Pennsylvania: "Conservationists Say State Waterways at Risk"
"Pennsylvania has 86,000 miles of rivers, streams and creeks — a total length eclipsed only by the vast wilderness in Alaska."
"Pennsylvania has 86,000 miles of rivers, streams and creeks — a total length eclipsed only by the vast wilderness in Alaska."
Several hundred thousand residents of the Toledo, Ohio, area remained Monday morning under an advisory not to drink their tapwater. Labs found microcystin, a toxin produced by blue-green algae, in the water. The algae are blooming in western Lake Erie, from which the city draws its water, because of phosphorus frpm farm runoff, lawn fertilizer, and sewage overflow. At a 3 am news conference, Mayor D. Michael Collins said the advisory would ramain in effect for some hours although tests showed microcystin in the water returning to safe levels. The crisis disrupted people's lives on a massive scale as bottled water was distributed.
North Carolina lawmakers said Thursday they still haven't reached agreement on legislation requiring Duke Energy to limit pollution leaking from its coal ash dumps across the state, nearly six months after a spill coated 70 miles of the Dan River with gray sludge."
"In the dog days of summer, Nick Anthony wouldn't swim in Lake of the Woods unless some money was involved."
"Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced new actions Tuesday aimed at curbing methane emissions form the nation's natural gas systems."
Here are some recent explainers of interest to environmental journalists from the CRS, which Congress does not allow to be released to the taxpaying public who paid for them. The WatchDog thanks those who leaked them and the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy for publishing them.
"Proposed answers from Environment Canada to questions about a 2013 oilsands leak triggered emails suggesting the ministry 'limit information' given to media."
"The Government Accountability Office is calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to step up enforcement of water contamination and seismic activity associated with fracking, the high-pressure injection of fluids into wells to extract oil and natural gas."
"A common ingredient in human laxatives and in the controversial dispersants that was used to break down oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill is still being found in tar balls four years later along Gulf Coast beaches including Perdido Key."
"The WWF contracted RPS Applied Science Associates to model 22 different oil spill scenarios and map the spread of the oil, potential impact on the water and shoreline, and interaction with sea ice, wildlife and the surrounding ecology."