James Bruggers, Environmental Reporter at Inside Climate News, Dies at 68

James Bruggers died Tuesday at a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. He was 68. The cause of death was a combination of thyroid cancer and pneumonia, his wife Chris Bruggers said. Bruggers began his journalism career at his high school newspaper in Saginaw, Michigan, and held reporting jobs in Montana, Alaska, California and Louisville.

He served as an environmental beat reporter for the Courier Journal from 1999 to 2018 before joining Inside Climate News for the final seven years of his career. At the Courier Journal, Bruggers reported on toxic air pollution around the industrial area known as Rubbertown.

The city later adopted a new program to limit those pollutants that contributed to an 80 percent drop in toxic chemical emissions, according to Louisville metro government.

That series won the National Press Foundation’s 2003 Thomas L. Stokes Award for Energy and Environment Journalism. Bruggers retired last year but continued to contribute stories to Inside Climate News through April.

His final article detailed ongoing environmental violations at an Ohio plastic waste processing plant. One month later, the company operating the plant said it was suspending operations there. In 2020, Bruggers’ coverage of the environmental consequences of coal mining in Appalachia won an award for outstanding beat reporting from the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Bruggers and Inside Climate News reporter Lee Hedgepeth later investigated a methane leak from a mine underneath residences in Alabama that detonated a home and killed a man. Their reporting prompted a federal investigation and state action. The day before Bruggers died, Hedgepeth received a copy of the methane monitoring plan the mine owner was forced to implement.