water

The United Nations’ UNESCO committee has voted to not add the Great Barrier Reef to its “in danger” list, despite the biggest die-off of coral ever at the World Heritage Site. "We're taking every action possible to ensure this great wonder of the world stays viable and healthy for future generations to come,” Australia's Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio.

The EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are moving to rescind the 2015 Clean Water Rule, which clarifies which waters are federally protected from pollution under the original 1972 Clean Water Act. A statement from the agencies calls the rule, known as Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, an example of federal overreach.

After a commercial fisherman pulled a live Asian carp out of a northern Illinois river that empties into Lake Michigan, authorities have expressed concern that more of the invasive species have made it past electric barriers meant to keep them out of the Great Lakes, says the LA Times.

Heavy rainfall in May washed the equivalent of an estimated 2,800 rail cars of nitrogen fertilizer down the Mississippi River and will create the third-largest fish-killing "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico in 32 years of monitoring, say federal scientists. They forecast a low-oxygen dead zone of 8,185 square miles, about the size of New Jersey.

In the face of industry complaints, the Food and Drug Administration said it would extend the date, now set for January 2018, to comply with agricultural water standards for produce. In an announcement, the agency said "the length of the extension is under consideration" and will be determined "using appropriate procedures at a later time." The extension does not apply to sprouts.

A private security firm used to hunting militants in Afghanistan and Iraq was hired by the Texas-based pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners to track protestors at Standing Rock, South Dakota.

While California languished in a five-year drought, most state water districts didn’t adhere to a 2007 law that required them to track how much water they delivered to farms, reports The Sacramento Bee.

Unless critical habitat is protected and restored, researchers say three-quarters of California's 31 native trout, steelhead and salmon species "will be extinct in the next 100 years," says the Sacramento Bee. "California’s record-breaking drought that officially ended this winter wreaked havoc on many of the already-struggling fish, which depend on cold water."

Three new studies show that the West is running low on water, and that much of that decline is a result of climate change, says High Country News.

Salmon fishermen are among many groups in Alaska upset by the EPA’s announcement that the Pebble Limited Partnership can now file for a mining permit in Bristol Bay, in the southwestern part of the state.

U.S. commercial fishing profits and jobs were down in 2015, due mostly to environmental issues, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in its Fisheries Economics of the United States report. Earnings for 2016 have not yet been released.

When drought reduced streamflows and irrigation water allotments, growers in California's Central Valley pumped more water from their wells. Now a study by NASA and Stanford scientists says decades of overpumping permanently reduced the storage capacity of the aquifer beneath the valley by 336,000 to 606,000 acre-feet, which could exceed the capacity of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that is the primary water supply for San Francisco.

Voluntary action will not clean up Iowa waterways, so the state Legislature must "create bold laws that address water pollution," said Bill Stowe, chief executive of the Des Moines Water Works. The utility's board of trustees decided to seek a legislative solution to high nitrate levels in the Raccoon River rather than appeal the dismissal of their lawsuit against drainage districts in three counties in northwestern Iowa.

Back-to-back coral bleachings in 2016 and 2017 have left only the southern third of the Great Barrier Reef untouched, and experts are predicting the death of the entire ecosystem.

In a case that could have ramifications for farms and ranches across the arid west, a Native American tribe in Coachella, Calif., has set a new precedent for tribal ownership rights to groundwater.

Gov. Larry Hogan signed into law a ban on hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, in oil and gas production in Maryland, said the Associated Press. "Supporters of the ban said it was the first in the nation approved by a legislature in a state that has natural gas underground."

Two years after an extremely dry winter led to restrictions on water use, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas is among the deepest on record, says the Los Angeles Times. An end-of-winter measurement by state snow survey chief Frank Gehrke found 94 inches of snow near the town of Phillips.

As part of initiatives related to Earth Day, the Biden administration set "a bold, new national goal to protect, restore, and reconnect 8 million acres of wetlands and 100,000 miles of our nation's rivers and streams" on Tuesday. The initiative could be the overdue response to the Supreme Court decision in 2023 that limited federal protection of wetlands but only seven states are currently taking part, said an attorney active in water law.