The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Plan Columbia" ...
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The Price of Parking
The City of Columbia disregarded a study it comissioned building a parking garage double the size of a 3rd party recommendation. The garage, at 5th and Walnut in downtown Columbia, MO, remains mostly empty putting financial strain on the city's parking utility. Yet the city plans on building another parking garage six blocks away from the brand new garage. The city didn't have the money to pay for the first garage and doesn't have money to pay for the second garage. The first garage cost taxpayers $21 million. The city says the second garage will cost another $12 million- not including interest.
Tags: Parking Garages; Columbia; Missouri; Parking
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NASA
These stories take a hard look at NASA's plans to return humans to the moon and focus on the agency's decision to retire the space shuttle and build a revolutionary new rocket to replace it. The reporting documents actions by American's space agency that threaten to leave thousands of Floridians without jobs and America's space program bankrupt and grounded for years. It also exposes a NASA culture of decision making that is little changed from the one blamed for the deaths of the seven Columbia astronauts.
Tags: NASA; astronaut programs; funding; technology; debt; space missions; NASA engineers
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Dirty Bombs
"Radioactive devices are stolen from cars, disappear from construction sites, fall off trucks and generally go astray at a startling pace. A computer database compiled by The Canadian Press showed how dozens of these tools - from a darkroom truck in northern British Columbia to a device used for molecular separation in Montreal - have gone missing in the last five years. The items vanished despite federal disaster planning reports that warn terrorists could wreak multimillion-dollar havoc if a nuclear gauge was used to build a crude 'dirty bomb.'"
Tags: radioactive; dirty bomb; bioterrorism; terrorism
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Plan for Colombia
The Express-News looks at the United States' efforts to eradicate drug trade in Colombia by spending $1.3 billion on army operations aiming to destroy coca fields. The series questions the effectiveness of the plan. Coca farmers account for the majority of the population in Columbia, and the project would be more successful, if they were provided some alternatives. The reporter examines how the drug war combines with the civil war that has been going on for decades, and finds "that it's unlikely that any significant change will come in Colombia's status as a drug exporter until the civil war is ended."
Tags: kidnapping; assassinations; guerrillas; military; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC); right-wing militia; international politics; foreign affairs; crime; violence; drug trafficking; cocaine; heroin; Latin America; human rights
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A Flood of Problems
A Columbia Missourian investigation reveals the neglect of local city and county officials in planning and handling storm water floods amidst new development. Boone County and city of Columbia systems for handling planning subdivisions place "little emphasis on storm water's potential to cause flooding or damage water quality."
Tags: storm water; urban sprawl; subdivisions; planning and zoning; Columbia; Boone County; water quality; growth; urbanization; development
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Plan Columbia
Colombia is now the third-largest recipient of US aid in the world after Israel and Egypt. The two-year, $3.2 billion aid package is to help fight "the war on drugs," by eradicating half of the nation's 300,000 acres of coca fields within five years. Yet others consider the escalating US military presence and its technological aid to the right wing paramilitary forces a thinly veiled military intervention, stabilizing the government in power against guerillas in the coca-producing regions. Kidnappings are up sharply, and others fear they'll increase even more if drugs profits are stymied.
Tags: Columbia; US Aid; War on Drugs; anti-narcotics; School of the Americas; U.S. military advisors; toxic herbicides; Plan Colombia; Pais Libre; kidnapping; FARC; ELN; death squads; human rights; Pentagon's Southern Command; Amnesty International; Paz Colombia; social inequality
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Drug Control or Biowarfare?
"The story unveiled a secret government plan to use Colombia as a testing ground for Fusarium oxysporum, a fungus-based herbicide, as a new biological weapon in the war on drugs; the power and personage behind the effort, and the lack of oversight, monitoring, and informed consent from stakeholders on health and environmental concerns. (The) story detailed how the fungus was initially clandestinely isolated and developed by various government agencies and how the U.S. worked to force the experimental agent on Colombian authorities for use against coca, poppy, and marijuana."
Tags: deforestation; USDA; Peru; fungus; Plan Columbia; Rep. Ben Gilman; mycoherbicide (fungus plant killer); human health; farming; immune system; State Department of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement; Monsanto Roundup; United Nations
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"In Columbia, questions about ethics, favoritism"
As a veteran roofer, Rocky Mills knows the only foolproof way to avoid rejection is to not bid on a job in the first place. Or so he thought until recently, when he learned bids he says he never made had been turned down by the Columbia Association (CA). Records at the huge homeowners association -- a private corporation that functions as a quasi-government for the Howard County planned community -- list Mills as a bidder by phone for two jobs. Mills' purported bids are among 16 losing ones in CA records from contractors who say they never made the bids. Those discrepancies highlight the unorthodox ways the CA -- the second-largest homewowners association in the nation -- goes about spending Columbia residents' money.
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No title (id: 2114)
Columbia Daily Tribune article finds Missouri's emergency plans to help residents during a nuclear attack are worthless and dangerous, September 1984.
Tags: Evacuation Disaster
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No title (id: 2028)
Columbia Daily Tribune shows that city's planning and zoning commission favors developers; reveals possible conflicts of interests on commission, June 1984.
Tags: None