Agriculture

"This year's bloom is predicted by NOAA to be much larger than average - just under the size of the 2014 bloom that left 500,000 without drinking water".

"The forecast for western Lake Erie for later this summer into fall?: Green and mucky.

The algae blooms that have plagued the lake in recent years are expected to be worse than normal this year, well above the size at which they can potentially become harmful to aquatic life and even humans, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters announced Thursday.

"In April 2016, Monica Eng of WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR station, published a critical story revealing that the agrichemical giant Monsanto had quietly paid a professor at the University of Illinois to travel, write, and speak about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and even to lobby federal officials to halt further GMO regulation."

"The Missouri Department of Agriculture announced July 7 it is banning the sale and use of dicamba products in Missouri effective immediately, after a second summer with numerous complaints of dicamba herbicides drifting and causing damage."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing lower biofuel quotas in 2018 than those currently on the books and required by federal law."

"Fishing and environmental groups sued the Trump administration [June 29] for concluding that Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) plan to replumb California's water system would not jeopardize key threatened species.

Brown wants to build two 40-foot-diameter tunnels buried 150 feet below ground to shuttle water around the ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the state's two main rivers meet before flowing to the ocean through San Francisco Bay.

"The world’s largest ever field trial demonstrates widely used insecticides harm both honeybees and wild bees, increasing calls for a ban".

"The Trump administration took a big step Monday toward clearing the way for construction of two giant tunnels that would siphon water from the Sacramento River and send it south to farms and cities."

"Toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes have dropped but invasive species and algal blooms threaten the lakes' ecosystems and keep them from being truly great, says a new report from the U.S. and Canadian governments."

"California’s largest lake is drying up. The Salton Sea has been shrinking for years, and fish and birds have been dying. The dry lakebed already spews toxic dust into the air, threatening a region with hundreds of thousands of people. And the crisis is about to get much worse."

"The overwhelming majority of bats are friends of humanity. They gobble up the insects that bite us and ruin our crops. They pollinate flowers and they replant forests by spreading seeds around. But as agriculture overtakes rain forests and jungles, humans have come into conflict with one bat species: the common vampire bat."