Water & Oceans

"A decade after city officials promised to cut flood risks in the Edgemere neighborhood, critics say it remains just as vulnerable."

"The natural disaster has deepened the precarious situation in the eastern part of the island. Those who lost everything are unsure how to rebuild their lives amid the various crises affecting them"

"Fifteen days after Tropical Storm Helene sent debris, runoff and a cocktail of toxins — including raw sewage and pharmaceuticals — pouring into the French Broad River in the fall of 2024, Shea Tuberty set out to investigate the damage."

"Mining company Blue Moon Metals plans to dispose of its mining waste in Repparfjord, a nationally protected salmon fjord in the Norwegian Arctic that Indigenous Sámi fishers rely on."

"Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the desert Southwest."

"For the past eight years, one of the primary objectives of the annual negotiations has been to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the temperatures in the late 1800s. ... But that goal is no longer plausible, scientists say. Humanity has not cut planet-warming pollution quickly enough, and the planet will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, likely in the next decade, according to a recent United Nations report."

"The plan from the Interior Department is one of the president’s most significant steps yet to increase domestic fossil fuel production."

"The Trump administration on Thursday announced a plan to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region off Alaska in the northern Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.

The plan is one of President Trump’s most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.

"Despite the Makah Tribe’s success in getting a waiver to carry out their exclusive treaty right for whaling, the permitting process that had dragged on for over 20 years has now been effectively delayed  another year and a half – because of bogged-down federal bureaucracy. The Makah Tribe is the only one in the Lower 48 that has an exclusive treaty right to whaling."

"A draft of a much-anticipated report on reforms to the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been whittled down in size, with recommendations compiled by a council appointed by the president slashed and amended by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s office, according to three people familiar with the developments."

"To many locals, the Los Angeles River — hugged by concrete embankments and heavy vehicle traffic — hardly seems like a river at all. ... But when Doug Rosenberg came upon a shopping cart tipped over in the river's shallow waters back in 2020, he saw the potential to meet nature halfway."