As the 10th anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe approaches, many news media are doing stories that try to make sense of it. For journalists, it's an inexhaustible subject because it's about people's lives and the moral perils of the governments we choose. It's about the looming catastrophes we deny.
"A former chemical company executive charged over a spill that fouled the drinking water of about 300,000 West Virginians pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors on Tuesday, according to federal court documents."
"The lobster population has crashed to the lowest levels on record in southern New England while climbing to heights never before seen in the cold waters off Maine and other northern reaches — a geographic shift that scientists attribute in large part to the warming of the ocean."
"A toxic algae bloom that began off the West Coast this spring now stretches from California to Alaska. It’s poisoning marine life from shellfish to sardines to sea lions, and scientists say it’s one of the worst they’ve seen."
"A stretch of river fouled by toxic waste from an abandoned gold mine in southwestern Colorado last week was reopened to kayaking and rafting on Friday while water from river-fed irrigation canals was deemed safe for crops and livestock."
"Christopher Clark, who directs the bioacoustics research program at Cornell University, is among the world's best scientific listeners. His work has revealed how human-made noise is filling the ocean, making it harder for marine animals to hear their own world. But Clark didn't start out with much interest in whales at all."
"The issue of abandoned mines and their legacy of water pollution is not unique to Colorado. Abandoned mines across Ohio have polluted streams and creeks for decades, turning waterways orange and lacing them with sulfuric acid, dissolved metals and toxic sediments."
"Los Angeles has been blackballed. The city has completed a program of covering open-air reservoirs with floating "shade balls" to protect water quality."
"Last September, the remote community of Point Lay on Alaska’s North Slope became the focus of headline news when a staggering 35,000 walruses crowded onto the shore nearby. And now, some scientists are saying a similar event could happen this summer — in fact, any time now."
"While crews begin the arduous task of cleaning up Colorado’s Animas River — where contamination by heavy metals and toxins leaked from an abandoned hard rock mine turning the water orange — thousands of other natural sites across the American West remain at risk from similarly hazardous defunct quarries."
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