Sign up to get Grist by Email. Go here to unsubscribe. In return for each day of aid, the fishers must agree to spend a day helping government researchers by tagging and releasing cod or recording trolling net catches. Gore will also announce a new federal task force on ocean conservation today.
Violations range from missed water quality tests to contamination problems.
The EPA and state enviro agencies say that at least 85 percent of Americans are drinking water that's among the world's safest. But those public water systems that serve the other 15 percent face little threat of punishment. More than 130 environmental, health, and anti-nuclear activists this week protested the composition of a new panel of scientists that will try to determine the cancer risks from low doses of radiation. Some of the Northeast states, which are forced to cope with pollution that blows in from power plants and other polluters in the Midwest and South, made the first effort at compromise last week, but it fell flat. Last year, the EPA announced that it planned to impose a more strict national limit on nitrogen oxide emissions, the subject of this regional disagreement, but this spring a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the EPA from proceeding with that plan.