ANNAPOLIS — At least nine U.S. military sites along the Chesapeake Bay are leaking contaminated fluids known as “forever chemicals” into the estuary, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group published on Aug. 11.
The Washington-based environmental organization released the study after gaining access to Department of Defense records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The records found high levels of contamination in the Bay from toxic, man-made chemicals known as Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which do not break down in the environment, posing serious health risks that can cause cancer.
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Category: Water News
Congress is preparing to infuse a historic amount of money into the nation’s drinking water systems — but whether that money will meet President Biden’s environmental justice goals will largely fall into the hands of states unlikely to consider race or how accessible those funds are to struggling communities, according to a new report.
The groundbreaking analysis released today reveals that, over the past decade, states have been less likely to spend money from EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program on smaller and more diverse communities. Opting to release the majority of funds as loans, states are also providing fewer grants than federal law allows, possibly boxing impoverished communities out of federal funding for water infrastructure improvements.
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(CNN)A bipartisan group of senators unveiled the legislative text of the infrastructure bill on Sunday night after months of negotiations.
In total, the deal includes $550 billion in new federal investments in America’s infrastructure over five years.
However, it is far short of the $2.25 trillion proposal that President Joe Biden unveiled in March. That measure, known as the American Jobs Plan, included money for roads, bridges and public transportation, but it drew criticism from many Republicans for also making investments in areas not traditionally considered infrastructure, such as caregiving for aging Americans and workforce training.
Photo Credit: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Climate scientists and marine advocates are calling on governments worldwide to look beyond green policymaking when it comes to climate change. They say a critical shade is missing in the fight against global warming.
Blue.
Countries must recognize the important role that oceans have in limiting climate change and enact policies to protect marine ecosystems, the U.K.-based Environmental Justice Foundation said yesterday in a report endorsed by environmental experts and advocates.
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Greenberg/Getty Images
The EPA included PFAS in a draft of a list of contaminants that may be subject to future regulation, but local water-quality activists are calling for more action more quickly.
Every five years, the Environmental Protection Agency creates an updated list of water contaminants. The list released last week includes several dozen chemicals and microbes, as well as the entire category of substances often called PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
PFAS are a family of thousands of different manmade chemicals also sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down naturally. The chemicals are used in common household items to make surfaces nonstick, stain-proof and waterproof.
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Photo Credit: Kimberly Haas/Union Leader File Photo
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Photo Credit: Kimberly Haas/Union Leader File Photo
A fracking boom in the Gulf of Mexico poses a major risk to human health and wildlife, a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has found.
The report, published Wednesday, calculated that oil and gas companies had dumped at least 66.3 million gallons of fracking fluids into the vulnerable waters of the Gulf between 2010 and 2020 with government approval.
“Offshore fracking threatens Gulf communities and wildlife far more than our government has acknowledged. To protect life and our climate, we should ban these extreme extraction techniques,” CBD oceans program director Miyoko Sakashita said in a press release. “A decade into the offshore fracking boom, officials still haven’t properly studied its public health impacts. The failure to curb this major source of pollution is astounding and unacceptable.”
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BOSTON — Tests of surface water found a toxic brew of “forever chemicals” in the state’s major rivers and tributaries, environmental officials said Tuesday.
The tests, conducted last fall by the U.S. Geological Survey, found per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in each of the 27 rivers and brooks sampled for the substances, which have been used to make products from frying pans to firefighting foam.
In many cases, levels exceeded the state’s standard for drinking water of 20 parts per trillion.
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Photo Credit: Ken Gallagher
Last Saturday, just as a historic heat wave hit the Northwest, thousands of people took to the north fork of the Coeur d’Alene River in Shoshone County, Idaho.
Groups on inner tubes and unicorn floaties and kayaks and rafts floated the crystal-clear waters after parking wherever they could find space along stretches of road lining either side of the river.
Some park their RVs for weekend getaways throughout the summer on private property rented along the river in this county of about 12,600 people. Others set up canopies and barbecues on any beach or rocky “sand bar” they can find. Locals say litter and trespassing can be common problems.
Meanwhile, kids splash each other as they run up and down the shores playing in the shallows — shallows that, in many places, are highly contaminated with toxic levels of lead, arsenic, mercury and more.
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Photo Credit: Samantha Wohlfeil/Inlander
By almost every measure, the drought in the Western U.S. is already one for the record books.
Almost half the country’s population is facing dry conditions. Soils are parched. Mountain snowpacks produce less water. Wildfire risk is already extreme. The nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, is headed to its lowest level since it was first filled in the 1930s.
The past year has been the driest or second driest in most Southwestern states since record keeping began in 1895. Farms and cities have begun imposing water restrictions, but Western states are facing a threat that goes deeper than a single bad year. The hotter climate is shrinking water supplies, no matter what the weather brings.
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A skyline of smokestacks appears on the horizon before the rest of Corpus Christi does. Approaching Texas’ “Sparkling City by the Sea” on I-37, a palm-tree-lined highway running from San Antonio to the Gulf Coast, it’s tough to tell where the billowing exhaust from oil refineries ends and the rain clouds begin. Massive storage domes, tangles of pipes, and burning flares reach into the sky, and a potpourri of gasoline, sulfur, and unidentified chemical-burning smells fill the air.
In Texas, it’s normal to see an oil refinery or a petrochemical plant as big as a football stadium, with another one behind it, and another one behind that. And it’s just as normal to see a neighborhood in the shadows of those massive polluters.
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Photo Credit: Rahim Fortune/Rolling Stone