"WASHINGTON — Sen. Barbara Boxer’s longtime relationship with environmentalists has been strained by compromises she’s made in the committee she leads to get major pieces of public works legislation through a divided Senate."

"A crisis grips the Indian River Lagoon. Record numbers of manatees, dolphins and pelicans died in the past year — often from mysterious maladies. Sea grass flats are decimated. Unprecedented algae blooms have formed."

"U.S. federal regulators on Thursday said oil and gas company Chesapeake Energy Corp will pay a civil penalty of $3.2 million to settle Clean Water Act violations in West Virginia where it drills in the Marcellus Shale."

"As winter sets in across the northern United States, the road salt that keeps people out of ditches is flowing into rivers at levels that could harm fish and other creatures. With billions of pounds of salt spread on U.S. roads every year, researchers say that rivers, streams and lakes in the nation’s wintry cities are getting saltier. And, according to new research, the salt, or sodium chloride, in rivers remains toxic not just in winter, but throughout two-thirds of the year."

"US government scientists have for the first time found direct evidence of toxic exposure in the Gulf of Mexico."

"SAN DIEGO -- The Navy's five year-plan to use sonar in training exercises off Southern California and Hawaii was approved Monday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."

"LAREDO — Many Texans who live along the border with Mexico share the legend of La Llorona, a repentant mother who is said to have drowned her children in the Rio Grande. And they pass on another myth: Once you drink the river-fed tap water here, you are bound to the region."

"In recent years, California’s Agassiz’s desert tortoise population has been decimated by shootings, residential and commercial development, vehicle traffic, respiratory disease and predation by ravens, dogs and coyotes. Now, dwindling populations of the reptiles with scruffy carapaces and skin as tough as rhino hide are facing an even greater threat: longer droughts spurred by climate change in their Sonoran Desert kingdom of arroyos and burrows, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study."

"We've long known that the fish we eat are exposed to toxic chemicals in the rivers, bays and oceans they inhabit. The substance that's gotten the most attention — because it has shown up at disturbingly high levels in some fish — is."

But mercury is just one of a slew of synthetic and organic pollutants that fish can ingest and absorb into their tissue. Sometimes it's because we're dumping chemicals right into the ocean. But as a published recently in Nature, Scientific Reports helps illuminate, sometimes fish get chemicals from the plastic debris they ingest.

"LANSING, Mich. — State Natural Resources Director Keith Creagh prohibited drilling on land tracts in the Au Sable River’s “holy waters” corridor Thursday while approving oil and gas exploration leases that worried fly fishermen and environmentalists."