Water & Oceans

"Activists condemn refusal to allow Arctic Sunrise icebreaker entry to Northern Sea Route as attempt to stifle peaceful protest."

"ROCKAWAY BEACH, Ore. -- From her front porch, Nancy Webster has a clear view of the hills just east of the coast highway, a western hemlock forest that's home to Rockaway Beach's water supply."

"Japan will raise the severity rating of a recent toxic water leak at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant to level 3, or 'serious incident', on an international scale for radiological releases, underlining the deepening sense of crisis at the site."

"The US Bureau of Reclamation announced the cut Friday, from Lake Powell, because of drought conditions. While the move involving the Colorado River will be hard for people to detect at the faucet, it carries symbolic importance."

"A new law meant to stabilize the federal government's money-losing flood-insurance program is starting to send rates sky high, prompting a growing backlash in coastal areas."

"The Biggert-Waters law, enacted in 2012 before superstorm Sandy hit the Eastern Seaboard, requires that government insurance premiums for the 5.6 million property owners in flood-prone regions be set at a level that better reflects the full risk of flooding. It was prompted by cumulative losses that had ballooned to $24 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program.

"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Federal officials are declaring a fishery disaster for Florida's oyster industry in the Gulf of Mexico.

The collapse of the oyster industry last year followed a drought that reduced freshwater into Apalachicola Bay. But state officials have also blamed the lack of freshwater flow due to increased consumption in Georgia.

"Lake Okeechobee keeps rising — and so do worries about an aging dike the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ranks among the most vulnerable to failure in the country."

"Federal scientists investigating an unusually high number of dead bottlenose dolphins washing up on the East Coast said on Thursday the carcasses are showing up at a rate that is seven times higher than usual."

"MELBOURNE, Fla. — The first hint that something was amiss here, in the shallow lagoons and brackish streams that buffer inland Florida from the Atlantic’s salt water, came last summer in the Banana River, just south of Kennedy Space Center. Three manatees — the languid, plant-munching, over-upholstered mammals known as sea cows — died suddenly and inexplicably, one after another, in a spot where deaths were rare."