Latest Surface runoff Stories
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Aggregate Industries - Northeast Region Inc., will pay a $2.75 million civil penalty and implement a regional evaluation and compliance program to resolve numerous violations of the Clean Water Act at 23 facilities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the Justice Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today. The penalty is the largest ever assessed to a nationwide ready-mix concrete company for storm water violations...
Pesticides from homes and farms contribute significantly to the deterioration of the Chesapeake Bay, U.S. scientists and public health experts said. More than 16 million people live around the Chesapeake Bay, the largest and most biologically diverse estuary in the United States, the Maryland Pesticide Network and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future said Friday in a release. The Unaddressed Bay Polluter, a study sponsored by the groups, urges government agencies at all levels to...
FRESNO, Calif., July 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Natural Resources Conservation Service Chief Dave White announced today that 15 organizations in California will receive funding from a new program under the 2008 Farm Bill that will help improve water quality and quantity. The funding is being made available through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new Agricultural Water Enhancement Program (AWEP). "AWEP...
MALIBU, Calif., July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The Natural Resources Defense Council released today its annual survey of water quality at U.S. beaches called "Testing the Waters 2009." In addition to reporting 2008 beach closure and advisory days, the report stated "the best way to protect swimmers from beachwater pollution is to prevent it. Federal, state and local government can make this a priority by requiring better controls on stormwater and sewage, the two largest known sources of...
Coastal marine ecosystems are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities, according to scientists at UC Santa Barbara who have recently published a study in the Journal of Conservation Letters. The authors have performed the first integrated analysis of all coastal areas of the world."Resource management and conservation in coastal waters must address a litany of impacts from human activities, from the land, such as urban runoff and other types of pollution, and from the...
There may be thousands of things large and small that can be done to better control pollution on even the smallest waterways, and a new tool developed at Purdue University may help sort out how to choose the best ones.Indrajeet Chaubey, an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering, combined a best management practices tool with a complex genetic algorithm that can search out the best solutions for non-point source pollution control in a watershed. By analyzing data from...
Guidelines and Applications Now Available for 09-10 Tax Credit Program HARRISBURG, Pa., June 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania farmers are making further investments in the environment by implementing on-farm conservation practices while enhancing their farm's production, thanks to the Resource Enhancement and Protection tax credit program, or REAP. "Pennsylvania farmers are charged with protecting our soils and water supply by being good stewards of the land," said Agriculture...
WASHINGTON, May 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Alaska Gold Co. (Alaska Gold), and NovaGold Resources Inc. (NovaGold), the owners and operators of the Rock Creek Mine near Nome, Alaska, have agreed to pay a $883,628 civil penalty to resolve violations of a stormwater discharge permit, the Justice Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today. According to the court documents, in 2006, Alaska Gold, an Alaskan corporation and its parent company, NovaGold, a...
A U.S. study suggests the significant increase in polyaromatic hydrocarbons entering waterways might come from driveway and parking lot sealcoats. University of New Hampshire scientists said polyaromatic hydrocarbons, more commonly known as PAHs, are found in diesel and crude oil and are considered to be carcinogenic. Our society has been sealcoating pavement for decades and there are things we've never asked about, said Associate Professor Tom Ballestero. Now we're starting to probe and ask...
 Driveways and parking lots may look better with a layer of sealcoat applied to the pavement, but the water running off the surface into nearby streams will be carrying more than just oxygen and hydrogen molecules. New research conducted at the University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center (UNHSC) indicates that sealcoat may contribute to increasingly significant amounts of polyaromatic hydrocarbons entering waterways from stormwater runoff.Polyaromatic hydrocarbons, more commonly known as...
Latest Surface runoff Reference Libraries
Erosion is the process by which rock and soil are taken from the surface of the Earth by exogenetic processes like wind or the flow of water, and then transported and deposited in another location. While erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10 to 40 times the rate at which erosion is happening globally. Excessive erosion results in problems such as desertification, decreases in agricultural productivity because of land degradation, sedimentation of waterways,...
The water cycle (or hydrologic cycle) describes the continuous movement of water above, below, and on the planet. Since the water cycle is in fact a "cycle", there is no beginning or end. Water exists in three states: liquid, vapor, and ice. Although the balance of water on our planet is fairly constant, individual water molecules may come and go. The water cycle is driven by the sun. The sun heats the oceans and allows water to evaporate into the air. The sun also heats snow and ice which...
