"DINUBA — Growing up in Mexico, Maria Rodriguez remembers hauling water from a stream to the shack where her parents and their nine children lived. Indoor plumbing was not an option."
"Good news, whale lovers: A new analysis suggests that there are as many blue whales living off the coast of California as there were before humans started hunting them to near extinction 110 years ago."
"BP shoulders most of the blame for the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill by acting with "profit-driven decisions" that amounted to "gross negligence," a federal judge ruled Thursday in a decision that could quadruple the billions of dollars in penalties the oil giant faces."
"A U.S. judge has decided that BP Plc was “grossly negligent” and “reckless” in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill four years ago, a ruling that could add nearly $18 billion in fines to more than $42 billion (25.73 billion pounds) in charges the company took for the worst offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history."
"Extracting natural gas for energy from shale rock deep underground requires lots of water, but much of the world's shale gas is in regions where water is already scarce, including part of California, according to a study issued Tuesday."
"A measles-like virus that is blamed for killing hundreds of dolphins on the U.S. East Coast has spread into a Florida lagoon where hundreds of manatees, brown pelicans and dolphins already died mysteriously in recent years."
"There weren't any keepers yet, but the fish were definitely biting for Willie Edwards one day last week as he trolled along the edge of the Susquehanna Flats. The 72-year-old fisherman from North East said he'd caught 'a lot of little rock,' or striped bass."
"Halliburton, the company contracted by BP to cement the ill-fated Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, has reached a $1.1 billion settlement with thousands of businesses, individuals and local governments that suffered losses from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the company and plaintiffs announced on Tuesday."
"Australia will abandon plans to dump 3 million cubic meters of dredged sand into the Great Barrier Reef area in its effort to create the world's biggest coal port, the Australian Financial Review reported on Tuesday.
The fragile reef, which stretches 2,300 km (1,430 miles) along Australia's east coast, and sprawls over an area half the size of Texas, was the centerpiece of a campaign by green groups and tour operators opposing the plan.
Drought-stricken California has not built any new big dams for decades, for a number of reasons. Now some in the state are trying to launch a new dam-building surge.
