Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/tag/ron-seely/)
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism earns honors for coverage of drinking water problems, gun violence and more from the Milwaukee Press Club.
Failing septic systems, leaking public sewer pipes and landspreading of septic waste can introduce dangerous pathogens into both rural and urban water systems. Experts say Wisconsin needs tougher laws to protect Wisconsin drinking water from contamination by sewage and septic waste.
Hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents are at risk of illness from waterborne pathogens in private and public drinking water supplies. Contamination by pathogens is of special concern because unlike pollution by metals or chemicals, pathogens can sicken people after just a single exposure.
The Center was honored with four gold awards, one silver and two bronze in the club’s Awards for Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism, the state’s premiere all-media journalism competition.
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s Ron Seely has been selected as winner of the Sierra Club’s 2014 national reporting award. Seely, a reporter, editor and student mentor for the Center, will receive the David R. Brower Award for outstanding environmental coverage, the national Sierra Club announced this week. The award is named after the first executive director of the Sierra Club. Ellen Davis, chairwoman of the honors and awards committee for the Sierra Club, said Seely was chosen for his high-quality reporting on environmental issues spanning more than two decades, including coverage of the environmental effects of large farming operations and the proposed Gogebic Taconite mine in northern Wisconsin. “It was really for his entire career rather than a particular story,” Davis said.