Water & Oceans

"The striped bass is in trouble again. ... and some biologists say the problem may not be overfishing this time: It could be the weather."

"Struggling automatic dishwasher detergent manufacturers turn to chemical industry for help with phosphate-free formulas."

Cash-strapped communities across the country find themselves being courted by private companies -- including Goldman Sachs -- who want to buy their water utilities. They should heed the unhappy experiences of communities who have already privatized.

Water managers, farmers, electric utilities, skiers and some 30 million water users breathed a sigh of relief in recent weeks with news that snowpack in the basin of the Colorado River was better. The relief may be temporary. The drought that has plagued the region for 11 years may become the new "normal."

"A truce called in a bidding war for Canada's Baffinland Iron Mines sets the stage for an environmental battle over the Arctic project and the impact of shipping the ore through ocean ice to world markets."

"A Cold War 'red scare' campaign against compulsory medication helped kill off five years of fluoridation in this northern Wyoming city in 1954. The federal government has long since called fluoridation one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. But it was only a few weeks ago that Sheridan's City Council voted to resume fluoridating municipal drinking water."

"For the scientists aboard the WeatherBird II, the recasting of the Deepwater Horizon spill as a good-news story about a disaster averted has not been easy to watch. Over the past seven months, they, along with a small group of similarly focused oceanographers from other universities, have logged dozens of weeks at sea in cramped research vessels, carefully measuring and monitoring the spill's impact on the delicate and little-understood ecology of the deep ocean."

"In industrialized nations, people expect their drinking water to be pathogen free, thanks to treatment facilities that filter and disinfect the water. However, after reviewing 26 studies from 18 countries, two scientists conclude that some amoeba species called free-living amoebas (FLA) consistently survive these treatments and quickly multiply in drinking-water distribution and storage systems. Given their potential to spread disease, these microbes are a human health risk that demands further study, the researchers say."