Water & Oceans

"The Interior Department is planning to hold the largest sale of oil and gas leases in the country's history.

The plans, announced Friday, would auction off 77.3 million acres of offshore waters to drilling, covering coastal waters in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The auction will take place March 21.

Areas protected under a 2006 congressional moratorium, which bans drilling within 125 miles of the Florida coast until 2022, will be excluded from the lease."

"In just eight days in mid-February, nearly a third of the sea ice covering the Bering Sea off Alaska's west coast disappeared. That kind of ice loss and the changing climate as the planet warms is affecting the lives of the people who live along the coast."

"Although it’s expected that President Trump’s plan to gut Great Lakes programs will be “dead on arrival” in Congress again, a major coalition of environmental groups is prepared to show how such draconian cuts could severely hurt public health and the economy — not just the environment."

"The Trump administration’s stance on climate change became a little less clear this week."

"Melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are speeding up the already fast pace of sea level rise, new satellite research shows."

"The U.S. military is spending billions to clean up drinking water contaminated with toxic firefighting foam while continuing to use dangerous new formulas."

"To ensure that tap water in the United States is safe to drink, the federal government has been steadily tightening the health standards for the nation’s water supplies for decades. But over and over again, local water systems around the country have failed to meet these requirements." An illuminating data visualization maps where the problems are.

"Three environmental groups teamed up to sue the Trump administration on Tuesday for allowing oil companies to dump leftover waste from drilling and fracking into the Gulf of Mexico."

"After a deadlocked 3-3 vote, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted 4-2 Friday to elevate the marbled murrelet from a “threatened” species to “endangered.”"

"Sparsely populated, low-income communities across the country suffer from polluted water—an injustice expected to worsen under Trump."