pollution

Federal regulators ordered two aerospace companies to complete more than $21 million in cleanup work at a contaminated groundwater site near Los Angeles, according to a report.

Oregon’s problems with blue-green algae have spread to another lake. State officials have issued a health advisory for Upper Klamath Lake. It’s in southern Oregon, west of Klamath Falls.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday approved the first state permit program for disposal of toxic ash from coal plants, a switch from federal oversight that the coal industry had sought. … Environmental groups had argued against the transfer of oversight of coal ash disposal to states, arguing that state inaction had already contributed to widespread groundwater contamination.

Having detected toxins in its water distribution system since Memorial Day weekend at levels that occasionally exceeded state and federal health guidelines, officials in Salem are warning children, the elderly, and those with liver and kidney disease not to drink the tap water. A bloom of cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae for its colorful, scum-like appearance, formed in Detroit Reservoir, the manmade lake on the Santiam River that is the Oregon capital’s drinking water source.

The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office filed charges against local rancher Ray Christie earlier this week, including seven felony counts of animal cruelty and 28 misdemeanors related to placing carcasses too close to state waters in violation of state Fish and Game regulations.

When it comes to a recent Humboldt Baykeeper study of mercury levels in Humboldt Bay fish and shellfish, the group’s director Jennifer Kalt said there’s good news and bad news. The study found that men, women and children of all ages should avoid ingesting unsafe levels of mercury by taking leopard shark out of their diets.

Even in times of drought, California’s natural and human-made arteries run with the nation’s cleanest, most accessible water. So fundamental is the stuff to the state’s identity and to its residents’ daily lives that California law recognizes a human right to “safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.”

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the most productive farming regions in the nation, an estimated 150,000 people are stuck living with contaminated drinking water. … The good news: Help is available to many of these small community water systems, provided they can merge with a neighboring utility that has clean water.