"TOKYO — Two and a half years after a series of meltdowns, Japan’s effort to clean up what remains of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is turning into another kind of disaster."
By KATE SHEPPARD
Americans — and humans in general — have long flocked to the coasts. Thirty-nine percent of the U.S. population, or about 123 million of us, live in coastal counties. But many in coastal areas are finding it increasingly less hospitable due to sea-level rise and extreme weather events linked to climate change. As communities figure out how to adapt to these changes, it is often environmental journalists who are being asked to cover these complex stories.
"TOLEDO, Ohio -- Toxins from blobs of algae on western Lake Erie are infiltrating water treatment plants along the shoreline, forcing cities to spend a lot more money to make sure their drinking water is safe."
"INCHELIUM, Wash. -- Imagine bringing your kids to the lake and wondering if they’d be better off at home, watching TV."
"BALTIMORE -- Even as some Fells Point residents worry that building over a capped toxic site at Harbor Point could endanger their health, records show elevated levels of cancer-causing chromium in groundwater just beyond the area targeted for an upscale development."
"South of Florida's Lake Okeechobee, hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar cane thrive in the heart of one of the world's largest wetlands. The Everglades stretches from the tip of the peninsula to central Florida, north of Lake Okeechobee."
"A proposed copper-nickel mine in northeast Minnesota would generate water pollution for up to 500 years and require billions of dollars in long-term cleanup costs, state regulators have concluded as they near a key stage in the project’s review."
"For the first time, a rigorous scientific investigation has associated a mass whale stranding with a kind of sonar that is widely used to map the ocean floor, a finding that has set off alarms among energy companies and others who say the technology is critical to safe navigation of the planet’s waters."
Water control structures — dams, locks, weirs, reservoirs, impoundments, and levees — are a gold mine of environmental stories. They affect not only the quality of life in human communities, but also the integrity of ecosystems. There are a variety of databases and data resources that can help reporters get a better grip on the many stories that center on dams and levees.
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