Water & Oceans

"NEW YORK – Cleaning up widespread corruption in the water supply industry is crucial to avert looming water conflicts born of desperation, warns a new United Nations report based on case studies in 10 countries.

“In many places … corruption is resulting in the hemorrhaging of precious financial resources,” siphoning an estimated 30 percent of funds earmarked for water and sanitation-related improvements, the report states.

"Oil and gas companies hoping to drill in the Atlantic Ocean will have to contend with a new federal proposal to declare waters off the Carolinas and Georgia as critical for endangered whales."

"U.S. shellfish producers in the Northeast and the Gulf of Mexico will be most vulnerable to an acidification of the oceans linked to climate change that makes it harder for clams and oysters to build shells, a study said on Monday."

"Wet winter storms that dropped up to a foot (30 cm) of rain on parts of California have modestly eased the state's ongoing drought over the past three months, U.S. drought experts said on Thursday."

"The strandings of a record number of sea lion pups along the California coast this year are linked to a puzzling weather pattern that has warmed their Pacific Ocean habitat and likely impacted fish populations they rely on for food, federal scientists said on Wednesday."

"Working late in a tiny Arkansas lab, Susan Wilde found herself alone with a killer."

"A federal judge in New Orleans has rejected BP's effort to cap its fines from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill at $9.57 billion, nearly one-third lower than the penalty federal prosecutors are seeking. The court has not yet ruled how much the British oil giant will pay for the disaster."

"California’s public drinking water systems violated safety levels for contaminants more than 1,000 times during the 2012-2013 fiscal year says a report that cites high levels in some water systems of arsenic, nitrates and other pollutants."

"LONDON — Cleaning up an oil field in a forbidding environment like the North Sea may be almost as formidable a task as developing one, and in the coming years, those waters are likely to serve as a laboratory for what happens when the useful lives of oil fields expire."

"Flame retardants and pesticide byproducts are showing up at potentially toxic levels in sharks, rays and other marine life in the Indian River Lagoon and in the ocean just off Brevard County."