GO DUMP IN A LAKE: The U.S. Supreme Court gave a thumbs up Monday to a mining company that wants to dump rock waste from an Alaskan gold mine into a nearby lake, even though doing so would kill all the fish there. Voting 6-3 in favor of the Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp., the court upheld a 2005 permit from the Army Corps of Engineers that defines 4.5 million tons of mine tailings as "fill" rather than "pollution," bypassing the Clean Water Act and opening the door for dumping them into Lower Slate Lake. The tailings — which contain aluminum, copper, lead and mercury — are what's left after gold is mined from ore, and many conservationists are worried this ruling will set a precedent for other industries to freely dump their waste into waterways. (Sources: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC)

 

CLIMATE (BILL) CHANGE: Late last night, House Democrats unveiled an updated, 1,201-page climate bill, suddenly setting up a showdown on the floor for this Friday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi filed papers Monday night to bring the revamped bill to the floor, and although it still hasn't won over some key Democrats — most notably Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson — she and other party leaders say they can smooth over their differences by Friday. Rep. Henry Waxman, one of the bill's two co-authors, reportedly wants to wrap up the cap-and-trade debate by July 4 so he can dedicate himself to President Obama's health-care agenda. Also on Monday, a group of 20 U.S. climate scientists sent a letter to Congress urging it to pass the bill, which they called a "powerful advance." (Sources: NY Times, Politico, Scientific American)

 

PRICE WARS: If it passes, the House climate bill would cost the average American consumer $175 a year by 2020, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — not quite the thousands of dollars touted by some Republican critics. The poorest 20 percent of U.S. households would actually save $40 in 2020 under the House bill, the CBO reports, while the richest 20 percent would pay an extra $245 per year. On the other hand, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, has projected the bill would raise energy costs by $3,128 per household in 2015, while the conservative Heritage Foundation forecasts a $4,300 annual premium. (Source: Washington Post)

 

ANDRES THE GIANT: Tropical Storm Andres is churning across the Pacific Ocean this morning, threatening western Mexico and teetering on the verge of becoming the Pacific's first hurricane of 2009. The storm's winds are expected to reach 75 mph later today, just past the minimum for a hurricane. Most forecast models see Andres grazing the central Mexican coast today before weakening and careening westward, just shy of the Baja California peninsula, late Thursday or Friday. (Sources: Associated Press, Bloomberg)

 

A PRIVATE MATTER: Scientists, politicians and officials met several thousand feet below the surface Monday for an underground-breaking ceremony at a new laboratory in an old South Dakota gold mine. It will be the world's deepest underground science lab — with its depths plunging as far as 8,000 feet below the surface — and well-positioned for scientists to study a secretive cosmic substance called dark matter. Being so far inside the Earth will shield experiments from cosmic rays as they try to prove the existence of dark matter, which is believed to contain no atoms yet make up nearly 25 percent of the universe. (Source: AP)

 

PUP RESCUE: A baby sea lion that wandered onto a busy San Francisco freeway Monday morning has been rescued unscathed, but it wasn't easy. Authorities began receiving calls at 5:45 a.m. from drivers who saw the pup stranded on the median of Interstate 880, where officials say it probably ended up after crossing from a nearby estuary during the night. A police officer got the young sea mammal into the back of his patrol car and took it to an animal control center, but it later fell under the car during a fumbled transfer to a cage (see video). After a brief stalemate, the pup was recaptured and taken to the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, which has reported an increase in sick and malnourished sea lions this year, a problem experts say may be due to a drop in populations of small fish that pups eat while they're developing. (Source: AP)

 

— Russell McLendon

 

(Photo: U.S. Geological Survey)