There were just 12 of these hypoxic areas in the 1960s. Now there are more than 300, or nearly half of the 647 waterways investigated by a consortium of federal agencies that released its report on Sept. 3, 2010.
The invasive and harmful quagga mussel is showing up in Western states, and the Western states are fighting back.
The House Science Committee on Thursday holds a hearing to probe what went wrong thirteen years ago when a federal report whitewashed the health threats to Marines and their families from contaminated water at the Camp Lejeune, N.C., base.
"The federal government declared in April that basking sharks in the Pacific Ocean are a 'species of concern,' which means the government doesn't yet have enough information to say the giant fish is threatened or endangered, but it might be."
EPA has reissued the operating permit for the world's largest sewage treatment plant -- Blue Plains, which handles sewage from most of the DC metro area. Despite huge improvements in the Potomac River since the 1960s, Blue Plains needs to reduce its nitrogen discharge another 45 percent to protect the Chesapeake Bay.
"One-hundred-foot-tall waves can be nightmarish ship-swallowing monsters — or seductive sirens that tempt the adventurous. But it wasn't until 15 years ago that scientists were even able to prove that such giant rogue waves actually existed."
"Scientists on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico are finding a substantial layer of oily sediment stretching for dozens of miles in all directions. Their discovery suggests that a lot of oil from the Deepwater Horizon didn't simply evaporate or dissipate into the water — it has settled to the seafloor."
"A plan to ship 16 steam generators on the Detroit River and Great Lakes has sparked an international outcry. What alarms residents on the U.S. and Canadian sides of the waterways is the material inside the generators -- nuclear waste."
"The story of Hilmar is a classic tale of a company growing rapidly, bringing good jobs but also environmental threats to a rural farm community. In an ironic twist, though, it isn’t corporate outsiders pitted against town residents; the owners of Hilmar Cheese are descendants of the community’s founding families. Much of the well water around the cheese plant, located in the agricultural heart of California, isn’t fit to drink. And Hilmar Cheese is the likely culprit, new documents show."
A study involving hundreds of families in Maine is finding high levels of arsenic in drinking water. The highest risk is for those drinking from private wills, which are not subject to regulation. In Maine, 56 percent of residents live in homes with private wells.
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