Water & Oceans

"More than 300,000 Americans moved to flood or fire-prone counties last year, according to data from the real estate company Redfin."

"Debby, now a tropical storm, roared ashore Monday along the Big Bend coast of Florida, killing at least four people, flooding streets, and causing widespread power outages as the storm roared toward Georgia and South Carolina, where it's expected to bring catastrophic flooding this week."

"Driven by prolonged drought and inconsistent public water delivery, many Mexico City residents are turning to rainwater. Pioneering company Isla Urbana, which does both nonprofit and for-profit work, has installed more than 40,000 rain catchment systems across Mexico since the company was founded 15 years ago. And Mexico City’s government has invested in the installation of 70,000 systems since 2019, still a drop in the bucket for the sprawling metropolis of around 9 million."

"When Hurricane Idalia struck Florida last summer, a tree fell straight through a trailer occupied by a migrant-farmworker family in Hamilton County. They couldn’t afford to move, even temporarily, so the family of six just picked up the things they could salvage and continued to live around the rotting tree."

"Belgium has withdrawn from the mixed relay triathlon race on Monday and Switzerland has had to mix up its roster after athletes from both countries fell ill following the initial triathlon races last week."

"Brian Harrington entered the Illinois Department of Corrections system in 2007 at age 14, sentenced to 25 years in prison. ... He remembers the toilet water being brown—and sometimes the drinking water, too. He recalls the tap water’s sewer smell and the black specks swirling, then settling, in his cup."

"On March 14, 2016, in the squid grounds off the coast of Patagonia, a rusty Chinese vessel called the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was fishing illegally, several miles inside Argentine waters. Spotted by an Argentine coast guard patrol and ordered over the radio to halt, the ship fled the scene. The Argentinians gave chase and fired warning shots. Then the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 tried to ram the coast guard cutter, prompting it to open fire and sink the Chinese ship."

"Due largely to lagging prevention efforts in the Midwest, the low-oxygen area of the Gulf of Mexico is larger than expected this year, prompting fish and shrimp to flee nearly 4 million acres of habitat and killing off bottom-dwelling species."

"The international agency charged with regulating seabed mining worldwide voted on Friday to replace its top executive, after accusations that the British lawyer running the agency was too closely aligned with the mining industry."

"The center of Hurricane Debby is expected to reach the Big Bend coast of Florida early Monday bringing potential record-setting rains, catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge as it moves slowly across the northern part of the state before stalling over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina."