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 "land use" ...
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Los Angeles VA Has Made Millions on Rental Deals
This story is about one of the most fought-over pieces of property in Los Angeles, the 400 acre Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus in West Los Angeles. It’s in an affluent neighborhood and has been a target of developers. But with many unused buildings, it’s also been coveted as a place to house some of L.A.’s 8,000 homeless veterans. That was the original use of the land, which was donated for an Old Soldiers’ Home in the late 19th century. The VA has not acted on plans announced in 2007 to begin rehabbing unused buildings there for housing for homeless vets. Meanwhile, it’s rented out land and buildings to commercial enterprises. There is no public accounting for this income. Through FOIA and other documents, we found that the VA is renting out the property using a law intended for sharing health care resources, though the renters are non-health related commercial enterprises. We were also able to estimate that the VA has taken in at least 28 million and possibly more than 40 million dollars over the past dozen years, far more than the cost of re-habbing a building to house homeless vets.
Tags: Property; neighborhood; land uses; veterans
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Frac sand mining booms in Wisconsin
An ongoing series looking at the recent growth in Wisconsin’s sand mining industry to meet the increased demand from oil and gas drillers. The frac sand industry has created jobs and economic development in Western Wisconsin, but many residents worry that the industry is not properly regulated. Concerns remain about the impact of the mining on human and environmental health, transportation, and land use.
Tags: Sand mining; oil; gas; human health; environment; transportation; land use
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Chainsaw Scouting
This series “examines the long-running logging and land use practices conducted by Boy Scouts of America groups across the nation for the past two decades”. Some of the major findings include: instead of preserving the land they often sold woodlands to make money, sold property given to them by donors, ruined habitats for a number of protected species, and used the revenue from these deals to compensate for lost funding.
Tags: non-profit; camps; profit; conservationists; children; Virgil McCroskey; forestry
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Deed scam targets inheritances
"A Florida business used forged signatures, some of people who had died decades ago, to collect more than $300,000 from Brevard County. The money was from an escrow fund of money left over from sales of land sold for back taxes."
Tags: General Development Corp; Palm Bay; heir; fraud;
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Renegade Riders
Despite new state laws, extra enforcement and self-policing, off-road vehicles are tearing up public lands across the state. As the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources designated nearly 8,000 miles of motorized trails, top officials repeatedly ignored staff experts' recommendations on how to keep riders away from sensitive areas such as wetlands. A companion video reports on startribune.com used a hidden camera to capture illegal off-trail damage as it happened.
Tags: state parks; environmental destruction; Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; public safety; conservation; park trails
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Lost Paradise
People who bought retirement or hunting property in north Arkansas learned too late that developer Wayne Watkins didn't record their sales at the county courthouse and that he used land he sold to them as collateral for $2.6 million in loans. When he defaulted, banks foreclosed. Because no legal record existed of the buyers' ownership interest, banks often sold the land again.
Tags: banks; lending; housing; loans; fraud; housing scams; foreclosure
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Witnesses Wait
Humans have found ways to synthesize chemicals that cause terrible damage in the human body and do not decompose; they last and last. Most companies that produce these compounds locate away from people, in industrial zones. But in one neighborhood of New Orleans, an old chemical company mixed some of the most hazardous substances ever produced by man: Agent Orange, Heptachlor, Endosulfan, Dieldrin and DDT. They produced these chemicals out in the open on a small parcel of land ringed by people's homes. The wind blew the dry chemicals onto the houses, and there has been no effort to remove the soil or the risk to people who play and raise children and gardens there. Using an EPA database and Google Earth, the reporter found that there is no place more polluted with old, canned, organo-chlorine insecticides than this tiny, black, new Orleans neighborhood.
Tags: Pollution; Agent Orange; heptachlor; endosulfan; dieldrin; DDT; New Orleans; soil contamination; EPA; Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality
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Desert Dealer
If the State Land Dept. had run a background check on land developer Jim Rhodes, it would have found that he had admitted illegally using funds to aid politicains, along with his connections to corrupt Nevada officials. He purchased 1,000 acres of state trust land and the right to master plan an additional 6,700 acres. Rhodes has been successfully sued for fraud, self dealing and theft, among other offenses.
Tags: Construction; housing; homes; Clark County; Erin Kenny; Dario Herrera
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A Trail of Broken Promises
The story follows an agency, known as the Southeastern Economic Development Corp., as the president used a legal settlement to get a small business owner to remove its claim on a piece of coveted land. The agency then ignored the settlement and allowed a developer with business ties to the chairman to take over the land. The broken settlement cost the small business owners their expansion plans and their business.
Tags: small business owners; broken settlements; corporate malpractice; land development; Southeastern Economic Development Corp.
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Documentary stamp tax loophole
"Buyers and sellers of pricey properties structure sales as corporate entity transfers rather than as real estate transfers. This lets them legally avoid the Florida documentar stamp tax, collected at a rate of 70 cents per $100 of property value. My first stroy identified three sales totaling $600 million that avoided $4.2 million in taxes. My second story identified additional sales and also cited properties sold using land trusts, another structure that avoids documentary stamp taxes."
Tags: tax; stamp tax; real estate; commercial; documentary; porperty value