"In a year the Republican-controlled Congress is expected to take a significant whack at President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, GOP lawmakers on Wednesday told top environmental officials they should scrap what was once a fairly obscure proposal to define what is and isn’t considered a body of water by federal law."

"Water scarcity could lead to conflict between communities and nations as the world is still not fully aware of the water crisis many countries face as a result of climate change, the head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists warned on Tuesday."

"The ailing Chesapeake Bay is slowly recovering from pollution and overfishing but still has problems that include a drop by half in a key segment of the blue crab population, a report on the largest U.S. estuary said on Tuesday."

"Major voluntary strategies used on Midwest farmland to curb fertilizers that feed the annual low oxygen "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico don't remove enough nutrients to succeed, according to a new, peer reviewed scientific study."

"LOS ANGELES -- California has experienced one of the driest Januarys on record, and the lack of rain during a time of year when the weather is usually wet indicates the state is likely headed for a fourth straight year of drought, officials said."

It's not just the application of nitrogen fertilizer to farmlands that causes nitrate pollution of water -- it's the timing of that application and the runoff that results. One solution seems to be winter cover crops.

"A new Army Corps of Engineers report warns that unless coastal residents and state and local leaders from the Carolinas to Maine rethink their approach to shoreline development, the next big storm will be equal to or worse than Hurricane Sandy – with its $65 billion in losses, 159 deaths and 650,000 homes damaged or destroyed."

"SANTA URSULA, Mexico — People in the hamlet of Santa Ursula began to worry when the logging started. In a few short weeks, more than a mile of densely forested riverbank was stripped from the Arroyo Sal to make way for heavy dredging equipment."

"State workers performed a California winter ritual Thursday, poking hollow aluminum tubes into Sierra Nevada meadows to measure the snowpack. In what scientists see as a harbinger, they didn't find much."

"A dam in Delaware comes tumbling down; last year 71 others did too."