Water & Oceans

"NEW YORK — A clean-water advocate took an Earth Day swim in the polluted Gowanus Canal, a federal Superfund site."

"House appropriators on Wednesday advanced a $35.4 billion bill that would fund energy and water development for fiscal year 2016." Democrats failed to remove GOP policy riders.

"President Obama used the backdrop of the Florida Everglades this Earth Day to highlight the dangers posed by a changing climate. He also took a swipe at Florida's Republican governor, who's been accused of discouraging state workers from discussing global warming."

"Storm surge thrown onshore by tropical systems can kill, destroy property and reshape coastlines. Here’s another negative for the list: Depending on the makeup of the soil and local infrastructure, it can also contaminate water deep in the ground."

"Five years after the largest oil spill in U.S. history spewed millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, many Louisiana oystermen are fearful that a once-bountiful population of the mollusks may never recover."

"MEXICO CITY — President Enrique Peña Nieto and his top military commanders flew to a modest fishing village in Mexico’s far northwest on Thursday and made a promise to protect a small porpoise called the vaquita that is on the edge of extinction."

"Although contaminants buried in the sediments of Green Bay may be out of sight, they should not be out mind, according to research published last month in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. Two invasive species – the quagga mussel and round goby – can allow a group of toxic chemicals deposited more than 45 years ago to reenter the food web, passing them to predatory fish and possibly people."

"OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO — A blanket of fog lifts, exposing a band of rainbow sheen that stretches for miles off the coast of Louisiana. From the vantage point of an airplane, it's easy to see gas bubbles in the slick that mark the spot where an oil platform toppled during a 2004 hurricane, triggering what might be the longest-running commercial oil spill ever to pollute the Gulf of Mexico."

"In the five years since the Deepwater Horizon accident, the oil and gas industry has not retreated to safety. Instead, it has expanded its technological horizon in ways that make it harder to foresee the complex interactions between drilling technologies, inevitable human errors and the ultra-deepwater environment."

"Two Tennessee environmental groups claim toxic pollution from a coal-burning power plant is seeping into the Cumberland River and state regulators are not doing enough to stop it."