Water & Oceans

"Of the Montana schools that have met the state’s program deadline, most show high levels of lead in school drinking water."

"A New Orleans-based oil company has agreed to turn over a $432 million cleanup trust fund and pay an additional $43 million to settle a federal lawsuit over cleaning up abandoned wells leaking since 2004, federal prosecutors said Wednesday."

"The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday it has applied for approval from safety authorities to construct an undersea tunnel and other facilities needed for the planned release of large amounts of treated radioactive water into the sea."

"Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the world’s most important fisheries."

"Lowndes County, Alabama, which sits between Selma and Montgomery, was once called Bloody Lowndes for its central role in the struggle for civil rights. Today people in Lowndes are fighting for another basic right: access to sewage treatment."

"EPA is expanding testing efforts for "forever chemicals" in the nation’s drinking water systems."

"When Washington, D.C., announced it was busy preparing for a wintry mix by making a cocktail of road-coating beet extract last week, some people were understandably confused. Beets and streets do not compute."

"Scores of studies presented this week at the world’s largest climate science conference offered an unequivocal and unsettling message: Climate change is fundamentally altering what kind of weather is possible, and its fingerprint can be found in the rising number of disasters that have claimed lives and upended livelihoods around the world."

"Vicki McDowell woke up on a Saturday morning in May, thinking about what she would make her son for breakfast. ... She walked to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. Turned on the faucet. Nothing happened."

"The Biden administration has found that huge arrays of offshore wind turbines off the coast of New York and New Jersey won’t cause significant impacts to the local environment, clearing the way for highly anticipated lease sales."