Breaking Waves: Ocean News

United Utilities has dropped legal fight to block access to data on the discharge of treated sewage in Lake District The water company United Utilities has conceded defeat in its legal battle to block public access to data on treated sewage it is discharging into Windermere in the Lake District. Company officials initially claimed that data from phosphorus monitors at a main sewage treatment works at the lake was not environmental information. The company also wanted to block access to data from Cunsey Beck, a site of special scientific interest, which flows into Windermere. Continue reading...

Environmentalists are braced for new construction on the president’s signature border wall – and the damage that would wreak During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, he began an ambitious and costly border militarization program, including the construction of over 450 miles of wall that severed wildlife corridors and fragmented ecosystems in some of the country’s most remote and biodiverse regions. With his second inauguration on Monday, environmentalists are bracing for any new phase of construction that could exacerbate the ecological toll of the border wall. “It’s an absolute travesty and a disaster for border wildlife,” said Margaret Wilder, a human-environment geographer and political ecologist at the University of Arizona, regarding the environmental impact of the existing border wall and the prospect of renewed construction. She said the wall harmed efforts “after many decades of binational cooperation between the US and Mexico to protect this fragile and biodiverse region. I don’t think Americans realize what is at stake.” Continue reading...

A combustible combination of factors laid the groundwork for disaster. Will LA learn the lessons from the fires as it moves forward? Dr Edith de Guzman watched the flames of the Palisades fire rolling through the Santa Monica mountains out of the windows of her University of California, Los Angeles, classroom last week. First, on Tuesday, flames surged toward the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the affluent community overlooking the ocean from the canyons in west LA. Then overnight, they tore through parts of Altadena, a diverse town in the city’s east that had served as a refuge for Black Angelenos. Continue reading...

Blaze erupts in Monterey county at one of world’s largest battery storage plants, causing highway and school closures A fire at one of the world’s largest battery-storage plants in northern California flared up again on Friday afternoon, sending up plumes of toxic smoke after authorities had said the blaze was mostly over. The fire in Moss Landing in Monterey county started on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of up to 1,500 people and the closure of a major highway. Fire crews were not engaging with the fire but rather waiting for it to burn out on its own, a local fire official said. Continue reading...