Earth Changes
A huge sinkhole has closed both lanes of Highway 2 north of Prince Albert.Officials say a washout from heavy rains caused the road collapse.
The sinkhole is located about 52 kilometres north of the Waskesiu turnoff.Repairs are underway, but it wasn't known when the highway would reopen.
Honey bees pollinate more than 100 US crops, including apples, zucchinis, avocados and plums, that are worth more than $200 billion a year. Since 2006, about 10 million bee hives at an average value of $200 each have been lost in what scientists call the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), according to a new report by the US Department of Agriculture.
There are currently about 2.5 million honey bee colonies in the US, which is a drastic decrease from the 6 million that existed in 1947 and the 3 million that existed in 1990. Last winter alone, the honey bee population declined by 31.1 percent, with some beekeepers reporting losses of 90 to 100 percent. In the previous two winters, beekeepers lost about 22 percent of their populations.
"Currently, the survivorship of honey bee colonies is too low for us to be confident in our ability to meet the pollination demands of US agricultural crops," the USDA report states.

Thousands of bloated and decaying fish at West Pond in the Great Trinity Forest, Joppa Preserve, June 8, 2013
Old Fred has most likely passed away. Unfortunately so has his lake and the fish in it.
That old pond sits inside River Oaks Park, part of Joppa Preserve and one of the trailheads for the Trinity River concrete trail at 4800 River Oaks Road.
The Corps of Engineers calls the place West Pond. North of River Oaks Road and about 5 acres in size this body of water is most likely an old gravel pit excavated for dam construction and improvement of Lemmon Lake which sits due east. An archeological site was identified there in the 1940s and is noted on the inset map as 41DL78. The pond was most likely used in the 50s and 60s to draw water for cement manufacturing.

Gary Stewart at Willband Creek Park on May 13, the day after he discovered thousands of dead fish in a retention pond.
MoE spokesman David Karn said an emergency response officer tested the water temperature, pH levels, conductivity and dissolved oxygen, and determined none of those were connected to the deaths.
Contamination of the water was also ruled out.
"There was no obvious source of contamination and no physical sign that the fish were exposed to a chemical contaminant," Karn said.
The city's environmental team was also notified. Rhonda Livingstone, spokesperson for the City of Abbotsford, said the fish kill is being considered an "unfortunate mystery."
"City staff will be closely monitoring the ponds to see if any new issues crop up, but the hope is that we won't have any similar incidents and we can chalk this up to a one-time, unusual event," she said.
The dead fish were discovered on Sunday, May 12 by Abbotsford resident Gary Stewart while he was out for a walk.
Stewart immediately informed the ministry, which sent out an environmental emergency response officer that afternoon.
Volunteers with the Ravine Park Salmon Enhancement Society were also notified, and they determined that the fish were three-spined stickleback. No other fish appeared to have been impacted.
Doug Gosling, a member of the Stoney Creek Salmon Stalkers, which is affiliated with RPSES, said he is disappointed that the MoE is not investigating the incident further.
"Thousands of fish showing up on the shores of one of our local waterways seems to me to be important enough to garner a fairly significant investigation ... by doing nothing much more than a little snoop-around and shrugging our shoulders won't help in preventing another similar event."
He said the MoE should be pushed to provide answers.
"I think they need to know there are lots of people interested in this event and something needs to be done to prevent it happening again."
Willband Creek Park is located in east Abbotsford at Highway 11 and Bateman Road.
The City of El Dorado has investigating the cause after received the report of dead fish Wednesday.
After inspecting the pond, they found a lot of big and little fish dead.
"The first thing we did was start adding new water," said Herb Llewellyn, city manager. "The solution to pollution is dilution. We have been cleaning up and adding water ever since."
They first suspected it was due to waste from the geese and ducks, which had taken all the dissolved oxygen out of the water, but when they checked, there was a lot of oxygen.
"We then started looking for other things," Llewellyn said.
They have been in contact with Randy Just, from the El Dorado State Park, and Craig Johnson, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism fisheries biologist for El Dorado, to try to determine the cause.
Kurt Bookout, public utilities director, said he had talked to Johnson and they both were stumped as to the cause.
"We've run all the tests we know to run in our lab and didn't find a cause," Bookout said.
He said they are continuing to flush fresh water through the pond.
A nearly stationary thunderstorm unleashed 9 inches of rainfall since 10 a.m. CDT about 7 miles south-southwest of downtown Springfield. Just north of there, four feet of water was reported flowing over a roadway in a Springfield suburb. More reports of up to three feet of water came in from the Galloway, Mo. area.
An upper-level disturbance over Texas is responsible for the slow-moving and heavy thunderstorm activity.
Eagle Pass, Texas, and the neighboring Piedras Negras, Mexico, have seen over 10.88 inches of rain over 7 hours.
The massive amount of rain quickly raised the water level of the Rio Grande River Valley from around 3 feet at the Eagle Pass Water Level Gauge, to a raging torrent over 17 feet high, all in less than 24 hours time.
Tokyo VAAC issued a warning of an ash plume drifting SE at flight level 200 (20,000 ft altitude), s. graphic.












