News from around the nation.

The fracking boom in PA raises health and environmental concerns; Hurricane Hone brings heavy rain and damaging winds to Hawaii's Big Island; Experts: Utility disconnections in extreme weather harm communities; Montana group uses the co-op model to take on the housing crisis.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, August the 26th, 2024.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Fracking is on the rise in Southwestern Pennsylvania, leading to more plastic production and harsh consequences for residents.

Our Danielle Smith explains.

Washington County is heavily fracked with almost 4,000 fracking wells on top of current and legacy coal mines.

Sarah Martick, Executive Director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, says conversations are happening at the national and global level about fracking impacting the way the fossil fuel industry wants to operate in the area.

She adds the demand for more plastic is driving some of the increased fracking in the area.

As plastic production becomes more and more part of the fossil fuel industry's strategy to protect themselves and their profits from what they would see as a decrease in profits from going towards renewable energy, we're seeing more communities impacted by both the plastic production side of it on the petrochemical end.

99 percent of plastics are made from fossil fuels, including fracked gas.

Next to Hawaii, where Hurricane Horn is gradually moving away from the Big Island, but will continue to bring gusty winds and widespread rain to the region, according to the National Hurricane Center.

That from NBC News.

They report Horn strengthened to a hurricane and by Sunday afternoon was notching maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour, making it a category one storm.

The Hurricane Center says Horn is moving west at eight miles an hour and will continue in that direction for the next few days.

Tropical storm warning continues to be in effect for Hawaii County.

And housing advocates say they're seeing more Kentuckians affected by electricity shutoffs.

In 2022, the number of Kentuckians who had their power disconnected increased by 228 percent compared to a 29 percent increase nationwide.

That's according to data from the Energy and Policy Institute and Center for Biological Diversity.

Kara Cooper with Kentuckians for Energy Democracy says LG&E and KU, one of Kentucky's largest investor-owned utilities, ranks among the top 12 worst offenders in the nation when it comes to utility disconnections.

She says in some cases, power was shut off for as little as $9 owed in payment.

Currently, Kentucky is one of only 10 states that has no weather-related protections for disconnections.

And that means that disconnection protections are happening at the utility level.

That's a problem because it's not one policy across the board for the entire state.

Mountain Association and other Kentucky advocacy groups recently signed on to a petition calling for federal legislation that protects households from utility disconnections during extreme weather.

Nadia Ramlagan reporting.

Tomorrow, the Metropolitan Housing Coalition and Kentuckians for Energy Democracy are hosting a webinar on utility disconnection protections during extreme weather.

Learn more on the coalition's website.

This is Public News Service.

A coalition of advocates is using a novel approach to address the housing shortage in Missoula, helping renters become homeowners.

Prices and availability continue to be a problem in Montana.

NeighborWorks Montana and North Missoula Community Development Corporation are expanding the co-op concept in Missoula, notorious for its housing shortage.

NeighborWorks Montana Executive Director, Kaia Peterson, says co-ops are successful because they hire the property management company that works for them.

So these are existing apartment buildings, and what we're doing is instead of an individual investor owning that building, we're helping the residents form a cooperative.

So the residents are creating a business together, a business form of the cooperative, and that cooperative buys and owns and operates the building.

Co-op ownership eliminates the possibility of an investor buying the building and increasing rent if the property value increases.

The group hopes to replicate the model across Montana.

I'm Mark Moran.

Next, we head to California, where new data show that fast food jobs have been on the upswing in the four months since the minimum wage in that sector went from 16 to $20 an hour.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that California added 11,000 new fast food jobs from April to July and showed increases year over year each month since January.

UC Berkeley Professor Michael Reich says the data contradicts doomsday predictions from opponents of raising the minimum wage.

The knock is that a minimum wage increase would lead to businesses closing, workers getting laid off, and much higher prices.

That's been the knock on every minimum wage increase since 1938.

Indeed, a large number of studies have found that minimum wages do not reduce employment in fast food.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

And North Carolina hasn't carried out an execution in 18 years, advocates are urging Governor Roy Cooper to commute all death row sentences before he leaves office.

Our Shantia Hudson reports.

Noelle Nickel is the executive director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

She warns that this long pause could end soon as it depends on ongoing Racial Justice Act litigation and lethal injection protocol challenges.

It's not a question of if executions will resume in North Carolina, but it is a matter of when they will resume, given the current makeup of our state legislature and our state Supreme Court, we feel certain that with two litigation issues that have prohibited executions will fall away.

North Carolina currently has the fifth largest death row in the United States with 136 people.

This is Mike Clifford, thank you for starting your week with Public News Service, remember endless to support it.

Hear us on interesting radio stations, your favorite podcast platform, find our content and trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.

Member and listener supported.

Hear us on great radio stations, your favorite podcast platform and find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.