Water & Oceans

"An aquarium and an engineering firm in Massachusetts are partnering on a project to better protect whales by monitoring them from space."

"Their catch this year has plummeted, while their exports to China have been gutted by the trade war. The government has imposed strict quotas on their primary bait. And they’re facing serious lawsuits that could affect how they fish."

"Antofagasta, situated on the edge of the Atacama Desert, relies on a vast desalination plant which provides the city with drinking water – but the waste brine is killing wildlife, say fishermen"

"A bill that would require the EPA to regulate PFAS, an emerging family of chemicals contaminating U.S. municipal and private water supplies, is slated to be the first major legislation that the House will take up in 2020."

"What scientists can see and measure, in the garbage patches and on beaches, accounts for only a tiny fraction of the total plastic entering the water".

"In a desert far from any city, farmers use groundwater to grow lush green hay. The hay fattens livestock all over the world. But there's a big problem: The water is drying up."

"Jim Beam was fined $600,000 earlier this month after a July warehouse fire sent a nearly 23-mile plume of alcohol into the Kentucky and Ohio rivers, killing fish."

"Officials in Mississippi are trying to force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River Commission to consult with them before opening the Bonnet Carré Spillway in Louisiana again and flooding the region with polluted river water."

"Disaster appeared imminent at the nation's tallest dam on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017....Catastrophe was averted. But the event awakened the public to the risks posed by the country's aging dam infrastructure."

"The Interior Department is moving to formally define "habitat" in the Endangered Species Act, part of an anticipated second wave of changes to the bedrock conservation law under the Trump administration."