Water & Oceans

"Companies will not be able to keep trade secrets for hydraulic fracturing ingredients if a proposed Alaska rule is adopted."

"A Shell Oil drilling rig that ran aground in the Gulf of Alaska has incurred water damage to its deck and electrical systems but is otherwise stable, officials with the response team handling the accident said Thursday."

"Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that was drilling the BP Macondo well when it caught fire and sank off the Louisiana coast in 2010, beginning the nation's largest oil spill, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act and pay $1.4 billion in civil and criminal fines to settle violations of the Clean Water Act and federal offshore drilling safety regulations, the company and the U.S. Justice Department announced today."

"CONCORD, N.H. -- Nearly a decade after it was first brought, a lawsuit accusing two oil giants of widespread groundwater contamination in New Hampshire is expected to present jurors with the most complex and time-consuming trial in state history."

"The U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Dutch Shell were fighting 70 mile-per-hour winds and 40-foot swells as they tried to assess damage to a floating oil drilling ship that ran aground on a remote Alaskan island."

"GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- A companion agreement to a historic deal to remove four dams from the Klamath River has been renewed, giving supporters another two years to try to get Congress to pay for the work, officials said Monday."

"ANCHORAGE -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC's foray into Arctic offshore drilling has suffered a serious setback after one of its two Alaska drilling rigs ran aground in shallow water off a small island."

"WASHINGTON -- For the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose lands straddle the North and South Dakota border, river water means drinking supplies. For Illinois farmers, it's irrigation for their crops."

"Friends say he has the vigor of a younger man, but Ed Merrifield knows the truth. He is tiring at age 65, and ready to give up his demanding third career as the Potomac riverkeeper."

"Ruling in a bitterly contested case with national ramifications, a federal judge found Thursday that the Waterkeeper Alliance failed to prove that an Eastern Shore farm's chicken houses were polluting a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay."