Water managers, farmers, electric utilities, skiers and some 30 million water users breathed a sigh of relief in recent weeks with news that snowpack in the basin of the Colorado River was better. The relief may be temporary. The drought that has plagued the region for 11 years may become the new "normal."
"A truce called in a bidding war for Canada's Baffinland Iron Mines sets the stage for an environmental battle over the Arctic project and the impact of shipping the ore through ocean ice to world markets."
"A Cold War 'red scare' campaign against compulsory medication helped kill off five years of fluoridation in this northern Wyoming city in 1954. The federal government has long since called fluoridation one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. But it was only a few weeks ago that Sheridan's City Council voted to resume fluoridating municipal drinking water."
"For the scientists aboard the WeatherBird II, the recasting of the Deepwater Horizon spill as a good-news story about a disaster averted has not been easy to watch. Over the past seven months, they, along with a small group of similarly focused oceanographers from other universities, have logged dozens of weeks at sea in cramped research vessels, carefully measuring and monitoring the spill's impact on the delicate and little-understood ecology of the deep ocean."
"In industrialized nations, people expect their drinking water to be pathogen free, thanks to treatment facilities that filter and disinfect the water. However, after reviewing 26 studies from 18 countries, two scientists conclude that some amoeba species called free-living amoebas (FLA) consistently survive these treatments and quickly multiply in drinking-water distribution and storage systems. Given their potential to spread disease, these microbes are a human health risk that demands further study, the researchers say."
Now that you have long since published your story about the disappearance of BP's oil from the Gulf, you may want to check the math that story was based on using newly released technical information.
"Environmental health groups are now looking to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose tougher standards on fluoride in drinking water, building on a decision Friday by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to lower the recommended level for the first time in nearly 50 years."
"Scientists have found evidence of a 'drastic' shift since the 1970s in north Atlantic Ocean currents that usually influence weather in the northern hemisphere, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday."
New York regulators are working on a new plan that may limit more tightly the use of the pesticide aldicarb -- which has shown up in the shallow aquifer on which Long Island is especially dependent for drinking water.
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