As some warned, federal environmental agencies have begun to purge web info on topics like climate change. WatchDog TipSheet has that story, plus items about an unusual libel lawsuit, a news outfit using satellite for groundtruthing, a new source of online water data, how journalists can protect against surveillance and more.
"Rising nitrate levels in the Minnesota and Blue Earth Rivers are forcing Mankato to adjust how it provides drinking water to residents and potentially threatens the city's attempts to limit the amount of water it takes from the region's most critical aquifer."
"As local lawmakers continue to pressure the military to do more to clean massive groundwater pollution near its bases in Bucks and Montgomery counties, contaminant levels appear to have increased in the past year."
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it proposed a rule on Thursday to postpone compliance dates for effluent guidelines for steam electric power plants published in November 2015."
"ALLEGAN COUNTY, MI -- The Vande Bunte Eggs farm has racked up more than 200 state permit violations in the past three years. ... The farm has also benefitted from more than $1 million in federal subsidies."
"Can Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar oversee objective scientific research into rare species? Or is he rigging the process to keep them off the endangered list, as his critics charge?"
"Scientists think they have answered a whale of a mystery: How the ocean creatures got so huge so quickly."
Flooding is no longer just a local disaster story. As the phenomenon worsens and spreads, it simultaneously raises issues like development, insurance, stormwater management and climate change. The latest TipSheet runs down longer-term angles of flooding, and offers sources and tools to better cover your own flood stories.
"A new scientific analysis finds that the Earth’s oceans are rising nearly three times as rapidly as they were throughout most of the 20th century, one of the strongest indications yet that a much feared trend of not just sea level rise, but its acceleration, is now underway."
"One of the planet's most unique coral reef systems happens to be nestled in one of the world's most active oil and gas production areas. And for a decade, federal agencies and outside experts have studied how to better protect this fragile marvel, the only national marine sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico."
Advertisement 
