Environment

People in West Virginia are still recovering from floods that tore through communities like vengeful gods. When you look at the pictures and videos of the June flood – thick, brown, furious, unrelenting – it’s not hard to imagine how our ancestors believed supernatural beings were behind the devastation. Today, of course, we have better insight into the natural forces at work, and science shows us that the damage from nature’s wrath has a lot to do with human behavior.

A prolonged heat wave is in the forecast for the region today and through Sunday night. Most of the WKMS listening area west of Land Between the Lakes is under an excessive heat warning. The rest of our region is under a heat advisory.

At a committee hearing on Tuesday, state lawmakers discussed how 400 tons of low-level radioactive waste ended up in a landfill in Estill County.

An Illinois agency will soon collect used tires from abandoned properties and rural roads in an effort to reduce the risk of illnesses carried by some mosquitoes.

Numerous media outlets are reporting that increased amounts of ‘corn sweat’ could be affecting the heat index across the U.S. increasing rates of heat exhaustion. Paducah National Weather Service Meteorologist Kelly Hooper says there might be some confusion.

The state attorney general’s office has determined there is insufficient evidence to seek criminal charges in the disposal of radioactive waste in an Estill County landfill. 

  Western Kentucky University is hosting a three-day seminar dedicated to one of the fastest growing industries in Kentucky. About 400 beekeepers from a half dozen Midwest states are in Bowling Green through Saturday. Heartland Bee-Keepers Association president.

Update: WKCTC has ended their campus alert for evacuation of the Allied Health Building and Emerging Technology Center.   

A natural gas leak near West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah this morning prompted evacuations of nearby buildings. According to a news release, a contractor for Atmos Energy reported damaging an 8-inch high pressure gas transmission line. 

Even in what has historically been the country’s coal-fired stronghold, coal’s share of the electricity market is declining. The drop of coal-fired electricity generation in the Southeast — and a corresponding rise in natural gas and renewables — is reflecting what’s happening to the nation as a whole.