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Honolulu (HawaiiNewsNow) -- A Hawaii lab has detected a petroleum product in a water sample collected from the Pearl Harbor-Hickam system -- a worrisome finding that comes as the investigation into the source of the fuel-like odor and oily sheen from the water continues. It’s the first confirmation of what military households and other impacted residents have been reporting for days: That their water smells like fuel and has made them sick. But the results also raise more questions, including how much petroleum is present and what kind it is. Environmental Health Deputy Director Kathleen Ho stressed the results are...

AUSTIN, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance today filed a notice of intent to sue the Texas Department of Transportation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an Austin highway construction project’s threats to the federally endangered Austin blind and Barton Springs salamanders. The conservation groups recently learned that the MoPac Intersections Project has exposed at least 21 underground caves, sink holes and other karst features that provide habitat for the endangered salamanders. There is a high risk that construction will pollute the two species’ habitat by introducing silt and pollutants to the subsurface. The...

A sinkhole has opened up at a fertilizer plant in the US, causing about 260 million US gal of radioactive water to contaminate a part of Florida's main sources of drinking water. The sinkhole, which is about 15. yd in diameter, collapsed beneath a pile of waste material called a “gypsum stack”. Sitting on top of that stack was a storage pond containing phosphogypsum, which is a radioactive byproduct resulting from the production of phosphate.

California is sinking even faster than scientists had thought, new NASA satellite imagery shows. Some areas of the Golden State are sinking more than 2 inches per month, the imagery reveals. Though the sinking, called subsidence, has long been a problem in California, the rate is accelerating because the state's extreme drought is fueling voracious groundwater pumping. "Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows — up to 100 feet (30 meters) lower than previous records," Mark Cowin, director of California's Department of Water Resources, said in a statement. "As extensive groundwater pumping continues, the land is sinking...

Energy: The further review the administration said was needed is done, with a Nebraska environmental agency saying it's safe to build the pipeline that will bring oil, jobs and revenue from our friendly northern neighbor. After kicking the Canadian oil barrel down the road, the Obama administration may soon be forced to approve the Keystone XL pipeline or come up with another excuse to block it after a report from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality declared it would have "minimal environmental impacts" on the state and its sensitive aquifers. Friday's report triggered a 30-day deadline for Nebraska Gov. Dave...

Jobs: The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree. You can see why the economy is in trouble. Vice President Joe Biden, the stimulus sheriff, says he turned first to MF Global's Jon Corzine for economic advice and President Obama thinks 20,000 people getting extended unemployment benefits does more for the economy than 20,000 people getting paychecks to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. In the president's view, extending the payroll tax cuts...

Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world's richest men get richer. North Dakota's booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president's economic guru just bought. Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off...

The more you learn about T. Boone Pickens’ plan to switch America to wind power, the more you realize that he seems willing to say and do just about anything to make another billion or two.

How Will North America's Largest Aquifer, The Ogallala Aquifer, Fare?The Ogallala aquifer underlies parts of eight states. (Credit: Photo courtesy U.S. Geological Survey) ScienceDaily (Apr. 10, 2008) — Are the tens of thousands of playa lakes that dot the Southern High Plains key to keeping the Ogallala Aquifer's dwindling waters clean? That's the question Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant physiologist Dennis Gitz is asking about North America's largest aquifer. Playas are ephemeral lakes that form when rainwater fills natural clay depressions in the landscape. Gitz found that this water flows continually downward, if slowly, into the Ogallala, contributing to its...

<p>Rancher Rob Blair, whose family has grazed cattle in the Mojave Desert for more than a century, fears the Cadiz Inc. plan will deplete the water supply.</p> <p>MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE -- In the poker game of private water marketing, Keith Brackpool seems to hold all the aces.</p>