"An environmental group petitioned the federal government on Thursday to immediately inspect more than 200 miles (320 km) of undersea oil pipelines off California's coast."
"In August 2014, chemicals from a Grupo México mine contaminated a main waterway. A Mexicoleaks Alliance investigation reveals that the spill control equipment at the Buenavista Copper Mine was not in compliance with regulations that federal authorities had failed to enforce since 2011. Now residents of seven Sonora municipalities are filing suit."
As August warms waters seasonally in many parts of the U.S., harmful algal blooms are causing health hazards. A prime example is Toledo, where high levels of an algal toxin made city drinking water unusable last year. Algal blooms in the warm, shallow Lake Erie are worsened by agricultural runoff. With climate warming, new algal blooms are showing up in new places, like the Pacific Ocean.
"Dolphins tend to strike a deep emotional chord in many people who encounter them. Famous for their intelligence and physical ability, there have been reports that the marine mammals have come to the rescue of humans at sea."
"MOSCOW -- Russia said on Tuesday it has resubmitted a claim to the United Nations for some 1.2 million square km of the Arctic shelf, a drive to secure more of the mineral-rich region where other countries have rival territorial interests."
"The U.S. has more than 11,000 flood control dams. Many were built more than half a century ago, and delayed maintenance is starting to catch up with them. The problem is particularly acute in Oklahoma, which has more than 2000 dams and which, this year, has record rainfall."
"Among the questions raised by Beijing's bid for the Winter Olympics was this one. Where are they going to get the snow? In its evaluation of the bid, the Olympic Committee noted minimal snowfall in the area, so the games, they concluded, will rely completely on artificial snow. And they acknowledge that northern China suffers from severe water stress and that the Beijing-Zhangjiakou area in particular is becoming increasingly arid."
"Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, never stingy with superlatives or shy about boosterism, has been bragging lately in a way that has neighboring Maryland steamed."
"The U.S. Coast Guard was investigating a large, patchy oil sheen that appeared off the Southern California coast west of Santa Barbara on Wednesday, not far from the site of a petroleum pipeline spill in May, officials said."
"MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- On a muddy hill above a World War II ordnance plant that made material for atomic bombs, a fracking crew will drill thousands of feet underground in a search for life itself. The drilling is a hunt for microscopic organisms, first introduced hundreds of millions of years ago, which have evolved to live in the shale 7,000 feet below the ground, at pressures 600 times that of the surface, and temperatures around 160 degrees F."
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