The planned oil-drilling in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's coast could bring spills harder to control than the Deepwater Horizon blowout. For centuries, native Inupiat have huted bowhead whales, bearded seals, walruses, and Caribou here. The Interior Department has approved exploration here by Shell, the company recently cited by the United Nations for decades of oil pollution in the Niger Delta.
Greater sage-grouse are at just 3% of their historical numbers, and warrant protection, according to the Bureau of Land Management. But since other species are in even more dire straits, the birds haven't been declared a threatened or endangered species. The US Dept. of Agriculture money is a work-around aimed at saving the birds and their habitat.
USDA continues to expand its Biomass Crop Assistance Program that provides financial incentives for producers of various biomass products with the latest selected project areas for growing camelina in CA, OR, WA, and MT, poplar trees in OR, and switchgrass in KS and OK.
Bayer CropScience has agreed to pay up to $750 million to about 11,000 farmers to compensate for contaminating two varieties of long-grain rice. The settlement requires participation of farmers who planted at least 85% of the average 2.2 million acres of long-grain rice grown each year from 2006 to 2009.
The states, territories, and Washington, DC, will share $37.4 million doled out through the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. The grants, administered by the National Park Service, match funding provided by states and local entities, and are supposed to be used for local parks, recreation, and conservation projects.
"The legacy of George Washington's centuries-old logging venture in the Great Dismal Swamp is contributing to the possible demise of a valuable ecosystem as a barely contained fire burns on the Virginia-North Carolina border, experts say."
"Unwilling to fix leaky water mains in Crestwood, a south suburb known for its penny-pinching ways, village leaders secretly supplemented their supplies for more than two decades with a community well they knew was contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals."
"Two Australian retirees invoke the 'father of modern science' in their fight against the hegemony of settled climate science. But their arguments - and the advisors supporting them - draw from a deep history of climate science denial and distortion."
Douglas Fischer reports for The Daily Climate August 16, 2011.
Bottled water companies seem to be actively marketing their products to minority groups. Latinos and African Americans spend a higher portion of their income on bottled water than whites do, and surveys say this is because they view tap water as risky. There is evidence that public drinking water systems in minority communities are either lacking or less safe.
"Warming temperatures could cut in half suitable trout habitat in the West over the next 70 years."
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