"A new scientific survey has found that the glaciers of the Arctic are the world’s biggest contributors to rising seas, shedding ice at an accelerating rate that now adds well over a millimeter to the level of the ocean every year."
The new year will likely mean subpoenas on EPA’s FOIA response policies, as a Democrat takes the chair in the House Oversight Committee amid charges the agency is choking off politically sensitive record requests. And are new laws in a dozen states making coverage of pipeline protests a felony? That, plus air emission exemptions for animal feedlot operators and data on illegal fishing. All in the latest issue of the WatchDog.
"A critically endangered right whale calf was spotted off Jacksonville on Friday, the first calf of the species seen in nearly two years, giving local whale watchers high hopes for the coming weeks."
"A Belle Chasse marine contractor given the job of stopping a 14-year-old oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is defending itself against a lawsuit alleging it’s unqualified for the work and may cause more environmental damage."
"Cities and states would get more credit from the EPA for installing natural stormwater runoff systems under legislation that’s been cleared for President Donald Trump’s signature."
"State attorneys general from Maine to South Carolina joined a lawsuit filed by conservationists seeking to block the Trump administration from allowing seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean that could harm marine mammals and lead to drilling off the Eastern Seaboard for the first time in decades."
"By the middle of this century, climate change is likely to punch a hole through the busiest stretch of rail in North America. Parts of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor route, which carries 12 million people each year between Boston and Washington, face “continual inundation.”"
"Japan is to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and resume commercial whaling next year, a report claimed on Thursday, in a move that drew condemnation from Australia, with other anti-whaling nations expected to follow suit."
"Hundreds of thousands of homes in the Southeast may have had their wells inundated by record-level floodwater resulting from major hurricanes this year, yet only a fraction have been tested for harmful contaminants."
"The results landed on Nikolai Vitti’s desk on a late summer afternoon, days before Detroit’s nearly 50,000 public school students would return to class. The findings were definitive and disturbing: In initial tests, two-thirds of schools showed alarming levels of lead in the water."
