"Indigenous activists threatened a clash with Brazil's government as they dispatched boats carrying 150 men on Wednesday to occupy the planned site of a controversial hydro-electric dam in the Amazon, a chief said."

"Baltimore's revitalized waterfront draws millions of visitors a year, but could it ever be a place where people actually take a dip? Or catch fish? That's the vision of a local group that wants to make Baltimore's harbor swimmable and fishable within a decade."

"The last ship of Japan's Antarctic whaling fleet sailed home Monday with the lowest catch in years, a shortfall whalers blamed on high-seas clashes with the militant environmental group Sea Shepherd."

"Maritime authorities have pulled off an incredibly complex salvage operation without spilling any more oil into Great Barrier Reef waters. Nine days after the coal carrier Shen Neng 1 ran aground on Douglas Shoal off Rockhampton it has been refloated, and is now anchored in safe waters."

Pollution at many of Florida's best-known springs is killing aquatic ecosystems. Time is running out in this session of the legislature for a bill aimed at repairing and protecting Florida's aquatic gems.

"The corals, whales and giant clams of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are in the path of a 'coal highway' to China that may see shipments jump 67 percent by 2016, increasing the threat of an ecological disaster after a coal carrier ran aground last week."

"Many streams and rivers in the United States are getting warmer, with the greatest increases in urbanized areas, according to research to be published in an upcoming edition of the journal Frontiers of the Ecology and the Environment."

"The Chinese coal ship that ran onto the Great Barrier Reef was one of dozens of freighters to have taken a legal short cut between dangerous shoals this year, satellite images show."

"An O'Malley administration proposal to ease Maryland's stringent new storm-water pollution rules won legislative approval [Monday] night, capping a fierce debate over whether the Chesapeake Bay would suffer from giving developers more time and leeway in having to clamp down on rainfall washing off their building projects."

"HONG KONG -- Salvage experts and a tugboat crew struggled on Monday to save a large Chinese freighter that slammed into the Great Barrier Reef off Australia  over the weekend, trying to prevent the vessel from breaking apart as some of the 1,075 tons of engine fuel in its tanks began oozing from the hull, threatening the world’s largest collection of coral."

"The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday that it would overhaul drinking water regulations so that officials could police dozens of contaminants simultaneously and tighten rules on the chemicals used by industries."

"Human beings are flushing millions of tonnes of solid waste into rivers and oceans every day, poisoning marine life and spreading diseases that kill millions of children annually, the U.N. said on Monday."

"Close to 40 percent of Puget Sound's shorelines have been covered in concrete or otherwise walled off from the tides. State officials say restoring the health of Puget Sound will require removing some of those walls. But it's local governments that control the shore, and property owners want to build more seawalls as coastal developments expand."

"The federal government is doing what once had been unthinkable: Building a new stretch of pipeline and draining more water from the Columbia River system to aid farmers. The pipeline is approved to carry just a trickle, but will be designed to handle much more water than that. New proposals would dramatically increase the amount of river water provided to Columbia Basin farmers."

"People along the Clark Fork River are still getting used to the removal of Milltown Dam. But as far as the fish are concerned, it's history."