"The future of the Newport Banning Ranch site, where developers want to build a hotel and hundreds of homes, now rests with the California Coastal Commission — which is engaged in its own struggle for identity."

"A coalition of environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday to demand a strong uniform standard for the transportation, storage and disposal of frack waste."

"President Barack Obama’s assurances Wednesday that Flint’s water is safe to drink from faucet filters was met with skepticism among residents of this predominately African-American city beset by fears of lead lingering in their pipes."

"Water shortages will deliver a 'severe hit' to the economies of the Middle East, central Asia, and Africa by the middle of the century, taking double digits off their GDP, the World Bank warned on Tuesday."

"Zimbabwe put its wild animals up for sale on Tuesday, saying it needed buyers to step in and save the beasts from a devastating drought."

"Seawater — increasingly acidic due to global warming — is eating away the limestone framework for the coral reef of the upper Florida Keys, according to a new study. It's something that scientists had expected, but not so soon."

"ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — Each morning at 3:30, when Joann Bourg leaves the mildewed and rusted house that her parents built on her grandfather’s property, she worries that the bridge connecting this spit of waterlogged land to Louisiana’s terra firma will again be flooded and she will miss another day’s work."

"President Barack Obama arrives in Flint Wednesday to witness first-hand a 2-year-old contaminated drinking water crisis amid growing calls for a stronger federal role in fixing the man-made catastrophe."

"The large-scale dredging of Miami’s port to accommodate the newest generation of freighters, an undertaking that prompted a long-running battle with environmentalists, caused widespread damage to a portion of the area’s fragile and already distressed coral reef, according to a new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."