Water & Oceans

"Companies have spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics crisis and may have breached a host of US laws, a new report argues."

"This has been a year of insurance sticker shock in the US. But the man who provides insurance to insurers thinks maybe the shock still isn’t enough to steer people away from risk in a changing climate."

"Almost 400 water systems serving nearly a million Californians don’t meet state requirements for safe and reliable drinking water supplies — and fixing them would cost billions of dollars."

"Hurricane Beryl strengthened to Category 5 status late Monday after it ripped doors, windows and roofs off homes across the southeastern Caribbean with devastating winds and storm surge fueled by the Atlantic’s record warmth."

"The severe floods sweeping through the Midwest are a potent example of how extreme weather damages the transportation arteries we all rely on."

"Water pollution levels in Paris' River Seine remain much higher than allowed for bathing, data showed on Friday, one month before the Olympics in which the capital's landmark waterway is meant to be one of the swimming venues."

"The "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm Hurricane Beryl barrelled across the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday afternoon toward the Caribbean's Windward Islands, where it is expected to bring life-threatening winds and flash flooding on Monday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said."

"The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to limit the broad regulatory authority of federal agencies could lead to the elimination or weakening of thousands of rules on the environment, health care, worker protection, food and drug safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more."

"Stephen Roe Lewis grew up seeing stacks of legal briefs at the dinner table — often, about his tribe’s water. His father, the late Rodney Lewis, was general counsel for the Gila River Indian Community and fought for the tribe’s rights to water in the Southwest, eventually securing in 2004 the largest Native American water settlement in U.S. history."

"Last year, the Supreme Court sharply restricted the federal government’s ability to limit pollution in small streams that sit dry for much of the year and fill up only after rainfall or snowmelt. Now, a new study finds that those bodies, so-called ephemeral streams, are significantly more important to the nation’s waterways than often appreciated."