Water & Oceans

"Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator, on a far-flung spit of white coral sand in the central Pacific, a massive, aging and weathered concrete dome bobs up and down with the tide. Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium."

"On a cold morning last March, Kenny Angel got a frantic knock on his door. Two workers from a utility company in northern Nebraska had come with a stark warning: Get out of your house. ...Minutes later, the dam came crashing down, unleashing a wave of water carrying ice chunks the size of cars. Angel’s home was wiped away; his body was never found."

"Hunched over a tank inside the Bodega Marine Laboratory, alongside bubbling vats of seaweed and greenhouses filled with algae, Kristin Aquilino coaxed a baby white abalone onto her hand."

"The Interior Department is proposing to award one of the first contracts for federal water in perpetuity to a powerful rural water district that had employed Secretary David Bernhardt as a lawyer and lobbyist."

"Lost and abandoned fishing gear which is deadly to marine life makes up the majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans, according to a report by Greenpeace."

"Attorneys arguing before the Supreme Court today attempted to turn water into whiskey. The justices searched for a standard of controlling pollution that travels through groundwater that would block regulated entities from evading the Clean Water Act while avoiding a significant expansion of the statute's federal permitting requirements."

A little-known disease caused by mycobacteria seems to be causing a decline of striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay.

"The Senate is prepared to walk away from provisions of a defense policy bill that would compel the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate a cancer-linked chemical that is leaching into the water supply, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told reporters Tuesday."

"After months of wrangling between local officials over whether to settle the case, justices for the nation's highest court are poised to hear arguments tomorrow [Wednesday] in County of Maui v. Hawai'i Wildlife Fund, a heated debate over the scope of the Clean Water Act."

"Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have been unwittingly exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water, with contamination in several cities consistently higher than they ever were in Flint, Michigan, according to an investigation that tested drinking water in hundreds of homes and reviewed thousands more previously undisclosed results."