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A 14-year-old federal loan program, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, has helped managers of community water systems like Steven Meade in Atlanta, Idaho, provide safe and clean water for their customers via loans. No more. Republican-led budget cuts mean Meade's community can't make its water fit to drink.

"Nearly 10 years after Japan's top utility first assured the government that its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was safe from any tsunami, regulators were just getting around to checking out the claim. The move was too little, too late."

"The federal government’s ability to gather and analyze energy data and produce market forecasts will be significantly impaired by the recently enacted budget cuts, the administrator of the Energy Information Administration said."

Climate change may be global, but it is already changing local North Carolina ecosystems in myriad ways. Beaches are eroding, shorelines are retreating, and birds are shifting their winter ranges. Even insects, fish, and frogs are changing behavior.

Incessant rains have delayed spring planting of corn from Minnesota to Indiana to Nebraska.

"Los Alamos National Laboratory must capture and eliminate toxic runoff from over 400 waste dump sites that discharge pollutants to the Rio Grande, a source of drinking water for Santa Fe, under a settlement agreement reached Thursday with community groups."

"With head-spinning speed, the Florida House took up and passed a major rewrite of state environmental laws late Friday that Florida conservation groups call one of the worst environmental bills in decades."

"A New York man who admitted smuggling nearly 4,000 live Chinese snakehead fish, which pose a danger to fish native to U.S. waters, was arrested on criminal charges, prosecutors said on Thursday."

"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia [Friday] rejected an attempt to overturn California's authority to implement greenhouse gas emissions standards for new cars brought by the National Automobile Dealers Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."

There is little evidence to suggest that tornado outbreaks like the one that devasted the South last week are related to global climate change.