Water & Oceans

"Among the questions raised by Beijing's bid for the Winter Olympics was this one. Where are they going to get the snow? In its evaluation of the bid, the Olympic Committee noted minimal snowfall in the area, so the games, they concluded, will rely completely on artificial snow. And they acknowledge that northern China suffers from severe water stress and that the Beijing-Zhangjiakou area in particular is becoming increasingly arid."

"Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, never stingy with superlatives or shy about boosterism, has been bragging lately in a way that has neighboring Maryland steamed."

"The U.S. Coast Guard was investigating a large, patchy oil sheen that appeared off the Southern California coast west of Santa Barbara on Wednesday, not far from the site of a petroleum pipeline spill in May, officials said."

"MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- On a muddy hill above a World War II ordnance plant that made material for atomic bombs, a fracking crew will drill thousands of feet underground in a search for life itself. The drilling is a hunt for microscopic organisms, first introduced hundreds of millions of years ago, which have evolved to live in the shale 7,000 feet below the ground, at pressures 600 times that of the surface, and temperatures around 160 degrees F."

"RIO DE JANEIRO — Athletes in next year's Summer Olympics here will be swimming and boating in waters so contaminated with human feces that they risk becoming violently ill and unable to compete in the games, an Associated Press investigation has found."

"Though the amount of microcystin present in raw Lake Erie water near Toledo’s water-system intake Wednesday was double the amount detected two days earlier, city officials announced they planned to scale back testing for the toxin."

"WASHINGTON -- A new government rule that promises to do more to protect streams near coal mining operations entered a critical stage this week, with coal industry lobbyists and environmentalists already lining up for battle."

"Florida has more private property at risk from flooding linked to climate change than any other state, an amount that could double in the next four decades, according to a new report by the Risky Business Project."

"JOHNSON, Kan. -- The prairie wind buffeted Brant Peterson as he stood in a half-dead field of winter wheat."