Water & Oceans

"How an esoteric piece of farm equipment created America’s breadbasket—and threatens to destroy it."

New research "suggests that massive long-term droughts can hit the region in conjunction with cycles of ocean warming and cooling — and that if these patterns continue to hold, another megadrought could lie in the future."

Florida environmental agencies said they are not legally required to notify homeowners whose well water was contaminated by a sinkhole at a major phosphate operation.

"MENOMINEE RESERVATION, Wisc. — Guy Reiter was an archaeologist before he was an activist. But the two merged after a dream six years ago. 'I was in a van and when we drove by the White Rapids I looked over and saw an elder sitting on a dam, in full Indian regalia,' Reiter says. 'He flagged me down, I climbed the dam, and he started talking to me in Menominee.'"

"In the waters off the coast of Hawaii, a tall buoy bobs and sways in the water, using the rise and fall of the waves to generate electricity. The current travels through an undersea cable for a mile to a military base, where it is fed into Oahu's power grid — the first wave-produced electricity to go online in the U.S."

"For decades, a creek in the mountains west of Denver sometimes ran yellow from toxic waste gurgling out of abandoned mines — a painfully familiar story in the picturesque wreckage of Colorado's 1859 gold rush. But after a three-decade, $62 million Superfund cleanup, Clear Creek now lives up to its pristine-sounding name, at least most of the time."

"Health workers are piecing together a complicated puzzle in El Paso County, Colo. In January, three cities — Security, Fountain and Widefield — noticed synthetic chemicals known as PFCs in the drinking water."

"The Senate has approved a $10 billion water projects bill that includes money for Flint, Michigan — nearly a year after a public health emergency was declared there because of lead-contaminated water."

"Tens of thousands of homes lost power across Taiwan on Wednesday as Super Typhoon Meranti hit the island, a storm seen as the strongest in the world so far this year, forcing schools and businesses to close and flights to be canceled."

"The floods that hit Louisiana last month were caused by rainfall that was unlike anything seen there in centuries."