Water & Oceans

Several hundred thousand residents of the Toledo, Ohio, area remained Monday morning under an advisory not to drink their tapwater. Labs found microcystin, a toxin produced by blue-green algae, in the water. The algae are blooming in western Lake Erie, from which the city draws its water, because of phosphorus frpm farm runoff, lawn fertilizer, and sewage overflow. At a 3 am news conference, Mayor D. Michael Collins said the advisory would ramain in effect for some hours although tests showed microcystin in the water returning to safe levels. The crisis disrupted people's lives on a massive scale as bottled water was distributed.

"More than half of California is now under the most severe level of drought for the first time since the federal government began issuing regular drought reports in the late 1990s, according to new data released Thursday."

North Carolina lawmakers said Thursday they still haven't reached agreement on legislation requiring Duke Energy to limit pollution leaking from its coal ash dumps across the state, nearly six months after a spill coated 70 miles of the Dan River with gray sludge."

"LOS ANGELES — The rupture of a nearly century-old water main that ripped a 15-foot hole through Sunset Boulevard and turned a swath of the University of California, Los Angeles, into a mucky mess points to the risks and expense many cities face with miles of water lines installed generations ago."

"The state's plan to build a pair of 35-mile tunnels under the delta would cause the extinction of winter-run chinook salmon, steep declines in dozens of other species and devastate water quality in San Francisco Bay, an environmental group said Wednesday."

"In the dog days of summer, Nick Anthony wouldn't swim in Lake of the Woods unless some money was involved."

"WASHINGTON — Oil companies that locked up more than 1.3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea for drilling in 2007 have since relinquished nearly half that territory."

"Flooding is increasing in frequency along much of the U.S. coast, and the rate of increase is accelerating along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, a team of federal government scientists found in a study released Monday."

"Two major feeding grounds for Pacific blue whales are bisected by busy shipping lanes near major seaports in San Francisco and Santa Barbara, Calif., a new study reports."