Water & Oceans

"State commission in New Mexico will soon decide between benefits of diversion and water conservation for the Gila."

"One of the nation’s biggest coal companies will pay a record civil penalty and will spend tens of millions of dollars to clean up water flowing from mines in five states, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department announced on Wednesday."

"A large dam in Washington state has a 65-foot-long crack below its waterline, say officials who are planning repairs at the Wanapum Dam, which is owned by a county utility. Divers found the 2-inch-wide crack that runs sideways after an engineer noticed an odd curve in a conduit near the dam's roadway."

"OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Nearly 25 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the southern coast of Alaska, sea otters in the most affected parts of Prince William Sound have recovered to their pre-spill numbers, a federal report released on Friday showed."

"North Carolina regulators have cited five more Duke Energy power plants for lacking required storm water permits after a massive spill at one of the company’s coal ash dumps coated 70 miles of the Dan River in toxic sludge."

"The state department of environment and natural resources announced Monday that Charlotte-based Duke had been issued formal notices of violation for not having the needed permits, which are required to legally discharge rainwater draining from its plants into public waterways.

"TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A freshwater channel that separates Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas is a premier Midwestern tourist attraction and a photographer's delight, offering spectacular vistas of two Great Lakes, several islands and one of the world's longest suspension bridges. But nowadays the Straits of Mackinac is drawing attention for something that is out of sight and usually out of mind, and which some consider a symbol of the dangers lurking in the nation's sprawling web of buried oil and natural gas pipelines."

"WASHINGTON — The Obama administration moved closer to allowing oil and gas exploration off the Atlantic coast by releasing an environmental report Thursday that details how companies should protect marine wildlife if they want to start seismic testing in the area."

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia inspectors have discovered 600 more above-ground chemical storage tanks located near public drinking-water supplies, pushing their current inventory to more than 1,600 such tanks, according to data made public Thursday."

"Ten million scallops that have died in the waters near Qualicum Beach due to rising ocean acidity are the latest victims in a series of marine die-offs that have plagued the West Coast for a decade."

"Development of natural gas and wind resources in the Marcellus shale region could cover up nearly 1.3 million acres of land, an area bigger than the state of Delaware, with cement, asphalt and other impervious surfaces, according to a paper published this month in the scientific journal PLOS One."