Water & Oceans

"SAN DIEGO — Almost hidden in the northern hills, the pilot water treatment plant here does not seem a harbinger of revolution. It cost $13 million, uses long-established technologies and produces a million gallons a day. But the plant’s very existence is a triumph over one of the most stubborn problems facing the nation’s water managers: if they make clean drinking water from wastewater, will the yuck factor keep people from accepting it?"

"The California Department of Fish and Game intends to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over its policy banning trees on levees."

"HONG KONG -- On Midway atoll in the North Pacific, dozens of young albatross lie dead on the sand, their stomachs filled with cigarette lighters, toy soldiers and other small plastic objects their parents have mistaken for food."

"Enthusiasm for offshore wind projects may have cooled among developers in the United States these days, but the Obama administration is still trying to make a ribbon of wind farms off the Atlantic Coast a reality."

"The millions of gallons of chemical-laced wastewater that fracking produces must flow somewhere, and Ohio is trying not to be that place."

"MIAMI -- The U.S. is not ready to handle an oil spill if drilling off the Cuban coast goes awry but can be better prepared with monitoring systems and other basic steps, experts told government officials Monday."

"Keeping the invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes will involve re-reversing the flow of the Chicago River -- an engineering marvel completed a century ago through a complex network of rivers, canals, and locks, a new study said on Tuesday."

"Sea currents act like a conveyor belt, depositing trash on a remote stretch of sand in an ecologically rich region of coral reef and mangrove forests. Locals can only pick up the pieces, bit by bit."