Water & Oceans

"The Louisville Water Co. has sharply lowered the levels of hexavelent chromium, a suspected carcinogen, in drinking water after solving a puzzle about the source of the pollutant."

"A new report by the American Society of Civil Engineers takes a dim view of the state of the country’s 54,000 community-based drinking-water systems and its 15,000 public wastewater treatment facilities. The systems are rusty, aging and seriously inadequate for meeting future needs, the study warns."

"Something that has been missing from San Francisco Bay since World War II appears to be making a comeback: Harbor porpoises are showing up in growing numbers, and researchers are trying to understand why they're returning."

"Nigerian coastal and fishing communities were on Thursday put on alert after Shell admitted to an oil spill that is likely to be the worst in the area for a decade, according to government officials."

"As of this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared three 'unusual mortality events' (UME)—unexplained death clusters—for multiple species of marine mammals on four US coastlines: the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Bering Sea, and the Chukchi Sea."

"In a sign that the Obama administration is willing to clear the regulatory decks for oil drilling in Alaska's remote Arctic waters, the Interior Department on Friday gave a conditional green light allowing Royal Dutch Shell PLC to explore for oil this summer in Alaska's Chukchi Sea."

"BP and the oil industry drilling in the Gulf of Mexico lacked the proper safety attitude to handle the large risks of deepwater drilling, leading to the many bad decisions behind the nation's worst offshore spill, a panel of expert engineers said today.

More specifically, the industry needs to radically redesign the blowout preventers that are meant to be a last line of defense against runaway wells or else risk a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the National Academy of Engineering concluded.