Water & Oceans

"Could the end be near for one of the West’s biggest dams?"

"Texas would rely more on treated toilet water and pumping rainwater into aquifers to serve its booming population over the next half-century under the state's 2017 water plan approved Thursday."

"With clay soil and tabletop-flat terrain, Houston has endured flooding for generations. Its 1,700 miles of man-made channels struggle to dispatch storm runoff to the Gulf of Mexico. Now the nation's fourth-largest city is being overwhelmed with more frequent and more destructive floods."

"The EPA announced new drinking water health advisory levels today for the industrial chemicals PFOA and PFOS. The new levels — .07 parts per billion (ppb) for both chemicals — are significantly lower than standards the agency issued in 2009, which were .4 ppb for PFOA and .2 ppb for PFOS."

"The Dungeness crab fishery could decline West Coastwide, a new study has found, threatening a fishing industry worth nearly a quarter-billion dollars a year."

"The NAACP has filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan and its governor on behalf of the residents and businesses in Flint, where high levels of lead in the drinking water has created a health crisis."

"A Houston-based pipeline company has been indicted in California on 46 criminal charges stemming from a major oil spill last year that forced beach closures and fouled miles of shoreline near Santa Barbara, prosecutors said on Tuesday."

"The world’s smallest porpoise, the vaquita, is slipping closer to extinction despite the Mexican Navy’s efforts to protect it and its habitat from illegal fishing, experts have warned."

"As [North Carolina] state regulators prepare to release risk assessments of Duke Energy coals ash waste impoundments this week, a state health official divulged that some health officials opposed the state’s reversal of warning that drinking wells near the waste posed health risks."

"The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Exxon Mobil Corp's appeal of a $236 million judgment against the oil company in a case brought by the state of New Hampshire over groundwater contamination linked to a gasoline additive."