Burgum is wrestling with a mammoth carbon dioxide pipeline project in his home state. The $5.5 billion venture has split North Dakota and left him straddling an awkward political divide as Trump and President Joe Biden offer voters starkly different visions about how to deal with climate change.
Wild Side column: Orlan Love speaks about a river that is a 10 most days ... some days are 11s.
Runoff from fertilized fields threatens marine wildlife, fisheries and water supplies. Government agencies set targets to fix the problem. But despite more than a quarter-century of federal effort and billions in investment, advocates, scientists, and regulators say the basin is “not even close” to those targets.
Just one year away from a 2025 deadline to reduce nitrate and phosphorus entering the Gulf by 20 percent, success seems unlikely.
This summer’s “dead zone,” a low-oxygen area where the river empties into the sea, could span 5,827 square miles across the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana has the power to call for change.
Worsening local effects on health and recreation in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin are spurring action on problems that also cause the Gulf of Mexico’s chronic “dead zone.”
Sluggish progress on reducing nutrient runoff into the Chesapeake Bay marks an inconvenient truth, but offers lessons for others seeking to clean their watersheds.
Agricultural drainage tile, a system used by farmers to increase crop yields, is a main contributor to excess nutrients in waterways.
Six-plus decades after the University of Iowa began managing a 485-acre swath of mostly woodland known as the Macbride Nature Recreation Area — host to popular UI programs like School of the Wild, the Iowa Raptor Project, and Iowa Wildlife Camps — the university is reviewing its use of that land “to ensure fiscal sustainability and consistency with the university’s mission of excellent education and research opportunities for a broad array of students.”
Linn County Supervisor Kirsten Running-Marquardt believes wind and solar energy are critical to economic development in Iowa. But she also wants to make sure landowners who sign contracts for wind projects aren’t left twisting in the wind.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources, in a budget-saving move, is asking employees who live in state-owned houses at fish hatcheries to move out by the end of 2028. The houses where biologists and other staff have lived for decades will be sold or torn down, according to records obtained by The Gazette.
NOAA’s forecast is based on the amount of nutrients monitored by USGS in the system, so depending on weather, and whether hurricanes stir up water in the gulf this summer, what the scientists actually measure in August could differ.
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