Flatwater Free PressYanqi Xu (pronounced yen-chee shu) most recently covered courts and law for NC Newsline in North Carolina, focusing on criminal justice, voting rights, housing justice and redistricting. Prior to that, she was part of a team at the Investigative Reporting Workshop that developed the Public Accountability Project, a newsroom search tool that hosts more than 1 billion public records in one place. She hails from China, where she first developed an interest in telling stories that resonate with people, no matter where they are.
At a February legislative hearing, a seemingly mundane bill reforming county zoning procedures drew testimony from a big name: Gov. Jim Pillen. For those seeking to build projects…
The Bellevue clinic founded and long run by Dr. LeRoy Carhart is no longer doing surgical abortions following his death and the passage of Nebraska’s more restrictive 12-week abortion law.
A small unit inside the Omaha Police Department helps to handle the deluge of mental health crises that police grapple with daily. One out of every three 911 calls OPD responded to last year was tied to mental health. The co-responders unravel mental health mysteries. They also help victims of crime, including Yanqi Xu, this story’s author.
Out-of-state investors are buying up Nebraska land in part because of the groundwater that can be placed on crops. But there are restrictions on what they can do with that water.
Meta and Google have paid a premium for Nebraska farmland in recent years.
See the Top 100 buyers of Nebraska farmland, by both money and amount of land.
Seven out-of-state buyers, including a Utah church, a Philadelphia corporate farm and a California investment fund, spent nearly $250 million in the past five years on pricey Nebraska farmland, FFP analysis shows.
Monitoring wells at 16 Pillen family-tied operations have tested for nitrate levels far above legal drinking water limit. One was so high, an expert said, “it should be a 911.”
Kerry Knuth steers his sprayer across a field, occasionally craning his neck to watch his newest piece of equipment shoot fertilizer at the base of his growing corn.…
Board attendance spiked in spring 2022, after a Flatwater Free Press story showing spotty attendance. It spiked again this year, after the Nebraska Legislature got involved.