” over monthly garbage bills she couldn’t pay.

Jackson’s case is one of more than 180 incidents where Chickasaw residents have been criminally charged over past-due garbage bills. Among the hardest hit by the policy, my reporting for Inside Climate News found, were Black moms and disabled residents.

Please take a moment to read and share.

An analysis of court records shows more than 180 citizens have faced criminal charges due to Chickasaw’s garbage policy. Experts fear the practice may not be isolated.

08/29/2024

Alabama is a complicated place. This story says it all.

Dozens of residents expressed fear and frustration over what they call “mining mayhem.” The regulators and politicians acknowledged for the first time that there may be a need for changes.

08/13/2024

In true Alabama fashion, the state's coal regulator told me that, yes, a controversial mine accused of causing a fatal home explosion had been sold. Regulators just didn't know who the buyer was, the agency's director said. She told me that despite the mystery buyer, operations were expected to continue.

Ryan M. Murray, a son of a late coal magnate and Trump ally, is now operating the mine, according to the executive. For residents, the new management raises old issues.

07/17/2024

Down by Lake Guntersville, behind the front desk at the Little Mountain Camping Marina, Sharon Collins tells visitors to wait and listen.

“It’s been just screeching and screeching and screeching for days,” Collins said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Just wait. You’ll hear her.”

It’s a bald eagle, she and other residents said, tossed out of its nest in June when trees were unceremoniously felled among lush greenery before heavy machinery began extracting chert, a mineral used for construction, from the land.

Collins said the irony’s as thick as the Alabama heat.

She said she’s fighting the planned mine in part for animals like that screeching bald eagle dislodged from its nest: a symbol of democracy in Deep South Alabama, now protected not by public officials, but by everyday people.

“So for politicians to sit back and let this happen is sick,” she said, her voice raised.

Sharon Collins has worked at the marina for decades, her sincere smile and Southern twang meeting every guest at the establishment's front desk.

Inaction from public officials hasn’t slowed Collins down, though. Nothing ever has. At the front desk of Little Mountain Camping Marina, Collins, 66, has been a jack-of-all-trades for decades—a Southern problem-solver full of drawl and drive, getting the day’s work done with a sweet tea smile.

Read the full story from Inside Climate News.

Aside Lake Guntersville, bald eagles are royalty. But locals say a planned chert pit is already changing that status.

06/25/2024

“It was like a fireball,” she said. “They were big flames, above the treetops, and it sounded like a jet engine, like rushing wind… It was absolutely terrifying.”

Spicer looked at her husband.

“I think they’re all dead,” she told him.

Lily Spicer had felt the energy of the explosion surge through her body.

She was talking to her daughter on the phone when the boom came. Her family was accustomed to the occasional blasts that would sometimes shake their windows, she said. But this was different.

“The only way I can describe it would be a direct hit with a lightning bolt, a massive explosion, and an earthquake, all in one,” she said.

Spicer was the closest neighbor to 78-year-old W.M. Griffice, whose home atop an expanding underground mine exploded on March 8, leading to his death, seriously injuring his grandson and deeply rattling this rural community 20 miles outside Birmingham.

Spicer said that since the explosion she and her family have lived in constant fear of dying themselves.

In the wake of the explosion, she and other residents have been left with serious concerns about the vast mine expanding under their homes, where bladed machines shear coal from expanses more than 1,000 feet wide and a mile long. But no one seems willing or able to answer their questions. Mine representatives and public officials alike have ignored citizens’ calls for transparency and accountability.

Read the full story of the Oak Grove mine and the residents living above it in the comments below.

06/24/2024

An Alabama family will amend their lawsuit to include a wrongful death claim following the passing of their grandfather from injuries caused by a home explosion over the expanding Oak Grove mine. More from Inside Climate News here.

In a court hearing, lawyers for the Griffice family said their investigation into the March explosion is continuing despite a lack of engagement from state or federal regulators.

06/24/2024

Randall Woodfin has ousted 2 Black women from leadership positions within the Birmingham PD. When I profiled La’Quaylin Parhm Mack while the chief of police position was still open, I asked if she'd be willing to serve. She said yes. Staff present were clearly not happy about the question and even later asked that her answer be de-emphasized in promotion of the piece. During our interview, I found her to be a genuine, interesting leader. Here's to hoping Birmingham press ask serious questions about why this happened and why her assistant immediately took her position.

Parhm Mack is making history in Birmingham as the first woman to be named Assistant Chief of Police. She’s a survivor, she said in an interview earlier this month. But she’s much more than that. …