Circle of Blue

Ever since Jacob Leinenkugel discovered spring waters here that were pure enough to brew his famous beer, this small Wisconsin city’s devotion to clean water has been paramount.  That’s why in 1997, when Chippewa Falls utility managers detected potentially dangerous concentrations of nitrates in a well supplying city water, officials acted. They installed new filtration […] The post Nitrate Is Po…

Ever since Jacob Leinenkugel discovered spring waters here that were pure enough to brew his famous beer, this small Wisconsin city’s devotion to clean water has been paramount.  That’s why in 1997, when Chippewa Falls utility managers detected potentially dangerous concentrations of nitrates in a well supplying city water, officials acted. They installed new filtration […] The post This American…

by Brian Bienkowski, The New Lede August 6, 2026 Michigan is giving a green light to a large new concentrated dairy farm that would add millions of gallons of animal waste to a region where water quality is already suffering from manure saturation.  The decision from Michigan’s Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) department is […] The post Michigan regulators approve dairy CAFO in polluti…

by Brian Bienkowski, The New Lede August 4, 2026 The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has backed off its re-assessment of cancer-causing nitrates despite decades of research suggesting the contaminant is more harmful than previously thought and that nitrate pollution is at crisis levels in US drinking water.  The agency would not confirm the assessment […] The post EPA stalls long-planned…

A look at the global water-food-energy nexus after one of the hottest Julys on record The post HotSpots H2O: Scenes From an Overheating, Drying World appeared first on Circle of Blue .

The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Michigan Public Service Commission erred when it granted a key permit for the Line 5 petroleum pipeline tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac.  Among other findings in its 58-page ruling, the majority found the commission’s permit review was overly narrow, failed to consider whether the tunnel project […] The post Michigan Supreme Court Vacates K…

Top executives of Bayer, the German chemical maker, were understandably elated on June 25, the day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor in a product injury case involving the company’s Roundup herbicide. The high court reversed a state court decision and dismissed the legal theory that prompted a jury to award $1.25 million […] The post Despite Supreme Court Decision, Bayer Faces More Chal…

By Carl Meyer; This article was originally published by The Narwhal Wildfires are raging in every province and territory across Canada, leaving entire First Nations communities burnt, upending the lives of thousands of evacuees and creating plumes of toxic smoke dirtying the air in major cities like Toronto and New York.  While some politicians claim the out-of-control wildfires are being primari…

Real change occurs in America when civic pressures from outside the centers of influence force insiders to retreat. Arguably the most compelling example of systemic change in how a state could operate is now unfolding in Iowa. Severe water contamination from crop and livestock production linked to the nation’s second highest and fastest rising incidence […] The post Toxic Terrain: How Journalism …

NORTHWEST INDIANA — The defining scenes of the era of artificial intelligence look nothing like science fiction. They are bright yellow, neon orange, dusty, sweaty, greasy, and loud.  They are excavators parked in a tallgrass field in rural Indiana. They are backhoes trundling down an Ohio farming town’s lone road. They are the neon vests […] The post Inside America’s First Data Center-Only Utili…

COLUMBUS, Oh. — After months of deliberation, Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) has decided not to move forward with a proposed general permit that would have allowed all data centers across the state — regardless of their size, location, or type — to discharge untreated waste- and stormwater directly into waterways.  The decision follows a […] The post Ohio Scraps Controversial Plan …

When members of the Pennsylvania American Legion gathered in Philadelphia on July 21, 1976, they were unaware that their organization’s annual conference would enter the epidemiological history books. America was in a celebratory mood that month. The country had just marked the bicentennial of the nation’s founding, and Philadelphia, as a leading player in the […] The post Legionnaires’ Disease S…

By Phred Dvorak July 12, 2026 This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. BANTANG KILLING, Gambia—In this little village in West Africa, Ebrima Nyan is watching his farmland slowly wither away. When Nyan, 47, was a teenager, the village […] The post In Gambi…

JASPER COUNTY, IND. — Growing up in the shadow of a coal plant in rural Indiana gives a child a unique relationship with the passage of time.  As a little girl in the small town of Wheatfield, population 900, Barb Deardorff recognized the months by the height of the cornstalks and beansprouts which grew on […] The post The AI Boom Is Prolonging Indiana’s Fossil Fuel Era, With Hidden Costs for Wat…