Free Republic

Just after 5 a.m. on May 28, Tempe police officers responded to an apparent disturbance between Bickings and a woman at the Tempe Center for the Arts, which sits on a promenade along the Tempe Town Lake, a reservoir in the city. In its statement, the city referred to Bickings as "unsheltered." Body-camera footage released by the city shows officers approach and speak to a woman who identified herself as Bickings's wife. As she picked up her belongings off the ground, she explained that she and Bickings sometimes have disagreements but said that he did not physically harm her. Two...

Some residents in Manatee County, Florida, were evacuated from their homes over Easter weekend as officials cited fears that a wastewater pond could collapse "at any time." Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for the area on Saturday. County officials said the pond, located at the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant, has a "significant leak," according to CBS affiliate WTSP-TV. The Manatee County Public Safety Department told people near the plant to evacuate due to an "imminent uncontrolled release of wastewater." "A portion of the containment wall at the leak site shifted laterally," said Manatee Director...

The Chestnut Hill Reservoir in Brighton, at the 22-mile mark of the Boston Marathon course, was the site of a dramatic rescue on September 24. Katie Kellner, 28, who is a member of the BAA racing team, was three miles into what was supposed to be an easy 60-minute run, which included a loop around the 1.5-mile reservoir. She witnessed a dog swimming in the water and a man on the shore calling to the dog. He was a dog walker, who handed off two other dogs to a bystander, then went into the water to pursue the loose dog,...

Michigan has thousands of aging and under-maintained dams that could pose localized risks. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality tells the Detroit Free Press that all but six of the state's 88 potential high-hazard dams are approaching 50 years old, the average engineered life span for a dam. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave Michigan a D grade on the condition of its dams in 2009, saying more than 90 percent of the state's nearly 2,600 dams would reach or exceed their design life by 2020.

Rising water filling up Santa Clara County's Anderson Reservoir, which was 99.3 percent full as of Wednesday, is expected to flow over the dam's spillway as a result of this week's impending storms. Unlike the potentially catastrophic situation with Lake Oroville's emergency spillway, the Anderson Reservoir's operational spillway is not at risk of failure, according to Santa Clara Valley Water District officials. Despite that good news, officials in Santa Clara County are warning residents living along Coyote Creek and near Kelley Park to be on the lookout for potential flooding. Water officials for the past month have been releasing water...

Water releases from Shasta Lake are at the highest in 20 years as the lake nears full capacity Monday. The lake stood at 96 percent of capacity and 137 percent of the historical average, as of midnight Monday, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Water officials are releasing 70,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) from Shasta Dam as the lake stands just 5 feet from the top of the reservoir, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office said. "This is higher than it should be for this point in time," the sheriff's office said. "The release is necessary for space...

Just 18 months after many California lakes were nearly dried up, the state now has too much of a good thing. California has now seen more moisture in the last 8 weeks than it typically does in an entire year. Parts of the Sierra Mountain range have received more than 400” of snow already this season with some coastal and foothills locations pulling in over 2 feet of rain… and their typical wet season has nearly 2 months to go. San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and several other cities have recorded one of their wettest Januarys on record and an...

Releases from Shasta Dam at 20-year highWater releases from Shasta Lake are at the highest they've been in 20 years as the lake nears full capacity Monday. The lake stood at 96 percent of capacity and 137 percent of the historical average, as of midnight Monday, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Water officials are releasing 70,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) from Shasta Dam as the lake stands just 5 feet from the top of the reservoir, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office said. "This is higher than it should be for this point in time," the sheriff's...

Update, 7:15 p.m. Thursday: The situation surrounding the damaged spillway at Oroville Dam has escalated into a crisis, with state water managers hoping they can dump enough water down the badly compromised structure to prevent the state’s second-largest reservoir from pouring over an emergency release point that has never been used before. Flow rates down the collapsing spillway were increased late Thursday morning to 35,000 cubic feet per second. The result was a spectacle of churning mud and water and the further damage to the concrete structure. [snip] Officials at the media briefing repeated further reassurances that the integrity of...

If you have family and friends in this area please tell them to monitor the situation. So far, no Emergency Broadcast System alerts or anything.

FOLSOM LAKE (CBS13) — A Northern California reservoir ran dry overnight, killing thousands of fish and leaving residents looking for answers. While a $3.5 million drought safety net at Folsom Lake finishes, a lake in another part of the state is left high and dry. Thousands of fish lay dead in what used to be Mountain Meadows reservoir also known as Walker Lake, a popular fishing hole just west of Susanville. “Everywhere that you see that’s wet, there was water,” said resident Eddie Bauer. RELATED: California Drought Has More Insects Swarming Toward Homes Residents say people were fishing on the...

LA's scheme to cover a reservoir under 96 million "shade balls" may not be all it is touted to be, experts told FoxNews.com, with some critics going so far as to refer to the plan as a "potential disaster." *snip* "Black spheres resting in the hot sun will form a thermal blanket speeding evaporation as well as providing a huge amount of new surface area for the hot water to breed bacteria," said Matt MacLeod, founder of the California biotech firm Modern Moon Farms. "Disaster. It’s going to be a bacterial nightmare.”

Spurned at the ballot box three years ago and facing an even more uphill battle now because of California's historic drought, an environmental group has filed a lawsuit attempting to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a linchpin of the water supply for 2.6 million Bay Area residents from San Francisco to San Jose to southern Alameda County.

VANITY POST: I have been trying recently to compile any articles of Arabs within the United States or Europe taking pictures of Nuclear Plants, Chemical Plants, large buildings.

BELCHERTOWN (CBS) – Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir. State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.

Seven foreigners from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Singapore were arrested for trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir on Tuesday. The Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts is one of the country’s largest man-made water supplies. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) CBS Local reported, via Free Republic: Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir. State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates....

BELCHERTOWN (CBS) – Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir. State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.

The Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant, al Qaeda in Iraq's affiliate in Syria, led an assault today that resulted in the takeover of a major dam on the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Additionally, the terror group claimed credit for a suicide assault on an intelligence headquarters in the city of Palmyra. The Al Nusrah Front spearheaded today's assault on the "strategic" dam in Thawra in Raqqa province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Nusrah Front led "other factions" of the insurgency to take control of Thawra, which "is considered one of the...

An earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people in Sichuan last year may have been triggered by an enormous dam just miles from the epicentre. The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake. Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake. Fan Xiao, the...

LOS ANGELES - A jury imposed the death penalty Tuesday on the ringleaders of a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme targeting rich Russian immigrants whose bodies were found in a Northern California reservoir. Jurors deliberated less than a day before reaching their vote on sentences for Iouri Mikhel, 41, and Jurijus Kadamovas, 40. Last month, the federal jury convicted both men of three counts of hostage-taking resulting in death and three counts of conspiracy. The death penalty verdict is binding on U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian, who is scheduled to formally sentence the two men March 12. The case will be automatically appealed,...