Race bears the strongest relationship to slow and ineffective enforcement of the federal drinking water law in communities across the nation, according to a new report released today. Watered Down Justiceis a new analysis of EPA data that confirms there is unequal access to safe drinking water, based most strongly on race, a scientific conclusion that mirrors the lived experience of people of color and low-income residents in the United States.

This article features interactive materials that allow the reader to investigate how climate change will impact individual counties throughout the United States. "Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States.

Plastic in our oceans has clear detriments to the ecosystems inhabiting them; nearly 700 marine species are reported to have encountered plastic debris, which can lead to entanglement, ingestion, or death. Protecting marine life from further harm caused by plastic pollution is the main driver behind our mission to rid the oceans of plastic. At the same time, we need to ensure that our cleanup operations have minimal negative side effects on marine ecosystems.

Urbanization would appear on the surface a natural course of creation by humans. Cities grow with populations; the idea seems clear yet there is more than just a growth in population that lies behind each unique city expansion. St. Tammany Parish, a suburb parish of New Orleans, Louisiana, that has its own distinct history like many other counties in the United States... Early growth in St.

Outrage over last month's sprawling Mississippi River nurdle spill in New Orleans and the lax government response to it has inspired a bill in Congress to prevent similar incidents. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., had already introduced a wide-ranging bill to reduce plastic pollution, and last week he drafted a new one aimed specifically at prohibiting the discharge of plastic pellets, called nurdles, into rivers and oceans.

Two Mississippi River diversions created to reduce salinity levels in Breton Sound and the Barataria Basin, and a crevasse that cut through the river's east bank levee in Plaquemines Parish, actually caused the loss of more wetlands than they helped build, according to a new study led by LSU researchers.

The effects of global environmental change, including coastal flooding, reduced rainfall in drylands and water scarcity, will almost certainly alter patterns of human migration. Conventional narratives usually cast these displacements in a negative light, with many millions of people forced to move, and tension and conflict the result. Our study suggests that the picture is not so one-sided. The study, the UK government's Foresight report on migration and global environmental change, examines the likely movement of people within and between countries over the next 50 years.

Microplastics are the miniscule plastic fragments (smaller than 0.04 inch) that fall off of decomposing plastic bottles and bags, and are intentionally manufactured into some toothpastes and lotions. Scientists have found microplastics nearly everywhere, particularly in lakes, rivers, and aquatic animals... U.S.

Persistent plastics, with an estimated lifetime for degradation of hundreds of years in marine conditions, can break up into micro- and nanoplastics over shorter timescales, thus facilitating their uptake by marine biota throughout the food chain. These polymers may contain chemical additives and contaminants, including some known endocrine disruptors that may be harmful at extremely low concentrations for marine biota, thus posing potential risks to marine ecosystems, biodiversity and food availability.

The scars of coastal loss, accelerated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, still can be seen on the wetlands surrounding New Orleans, visible in before and after images taken by combined camera and sensor devices aboard NOAA Landsat satellites. Wetlands surrounding Delacroix are shown a week before Katrina, with normal vegetation showing up as bright green and water as blue. The Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project releases water from the Mississippi River into the Big Mar, and it eventually flows southeast through these wetlands.