Water & Oceans

"It’s not the first time the president has boasted about a formal directive he never actually gave."

"The first beavers to live naturally in the wild in England for over 400 years have been given the green light to stay after a five-year trial showed their dam-building activities were good for wildlife and people."

"At least 388 manatees have died in Florida this year, slightly more than average, but in about a third of those cases, scientists did not recover the body to figure out the cause. Blame the coronavirus pandemic."

"The decades-long battle over an effort to raise the height of Shasta Dam took another turn Thursday when the Trump Administration released a new environmental report on the plan, just five years after completing a similar study."

"Following a record number of Atlantic Ocean storms over the past two months, including five that struck the United States, government scientists on Thursday updated their forecast for the remainder of the hurricane season, saying it was likely to be extremely active."

"The U.S. government settled a lawsuit Wednesday brought by the state of Utah over a mine waste spill caused by federal workers that sent wastewater downstream to several states from the inactive Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado five years ago."

"The companies in charge of Midland-area dams that failed in May have filed for bankruptcy in a Michigan federal court."

"New global industry standards for dealing with mine waste are not enforceable, fail to set measurable standards and will not protect communities, workers or the environment from disasters such as the 2014 Mount Polley spill or the deadly 2019 Brumadinho dam failure in Brazil, says an international group of scientists, community organizations and non-profits."

"At least nine people, including a 5-year-old girl with autism, were killed as Tropical Storm Isaias battered the U.S. East Coast with rain and fierce winds after making landfall as a hurricane in North Carolina. Millions of people were without power on Wednesday after felled trees downed power lines."

"For almost as long as people have been building near beaches, they have been protecting those buildings with sea walls. ... But modern, human-caused climate change is escalating the threats that make sea walls necessary."