A song (or two) that never ends

Two stories this week about topics that seem never-ending.

The first, a deep dive (pun intended) by freelance writer Kyle Bagenstose about the vexed question of water recreation in Philadelphia. In or on the water, there are problems about water quality as well as access. As the summers heat up now, and in the future, it would be great to get some consensus on this.

The other is about dissolved oxygen (or the lack of it) in the urban portion of the Delaware River from Trenton to Wilmington. I’ve been writing about this for about eight years — you can see all the stories we’ve written here. We gathered them together under this heading: Atlantic sturgeon.

We called these stories by that because the Atlantic sturgeon is an endangered species that, according to some, is not thriving in the Delaware because there are times of the year when there isn’t enough dissolved oxygen in the water to allow the fish to thrive.

Now, Chris Mele has written about the newest wrinkle: Water operators appeal to Trump administration for reprieve to water quality improvement rules on Delaware River.

The back-and-forth on this issue has been, well, never-ending, and now, though the EPA seems ready to publish new standards, there is likely to be pushback if those standards aren’t high enough to ensure the future for this fish.

The story goes on and on, with all sorts of new wrinkles provided by the new administration.

The last story in this bouquet is from Inside Climate News, which is a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for its newsletter here.

Inside Climate News is generous with permission to republish, so that’s exactly what we did:

Burn scars can exacerbate flooding, posing compounding climate hazards.

We’ve talked about this issue before. Not only is it worthwhile to consider obvious impacts of wildfires, but also the more subtle ones. The same can be true of many of the ill effects of climate change.

I know my readers DO pay attention, even in these difficult times, and for that I’m grateful.

Thanks for reading.