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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(8)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(6)
Recovery:(1)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
health impacts  ~ climate impacts  ~ capitalist greed  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ unintended consequences  ~ economic myopia  ~ global warming  ~ toxic water  ~ food crisis  ~ corporate malfeasance  



ApocaDocuments (3) matching "toxic water" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "toxic water"]
Fri, Apr 8, 2011
from Reuters:
Biodiversity vital to streams as extinctions rise
As Earth enters a period of mass extinction, a study released on Wednesday offers a new reason to preserve biodiversity: it's an effective, natural pollution scrubber in streams. Environmental activists have long warned that waning biodiversity means the loss of such ecological services as stream-cleaning, control of pests and diseases and increased productivity in fisheries. The latest study, published in the journal Nature, shows how this works, demonstrating that streams that contain more species have better water quality than streams that have fewer. The species being discussed are microorganisms such as algae that incorporate elements of pollution into their bodies. The more types of algae there are in a stream, each with a minutely different habitat, the better they are collectively at filtering pollution out of the water. ...


Can't we just bioengineer a quicker picker-upper?

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Apr 6, 2011
from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute:
10,000 shipping containers per year in ocean
Each year, an estimated 10,000 shipping containers fall off container ships at sea. Although many of these containers float at the surface for months, most eventually sink to the seafloor. No one knows what happens to these containers once they reach the deep seafloor.... Shortly after midnight on February 26, [2004], when the Med Taipei was directly offshore of Monterey Bay, stacks of containers began to break free of their lashings and topple sideways. Fifteen of the 40-foot-long containers fell overboard into the churning sea. Yet the ship continued south. By the time the ship reached the Port of Los Angeles, nine more containers had fallen overboard, and another 21 lay crumpled on deck. You would have thought a disaster like this would have made the national news. But no one was hurt, and there is no legal requirement for shipping companies to report such losses. No government officials knew about this debacle except perhaps a few customs inspectors. ...


We prefer to think of them as "time capsules for the future."

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Apr 5, 2011
from ProPublica:
Deteriorating Oil and Gas Wells Threaten Drinking Water, Homes Across the Country
In the last 150 years, prospectors and energy companies have drilled as many as 12 million holes across the United States in search of oil and gas. Many of those holes were plugged after they dried up. But hundreds of thousands were simply abandoned and forgotten, often leaving no records of their existence. Government reports have warned for decades that abandoned wells can provide pathways for oil, gas or brine-laden water to contaminate groundwater supplies or to travel up to the surface. Abandoned wells have polluted the drinking water source for Fort Knox, Ky. [2], and leaked oil into water wells in Ohio and Michigan. Similar problems have occurred in Texas, New York, Colorado and other states where drilling has occurred.... The task of finding, plugging and monitoring old wells is daunting to cash-strapped state governments. A shallow well in good condition can sometimes be plugged with cement for a few thousand dollars. But costs typically run into the tens of thousands, and a price tag of $100,000 or more isn't unusual.... The vents and alarms are just part of life in Versailles. The mayor, James Fleckenstein, recently bought a house with two vents on the property and an alarm in the kitchen. "We've been living with this problem forever," Fleckenstein said. "People would have a vent in their yard burning 24 hours a day all year long, a one-inch pipe sticking out of the ground. People would put a coffee can and light it and it would just burn all the time." ...


Oh, right! We forgot to factor in time!

ApocaDoc
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