James Bruggers, whose decades of dogged reporting shined a light on polluting corporations, inadequate regulations and the people who fought against them for environmental justice, died Tuesday at a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. He was 68.
The cause of death was a combination of thyroid cancer and pneumonia, said his wife, Chris Bruggers.
Bruggers’ journalism career stretched back to his high school newspaper in Saginaw, Michigan, and brought him to reporting jobs in Montana, Alaska, California and Louisville, where he was an environmental beat reporter for the Courier Journal from 1999 to 2018. He spent the final seven years of his career at Inside Climate News, where he covered the Southeast and focused much of his work on the impacts of coal mining, petrochemical development and plastics pollution. Bruggers retired last year but continued to contribute stories to Inside Climate News through April.
Bruggers was driven by a love of nature, an innate sense of justice, compassion for his sources and the relentless pursuit of the story. His work won recognition from numerous organizations, including the National Press Foundation and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Bruggers’ writing reached into the lives of the people he wrote about and those who read his work, and helped spur environmental cleanups and new limits on toxic pollution. Colleagues and friends said they will remember him above all for his kindness, generosity, good humor and dedication to the truth. He was as invested in the success of those around him as he was in his own, they said.
At the Courier Journal, Bruggers became known as a watchdog of Louisville’s air, water and land. One project exposed how hundreds of railroad workers had suffered brain damage as a result of chemical exposures while on the job. Another series detailed toxic air pollution in Louisville, especially around an industrial area known as Rubbertown. Soon after, the city adopted a new program to limit those pollutants that has contributed to an 80 percent drop in toxic chemical emissions, according to the metro government.
The series won the National Press Foundation’s 2003 Thomas L. Stokes Award for Energy and Environment Journalism.
James Bruggers with his wife, Chris Bruggers, at Limantour Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore. Credit: Courtesy of Chris Bruggers
Deborah Yetter, a reporter who worked with Bruggers at the Courier Journal, said he took on the complicated and often arcane issues that were important to Louisville’s environment, “and he had a good way of making them interesting.” His work gained him the respect of sources and readers alike, Yetter said. “He was just an all-around good guy.”
More recently, Bruggers dedicated years to investigating the harms of plastic waste and probing the petrochemical industry’s dubious claims behind so-called “advanced recycling,” which companies argued could help alleviate the crisis of proliferating waste. The series revealed those claims to be speculative at best and highlighted the pollution caused by these plants and the impacts on the people who lived nearby.
“He was the tip of the spear on so many issues related to plastics,” said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, an advocacy group focused on eliminating plastic pollution, and a former regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “He did really pioneering journalism educating lots of people before anyone got to the issue.”
Vernon Loeb, Inside Climate News’ executive editor, said Bruggers “was the kind of reporter all the reporters on our staff wanted to be.”
“His death hit us all so hard because he meant so much to everyone in our newsroom,” said Loeb, who edited him for years. “Everyone loved him.”
James Bruggers speaks with his colleague, Amy Green, at an ICN staff retreat in Birmingham, Ala., in 2025. Credit: Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News
Throughout his career, Bruggers’ work had impacts both sweeping and personal. His coverage of the environmental consequences of coal mining in Appalachia in 2020 won an award for outstanding beat reporting from the Society of Environmental Journalists. The judges noted Bruggers’ use of “both grit and finesse in lining up a wide variety of sources inside and outside government. A nice human touch gave voices to coal miners, small town mayors and politicians from both parties concerned about whether a powerful senator was protecting miners’ pensions and black lung payments amid the transformation of an ailing coal country.”
Four years later, Lee Hedgepeth, a reporter covering Alabama for Inside Climate News, received a call from Bruggers: “Hey, there was a mine explosion near your house.” Not only was Hedgepeth unaware, but so were state mining regulators. The two reporters would go on to investigate how methane had leaked from a mine underneath residences, detonating a home and killing a man. Their work prompted a federal investigation and state action.
The day…
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