Virginia shuckers get between 70 percent and 80 percent of their oysters from the Gulf region where oyster beds have been devastated.

Read (AP via WTOP)

Scientists are hopeful the Crescent City won’t become a toxic waste dump. But germs and chemicals in the leftover muck may stick around for a while.

Read (Wired)

The fishermen of Plaquemines Parish, near New Orleans, face permanent disruption.

Read (Christian Science Monitor)

Each fall, 18,000 raptors get a bird’s-eye view of this central Pennsylvania sanctuary, located an hour northeast of Harrisburg, Pa. They’re on routes that can begin at Canada’s Hudson Bay and end in Argentina, soaring down the Appalachian Kittatinny Ridge before cutting across Texas into Mexico, where they mass in the millions.

Read (Washington Post)

Each day, the Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority plant in Prince William County dumps high levels of nitrogen into Bull Run and, ultimately, into the Chesapeake Bay 150 miles away.

Read (Washington Post)

An ailing bald eagle found by a southwestern Indiana farmer tested positive for mercury poisoning, but state wildlife officials say it’s unclear if the bird was poisoned by eating tainted fish it caught in Indiana waterways.

Read (AP via WTOP)

Chemicals leaking from cars and factories will cause one of costliest environmental cleanups ever. As engineers began pumping out New Orleans, the water they’re moving carries a volatile mix of everything imaginable – from household paints, deodorants, and old car batteries to railroad tank cars, sewage treatment plants, and landfills. While state officials stop short of calling it a toxic soup, at least so far, federal environmental officials call it catastrophic.

Read (Christian Science Monitor)

While the human and economic toll of Hurricane Katrina continued to mount, New Orleans was beginning to pump back into Lake Pontchartrain the floodwaters that had inundated the city. What started flowing back into the lake is laced with raw sewage, bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides and toxic chemicals.

Whether or not the accelerating pumping of this brew from city streets into coastal waters poses a threat to the ecosystems and fisheries in the brackish bay remains to be seen.

Read (New York Times)

Unauthorized off-road vehicles are buzzing through nearly one-third of America’s national parks, according to a recently released internal National Park Service (NPS) survey. In one-fifth of the parks, they have damaged natural environments that by law must be preserved for future generations.

Read (Christian Science Monitor)

The interest of local people in managing the neighboring woods for their benefit is known as community forestry, part of a growing international trend. In community forestry, traditional opponents like environmentalists and loggers often join to fight a common enemy, for example subdivisions, absentee landowners or the decline of a local economy.

Read (New York Times)

The Bush administration has drafted regulations that would ease pollution controls on older, dirtier power plants and could allow those that modernize to emit more pollution, rather than less.

Read (Washington Post)

Hundreds of Canada geese have been found dead on their stomachs, their wings flared out, puzzling officials.

Read (AP via WTOP)

Two levee breaches in New Orleans left more than 80 percent of the city under water. The editor of Scientific American Magazine explains how the levees broke and what crews can do to plug the holes.

Read (NPR)

The state has installed a system that uses plants and organisms to clean wastewater at a rebuilt rest stop on Interstate 89.

Read (New York Times)

This is what they need to do at the [rest stop](http://www.virginiadot.org/comtravel/map-ra-charlottesveb.asp) on I-64 near Charlottesville, VA that has portable toilets.