"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."
Abrahm Lustgarten (left) wrote a nine-part series delving into farm subsidies and water policy. But his efforts to get the actual names of farm subsidy recipients or individual water users were largely thwarted. Read how info flows less quickly to the public than money and water flow to farmers in SPJ's FOI blog. Photo credit: Lars Klove.
"RIO DE JANEIRO - Thirteen rowers on the 40-member U.S. team came down with stomach illness at the World Junior Rowing Championships - a trial run for next summer's Olympics - and the team doctor said she suspected it was due to pollution in the lake where the competition took place."
"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy apologized Tuesday for a mine spill in Colorado that her agency caused last week and planned to travel to the area Wednesday, amid increasing criticism from lawmakers about the EPA’s response."
"When people urge the removal of dams they say are strangling rivers in the West, it’s usually fish they’re worried about. Studies of dam-removal projects show that migratory species like salmon respond quickly to improved conditions once a dam is removed. But the removal of a dam on the Elwha River in northern Washington State — the largest such project in the United States — is demonstrating that there can be another beneficiary: the beach."
"Keena Kimmel's bookshop occupies a cozy curve along the Animas River, a place of wild sunflowers and lilacs where fisherman try their luck and kayakers glide under iron bridges. But this weekend the river was empty and Kimmel's heart broken."
"NEW ORLEANS — Ten years ago, the neighborhood hard by the 17th Street canal in this city was water-blasted. The surges from Hurricane Katrina swept into the canal, broke through its flood walls and forced homes off their foundations. Much of New Orleans remained steeped in brackish filth for weeks until the sodden city could be drained."
"Three days after EPA workers triggered a huge blowout at a festering mine in southwestern Colorado, a mustard-colored plume — still fed by 548 gallons leaking per minute — stretched more than 100 miles, spreading contaminants including cadmium, arsenic, copper, lead and zinc."
For this latest installment of “Between the Lines,” a question-and-answer feature with authors, SEJournal book editor Tom Henry interviewed longtime SEJ member Cynthia Barnett about her third book, “RAIN: A Natural and Cultural History,” which came out in April. It’s a unique, ambitious book that goes beyond climate science and water in general to show how rain itself has been perceived around the world by numerous cultures throughout history. Barnett sees rain as “a unifying force in a fractured world.” She also is the author of two other highly acclaimed books,“Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.” and “Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis.
"Humpback whales don't just sing songs — they compose with the whales around them, singing a song that evolves over time. Scientists didn't know that until they started recording whale sounds in the 1960s and spent years listening."
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