Water & Oceans

"In the Chesapeake Bay, a fight is raging over a little fish with an outsized importance."

"Over the week of July 4, 2022, people flocking to Chesapeake Bay’s Virginia coast were met at the water’s edge by hordes of ghastly visitors: schools of hand-sized silver menhaden washed up by the thousands, their carcasses floating in the surf in the summer’s heat. By the week’s end, as the fish liquefied in a dumpster at a nearby wharf, circulating petitions were gaining signatures.

"The vast genetic diversity of corals means there are some that may survive warming waters. Now scientists just need to find them."

"More than 100 coal ash waste sites, many unregulated, sit just feet from the Great Lakes, raising concerns for nearby communities and the 30 million people who rely on the lakes for drinking water."

"The Colorado River is in crisis. The problem has been building for decades but has come to a head in recent years because the major manufactured reservoirs on the river have fallen to dangerously low levels, prompting the Biden administration to call for unprecedented cuts in water usage among the 40 million people who rely on the river."

"For the first time, the U.S. government in 2022 included methane emissions from dams and reservoirs in its annual report of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions to the Inventory of Greenhouse Gases and Sinks required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

"Sturgeon are disappearing from North American rivers where they thrived for millions of years. And the quest to save them is exposing the limits of the Endangered Species Act."

"A New Jersey beach town that defied state environmental authorities and fixed its dunes that were seriously eroded by a storm can proceed with a lawsuit seeking to recover $21 million it spent bulking up its shoreline, but cannot build a bulkhead to permanently thwart the waves, a judge ruled Wednesday."

"A company seeking to build an oilfield waste dump near wells and waterways in East Texas has showered regulators with upwards of $50,000 in political contributions since 2019." "McBride Operating LLC and owner Joseph McBride contributed to the political campaigns of the three sitting commissioners of the Texas Railroad Commission now considering his request."