Water & Oceans

"As vice president, Joe Biden oversaw a “green jobs” stimulus package that produced notable failures. This time, with more money and more demand for clean technology, will be different, Democrats say."

"WASHINGTON — In September 2009, then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to a defunct General Motors plant near his hometown, Wilmington, Del., to announce a $528.7 million government loan for Fisker Automotive to make hybrid and electric vehicles.

"The Biden administration on Monday announced a plan to vastly expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a potentially huge new source of renewable energy that has so far struggled to gain acceptance in the United States."

"Industry attorneys say they’re bracing for a wave of corporate liability and litigation as the Biden administration works swiftly to fulfill a campaign promise to control “forever chemicals.”

The Environmental Protection Agency this month announced it’s working on three water-related regulations for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. It sent a fourth chemical data-collection proposal to the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, for approval.

"A coalition of 17 environmental groups is speaking out against a key part of a sweeping plan to remove the lower Snake River dams to save salmon and steelhead."

"Public transit offers a simple way for cities to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the pandemic has pushed ridership, and revenue, off a cliff in many big systems."

"On the London Underground, Piccadilly Circus station is nearly vacant on a weekday morning, while the Delhi Metro is ferrying fewer than half of the riders it used to. In Rio, unpaid bus drivers have gone on strike. New York City subway traffic is just a third of what it was before the pandemic.

"Top congressional Republicans are warning Democrats against splitting up the upcoming infrastructure package, raising new doubts for the prospects of bipartisan cooperation on a top Biden priority in the months ahead."

"MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Court of Appeals on Tuesday heard arguments over Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 replacement project in northern Minnesota, which opponents are calling unnecessary due to an eventual decline in the demand for oil.

"At a normal tide on a normal day on the Southern California coast, ankle-high waves glide over a narrow strip of gold sand. On one side sits the largest body of water in the world. On the other, a row of houses with a cumulative value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, propped on water-stained stilts.

Property value ebbs and flows, but when it comes to coastal real estate "the trend lines are pretty clear," says California state Sen. Ben Allen, squinting in the sun. "And they're not pretty."

"Just before the Trump administration headed out the door, a federal agency this past December cleared the way for a private company to begin pumping groundwater from under the Mojave Trails National Monument in Southern California."