What We Learned This Week - "Turn Left on Red"

EPA's Local Government Advisory Committee suggested ways the agency might improve a controversial proposed clean water rule.  With a November 14 comment deadline looming, many others also chimed in with their rule perspectives, including Environment Minnesota, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.  Kansas has nearly completed a new 50-year water plan, recommending broadened collaboration with neighboring states.  One of those states, Colorado, is working on its own water plan, envisioning more people and scarcer water.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Army Corps of Engineers disagree with the Weather Channel's characterization of New Orleans as the worst place in the U.S. to own a home.  Dead zones like that in the northern Gulf of Mexico will likely expand as waters warm.  Environmental groups identified their land conservation priorities along the Gulf of Mexico's coasts, and the state of Louisiana identified five coastal restoration priorities. The U.S. House passed a bill to reauthorize the National Estuary Programs, while cutting its budget by almost 23 percent.  The national mid-term election turnout was the lowest since 1942 and was especially low in the Mississippi River Basin states of Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma and Mississippi. Since that GOP-dominated election, President Obama has veered decidedly left.   A spending bill to fund federal agencies beyond December 11 won’t be released for several weeks, leaving Congress with just a few days to debate the measure before the money runs out.  And last but not least, crop producers and scientists hold widely different views on climate change and its causes; China and the U.S. don't.