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.
