BW Recommends
BW Recommends | July 13, 2025
BW Recommends is a rundown of stories you might have missed this week. It offers insight into issues important to our area and sometimes tickles your curiosity.
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Judges To Weigh Request To Put Alabama Under Preclearance for a Future Congressional Map (Alabama Daily News)
Black voters and civil rights organizations who successfully challenged Alabama’s congressional map are asking the court to require that any new congressional maps drawn by state lawmakers go through federal review before being implemented. The Alabama attorney general and the U.S. Department of Justice oppose the request.
KultureCity, a Birmingham-based nonprofit, has bought the old steam plant, which is across the street from Railroad Park, with plans that could include using the building as an event and meeting space and developing the grounds with a sensory-inclusive playground, water play area, gathering areas and possible amphitheater. There is no immediate plan for the construction. The group said it will be seeking design proposals before moving forward.
Alabama Crime Victims Compensation Commission Says Backlog Has Been Nearly Eliminated (Alabama Reflector)
Two years ago, the state commission had a backlog of 1,900 cases. The turn around came after protests by nonprofit groups and the first direct legislative appropriations to the commission in its four-decade history.
Why Birmingham Police Chief Michael Pickett Won’t Rest as Homicides Drop by 56 Percent (Birmingham Times)
The chief said the city’s homicides had dropped to 37 so far this year, compared to 84 this time last year, and the clearance rate for those cases has risen to 81%. But he said that signals it is time to work even harder. “Complacency is the most dangerous thing in law enforcement,” Pickett told The Birmingham Times during an interview.
Water Utility Says It Can’t Meet Demand for Alabama Data Center Without ‘Significant Upgrades’ (Inside Climate News)
Developers of a proposed hyperscale data center in Bessemer may find themselves lacking a resource essential for the operation of what would be one of the largest such facilities in the United States: water.
Public documents obtained by Inside Climate News reveal that the Warrior River Water Authority, the utility that serves the area where the 4.5 million-square-foot facility is proposed to be located, has said that it could not provide the requested water flow of 2 million gallons per day without “significant upgrades to the existing water system.”
Trump Hires Scientists Who Doubt the Consensus on Climate Change (New York Times)
The Energy Department has hired at least three scientists who are well-known for their rejection of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, according to records reviewed by The New York Times. Two of those three are Alabama experts: John Christy, the state’s climatologist and an atmospheric scientist who doubts the extent to which human activity has caused global warming; and Roy Spencer, a meteorologist who believes that clouds have had a greater influence on warming than humans have. Both are scientists with the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Their hiring comes after the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship report on how climate change is affecting the country.
