"At least 18 dams have breached or failed in South Carolina since Saturday, the state's emergency management agency said early Tuesday."

"A federal appeals court in New York ordered the government to rewrite its rules regulating the discharge of ballast water by ships, in a victory for environmental groups that said the rules were too lenient and threatened the nation's waterways."

"At the second annual Our Ocean conference, which opens today in Chile and will address challenges to marine ecosystems around the globe, world leaders will announce the extra steps they are taking to protect the world’s oceans. And the Obama administration is helping to kick things off by announcing plans to create two new marine sanctuaries — one in Maryland, and the other in Lake Michigan."

"Hopes faded of finding any remaining survivors of a massive landslide in Guatemala that killed at least 73 people, even as families scrabbled through rubble hoping to find the bodies of loved-ones, with hundreds of others still missing."

"Hundreds were rescued from fast-moving floodwaters Sunday in South Carolina as days of driving rain hit a dangerous crescendo that buckled buildings and roads, closed a major East Coast interstate route and threatened the drinking water supply for the capital city."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving forward with new rules to reduce water pollution around the country. Power plants will face restrictions on discharging toxic pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, lead, and selenium into the water."

"The Ohio River, transformed by mining and industrial waste and sewage overflows into the nation’s most polluted major waterway, has a new and unexpected tormentor this fall: carpets of poisonous algae."

"A coalition of U.S. states warned on Monday that a spike in earthquakes potentially tied to oil and gas activity in places not typically prone to them needs urgent attention from regulators and others to protect public safety."

"The holy grail of space exploration is to find extraterrestrial life. An important precursor to that is finding liquid water—and that's exactly what NASA [Monday] announced scientists have discovered on Mars."

"ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Royal Dutch Shell will cease exploration in Arctic waters off Alaska's coast following disappointing results from an exploratory well backed by billions in investment and years of work."