Water & Oceans

"Four decades after the passage of the Clean Water Act, regulators haven’t kept up with the pollution pressure that growing populations put on America’s shorelines."

"President Obama’s budget proposal for 2016 includes a significant cut in funds for the Great Lakes Initiative, and some groups have responded by calling the president’s proposal a ' non-starter.'"

"Forty countries lying along the Pacific Ocean from Asia to the Americas are putting their tsunami early warning systems and escape drills to the test this week, with the key message for some coastal communities being "run and seek higher ground".

"Washington state senators held a hearing on Thursday to consider banning the increasingly controversial capture or holding of killer whales for entertainment."

"Wastewater is arguably worse for the environment than oil, killing vegetation and leaving farmland sterile for generations. Some say the state isn't doing enough to get its spill problem controlled."

"Regulators in California, the country's third-largest oil-producing state, have authorized oil companies to inject production fluids and waste into what are now federally protected aquifers more than 2,500 times, risking contamination of underground water supplies that could be used for drinking water or irrigation, state records show."

"In a year the Republican-controlled Congress is expected to take a significant whack at President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, GOP lawmakers on Wednesday told top environmental officials they should scrap what was once a fairly obscure proposal to define what is and isn’t considered a body of water by federal law."

"Water scarcity could lead to conflict between communities and nations as the world is still not fully aware of the water crisis many countries face as a result of climate change, the head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists warned on Tuesday."

"The ailing Chesapeake Bay is slowly recovering from pollution and overfishing but still has problems that include a drop by half in a key segment of the blue crab population, a report on the largest U.S. estuary said on Tuesday."

"Major voluntary strategies used on Midwest farmland to curb fertilizers that feed the annual low oxygen "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico don't remove enough nutrients to succeed, according to a new, peer reviewed scientific study."