Water & Oceans

"The millions of sardines that were found floating dead in a Southern California marina this week tested positive for a powerful neurotoxin, researchers said Friday."

"The federal government has agreed to step up its efforts to force freighters sailing on the Great Lakes to begin treating their biologically contaminated ballast water discharges like any other industrial pollutant."

Besides being a keystone of the ocean ecosystem, coral reefs are of huge commercial value. But they are seriously threatened by floods, runoff, rising ocean temperatures and acidity which are all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy.

"Instead of going straight to the faucet, many Navajos in northeastern Arizona have to drive 40 miles to haul water from a well back to their homes." Now a University of Arizona project may offer some help.

"The new well will track one plugged after a moratorium. Obama administration officials say pressure from courts and Congress did not affect the decision, but that the firm met new safety rules."

"Restrictions on water pumping that helps supply Southern California, intended to protect California's delta smelt, will be relaxed through June."

After a December 2008 spill of toxic coal ash at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant, EPA vowed to bring the ubiquitous waste under regulation. First, industry got to the Obama White House to sandbag the effort. Now, GOP lawmakers heavily funded by electric utilities have slipped a rider into the House stopgap spending bill to quash EPA's effort to protect the public altogether.

"A major new survey of the world's coral reefs finds that they are in trouble. Big trouble"