water

The 5 Gyres Institute helped expose the presence of microbeads in some of the cosmetic products we use every day, influence change amongst corporations and legislators. Now, the group wants to see how much plastic is on our ocean floors.  A group from the Institute set sail this week for the North Atlantic Subtropical gyre and […]

A major piece of legislation funding the development and improvement of water-related infrastructure passed Congress last week for the first time in nearly a decade, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill soon. Profit-driven systems experience problems in deciding where to extend service. Driven by profit rather than public access, companies at […]

I recently visited Detroit, MI, and am shocked and deeply disturbed at what I witnessed. I went as part of a Great Lakes project where a number of communities and ‎organizations around the basin are calling for citizens to come together to protect the Great Lakes as a Lived Commons, a Public Trust and a […]

The slogan on Wisconsin’s license plate—“America’s Dairyland”—celebrates the state’s number one agricultural activity and iconic status as a milk and cheese producer. What it doesn’t reveal is how dramatically the dairy industry in Wisconsin and in other parts of the U.S. has been changing, or the environmental concerns those changes pose.  While milk carton imagery […]

This winter was brutal. Polar vortex brutal. My salt-caked boots and dry skin can attest to the frigid temperatures that covered more than 90 percent of the Great Lakes in ice. Much of that ice is still there—though some of it has run aground in an ice tsunami(!). Over the decades, ice coverage on the lakes has […]

The Mississippi’s River southernmost delta is home to a rich ecosystem, robust, culture and booming economy. Wetlands provide critical storm protection for the Louisiana’s coast. A recent poll by America’s Wetland Foundation found that 74 percent of Louisiana residents “consider saving the coast to be the most important issue [in the state] of our lifetime.” […]

Last year, Greenpeace decided to do something we had never done before during our 13 years of work in China: Target and confront a state-owned coal company. And not just any company. The biggest and boldest, a Chinese government favorite: Shenhua—the largest coal company by volume on the planet. We discovered that Shenhua’s subsidiary had […]

When two bodies of water come together in a confluence, each stream provides its unique characteristics to form a more powerful entity. Much as the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers combine to form the mighty Ohio River, the same can be said of River Rally 2014, when River Network and Waterkeeper Alliance join forces to convene […]