Water & Oceans

"Evacuations and curfews have been enacted in parts of Iowa and Wisconsin as flood threats from swollen rivers and creeks continue to cause panic."

"Montana reopened a stretch of the Yellowstone River to fishing and other recreational activities on Friday after a month-long closure prompted by the spread of a deadly aquatic parasite that killed thousands of whitefish and sapped the local economy."

"TYLER, Ala. — The hard clay soil in this rural Southern county has twice cursed Dorothy Rudolph. It is good for growing cotton and cucumbers, the crops she worked as a child and hated. And it is bad for burying things — in particular, septic tanks."

"The State Water Control Board unanimously approved a complex and expansive permit Thursday that will allow Dominion Virginia Power to drain millions of gallons of wastewater from the coal ash ponds at its Chesterfield Power Station, the largest fossil fuel plant in Virginia, then treat it and discharge it into the James River."

"Environmentalists are warning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its draft plan to continue allowing oil and gas companies to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and wastewater directly into the Gulf of Mexico is in violation of federal law."

"Rapidly melting Greenland may be shedding its ice even faster than anyone suspected, new research suggests. A study just out in the journal Science Advances finds that previous studies may have underestimated the current rate of mass loss on the Greenland ice sheet by about 20 billion tons per year. "

"As cities across the nation overhaul their aging, increasingly fragile drinking water systems, some municipal leaders are digging deeper to erase a toxic legacy that endangers millions of Americans: lead water pipes connecting homes to street mains." Not Chicago.

"How an esoteric piece of farm equipment created America’s breadbasket—and threatens to destroy it."

New research "suggests that massive long-term droughts can hit the region in conjunction with cycles of ocean warming and cooling — and that if these patterns continue to hold, another megadrought could lie in the future."

Florida environmental agencies said they are not legally required to notify homeowners whose well water was contaminated by a sinkhole at a major phosphate operation.