LEED Points

Tag: water

  • Documents Show Australia Ignored Expert Advice Against Dredge and Dump in Great Barrier Reef

    Last December the Australian Federal government gave the go-ahead to dredge and dump in the Great Barrier Reef. It did so despite strong, expert advice from the independent authority charged with protecting the reef that it was dangerous to the reef’s health. [caption id="attachment_324523" align="alignnone" width="500"] Graphic courtesy of Greenpeace[/caption] Newly released internal documents clearly show that…

  • Climate Change Effects Antarctica’s Ocean Salinity, Traping Heat in Deep Water

    In the mid-1970s, the first available satellite images of Antarctica during the polar winter revealed a huge ice-free region within the ice pack of the Weddell Sea. This ice-free region—or polynya—stayed open for three full winters before it closed. Subsequent research showed that the opening was maintained as relatively warm waters churned upward from kilometers…

  • Flood Risk in Europe Expected to Double by 2050

    By Tim Radford The catastrophic floods that soaked Europe last summer and the United Kingdom this winter are part of the pattern of things to come. According to a new study of flood risk in Nature Climate Change annual average losses from extreme floods in Europe could increase fivefold by 2050. And the frequency of destructive…

  • Grassroots Organizations Mobilize to Meet Community Water Needs Following WV Chemical Spill

    By Dana Kuhnline Last month, an estimated 10,000 gallons of the coal-processing chemical MCHM, along with an unknown amount of a second substance called PPH, spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River—just upstream from a municipal water intake that serves nine counties. Freedom Industries, the company responsible for the spill, neglected to report it, despite some…

  • International Panel Recommends Nutrient Diet to Battle Toxic Algal Blooms in Lake Erie

    The International Joint Commission (IJC) released a report yesterday urging the states of Ohio and Michigan to declare the waters of the western Lake Erie basin impaired from nutrient pollution. The report, A Balanced Diet for Lake Erie: Reducing Phosphorus Loadings and Harmful Algal Blooms, and its 16 recommendations to help address the challenge of deteriorating…