Water & Oceans

"Missoula was the only city in Montana that had a privately owned water system. Now, after decades of effort, it has succeeded in taking back the utility. City leaders explain how it happened."

"The Beaufort Gyre, a key Arctic Ocean current, is acting strangely. Scientists say it may be on the verge of discharging a huge amount of ice and cold freshwater that could kick off a period of lower temperatures in northern Europe."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it will seek input from state and local officials as it considers how to rework a 1991 rule meant to protect people from lead and copper contamination in drinking water."

"Extreme weather left its mark across the planet in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history. Record heat baked Asia and the Arctic. Droughts gripped Brazil and southern Africa. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event in memory, killing large swaths of coral. Now climate scientists are starting to tease out which of last year’s calamities can, and can’t, be linked to global warming."

"Virginia regulators unexpectedly tossed the fate of the Atlantic Coast pipeline project up in the air yesterday, as what was widely expected to be a vote to let the natural gas pipeline proceed instead raised new questions about the project's timing and next steps forward."

"U.S. Steel failed to test a Lake Michigan tributary for highly toxic hexavalent chromium after blue liquid "with visible solids" poured out of one of the company's northwest Indiana plants in late October, according to documents posted online Tuesday by state regulators."

"When environmentalists press for the removal of river-choking old dams, George Howard can smell the money."

"The National Flood Insurance Program, designed to protect Americans from catastrophic floods, has failed in almost every way, encouraging people to buy and build in flood-prone areas while increasing the cost and magnitude of disasters."