"At the Conowingo Hydroelectric Dam in northeast Maryland, the barbarians are at the sluice gates.
Sediment, millions of tons of it, has flowed down the 440-mile Susquehanna River for more than 80 years and massed at the dam. And now a reservoir built to hold it is filling up.
"Efforts to reduce pollution of the Chesapeake Bay are starting to pay off, a major new study says, finding that despite weather-driven ups and downs, the 'dead zone' that stresses fish and shellfish every summer has actually shrunk, on average, in recent years."
"The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released the outlines of its long-awaited probe into whether hydraulic fracturing -- the unconventional drilling technique that's led to a boom in domestic natural gas production -- is contaminating drinking-water supplies. Investigators will try to determine the impact of large-scale water withdrawals, aboveground spills of drilling fluids, and the fracturing process itself on water quality and quantity in states where tens of thousands of wells have been drilled in recent years."
A new EPA guidance promises flexibility in enforcing sewage overflow limits on cash-strapped cities who can not afford to upgrade their systems.
Levees have huge environmental and human impacts, but are often neglected by news media until disaster strikes. The NLD should make reporting both routine and crisis stories a lot easier. The bad news is that after several years of work by the Corps, only a small fraction of all the levees in the US have been entered into the database.
"The Supreme Court [Monday] decided -- for now -- not to get involved in ongoing litigation over California's endangered delta smelt."
"After a celebrated comeback from abysmal water conditions and high pollution levels in the 1970s, Lake Erie is regressing to the highest levels of phosphorous contamination in 40 years, a Great Lakes expert said on Thursday."
"The Army Corps of Engineers says it desperately needs about $1 billion to repair the damage from this year's catastrophic flooding in the Missouri and Mississippi basins."
Wetland acreage in the US declined during 2004-2009, reversing a slightly positive trend of net wetland gains during 1998-2004, according to the latest assessment from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, released Oct. 6, 2011.
US EPA, under a court-ordered deadline of Oct. 31, 2011, is to release a final rule establishing a Pesticides General Permit process, which would establish ways to reduce certain pesticide applications on or near waterways for control of mosquitoes, other flying insects, weeds, algae, animals, and forest canopy pests.
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