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Residents of a Florida neighborhood said nearby road construction caused the area to become overrun with venomous snakes.

The Jacksonville neighbors said their problems with cottonmouths and water moccasins began when the reptiles’ habitat was disturbed by construction to widen an Interstate 295 off-ramp to Old St. Augustine Road, WXJT-TV, Jacksonville, reported Wednesday.

Several residents said they have had to kill a number of the invading serpents. Bill Richardson, whose dog was bitten by a water moccasin, said he has killed 19 of them.

“Every couple days, there’s at least a baby out back,” Richard said. “Nothing can work. Moth balls or anything.”

Residents said they are hoping officials will step in and help out.

“I know it’s the responsibility of the homeowner, but that’s a lot of wetlands,” one resident said. “We’re not going to chase them in there, so how do you maintain?”

Observers fear that Germany’s new government will draft an energy policy at the expense of resource and climate protection.

Gerd Rosenkranz, the head of Deutsche Umwelthilfe, an environmental protection group, said he is worried that the new government, a team-up of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Conservatives and the pro-business Free Democrats led by Guido Westerwelle, will undo the green policies of the past years.

Both parties have vowed to give nuclear energy a fresh look and reverse the phase-out agreement drafted in 2000. It foresees all German reactors to be shut down by 2021.

If Merkel and Westerwelle decide to “reverse the nuclear phase-out then this government will reopen a fundamental conflict in Germany and divide the society,” Rosenkranz said in a statement.

He added that renewable energy sources needed to be funded with the same vigor that has been done in previous years. Such a policy would also guarantee economic stability, he said. Thanks to a lucrative feed-in tariff for green power, the German renewable industry has boomed over the past 10 years and is now a world leader.

“If this government does not continue to support environmental protection and future energy technologies consequently enough, then it will kill one of the few hopeful emerging industry sectors,” Rosenkranz said.

He called on Berlin to “fight the effect of the financial and economic crisis in the context of the global climate and resource crisis. … As a consequence, Germany would have enormous new chances because it’s a high-technology economy.”

Another environmental group, the World Wildlife Fund, accused the German government parties of ignoring environmental and climate protection in their recent campaigning.

Conservatives and Free Democrats “have to surprise the people when it comes to climate and environmental protection and go far beyond what they are saying in their campaign programs,” Eberhard Brandes, the head of WWF in Germany, said in a statement.

The environmental group reminded Berlin that it had an international obligation to lead. Germany currently presides over the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty that is aimed at protecting animal and plant species and at promoting the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

WWF also wants Berlin to keep in mind resource conservation when helping to draft EU-wide fishing and farming policies, both of which are set to be finalized soon.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unveiled a draft agreement Wednesday on the proposed demolition of four dams on the Klamath River in California and Oregon. The draft sets up a process through which the Interior Department will look into the cost and benefit of removing the dams in order to restore fish habitat while at the same time accommodating farmers and other water consumers.

A total of 26 different stakeholders were involved in the negotiations.

“Hats off to all the stakeholders who have worked so hard to find common ground on one of the most challenging water issues of our time,” Salazar said in a written statement. “This agreement would establish an open, scientifically grounded process that will help me make a fully informed decision about whether dam removal is in the public interest.”

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released a written statement calling the agreement “a tremendous step forward toward completing a preliminary agreement that will make possible the removal of the four dams blocking salmon passage.”

Environmentalists said removal of the dams, which are owned by PacifiCorp., would benefit recreational and commercial fisheries while not harming farmers or the region’s electricity supply.

A state-owned Chinese oil giant is negotiating to buy up one-sixth of Nigeria’s known oil reserves, currently owned by Western energy groups, for a reputed $30 billion to $50 billion.

In strategic terms, that would be a major coup for Beijing in its global drive to secure energy supplies for China’s mushrooming economy and a serious setback for the United States, which gets one-fifth of its oil imports from Nigeria.

If Beijing succeeds, it would establish oil-hungry China as one of the dominant energy powers in Africa and give it access to oil that the Americans depend on to keep their economy functioning.

However, the Chinese would also inherit a serious problem: the center of Nigeria’s oil industry, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, in the southern Niger Delta is under attack from rebels demanding a share of the country’s oil revenues.

The violence, which has raged for five years, has slashed Nigeria’s oil production by about one-third. Oil theft is a multibillion-dollar industry in the trouble-plagued delta.

The attacks on oil installations have decreased somewhat since the government declared an amnesty for rebels who surrender. But that is due to expire Oct. 4, and the rebels say they will resume and intensify their campaign if the government fails to meet their demands.

The Financial Times has reported that the China National Offshore Oil Corp., one of China’s three major oil concerns, wants to buy licenses for 23 prime blocks currently owned or operated by Western firms such as Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and Exxon Mobil of the United States and Total of France.

The licenses — 18 onshore and five offshore — have either expired or are due to expire over the next few years.

All told these fields contain an estimated 6 billion barrels of oil. That’s the same as one of every six barrels of proven oil reserves in Nigeria.

That far surpasses the blocks containing some 4.7 billion barrels of oil China has acquired across Africa in its global drive to secure vast amounts of oil to fuel its mushrooming economy.

Another state-owned Chinese major, Sinopec, bought Swiss oil producer Addax Petroleum Corp. in August for $7.24 billion and acquired Addax’s high-potential operations in Nigeria and Gabon, as well as Iraq. That was China’s most expensive overseas energy acquisition to date.

Beijing has also bought up rights to oil, as well as other raw materials, across Asia and Latin America. It buys large amounts of oil from the Middle East, but as yet has not been able to buy up exclusive drilling rights in the region.

The FT reported that the negotiations regarding the Nigerian zones, some of the world’s richest oil blocks, were revealed in a letter from the office of President Umaru Yar’Adua to CNOOC’s representative, a company named Sunrise.

“The overall value of the Chinese offer is not disclosed, although some details suggest a figure of about $30 billion,” the FT, which obtained a copy of the Aug. 13 letter, reported Tuesday. “Some oil sector executives said the total on the table was $50 billion.”

Although the Nigerian government has said the blocks up for grabs will go “to the highest bidder,” it remains far from clear whether CNOOC will sweep the board and take over from Western companies that have long operated in Nigeria.

But the Chinese offer, if the figures cited are accurate, appears to be far above those offered by the Western companies to extend their licenses.

According to the FT, ExxonMobil offered $78 million to renew three 40-year leases that are due to expire soon. The Nigerian government demanded $2.5 billion.

The sweeping Chinese bid in this latest battle for Africa’s resources has thus strengthened the government’s bargaining position to the detriment of the Western operators at a time when reserves are shrinking and few, if any, new strikes of any significance are being made.

Federal officials say they are considering giving killer whales in Washington state’s Puget Sound a broader protective zone.

Boats are now required to stay 100 yards away from the whales. The proposed National Marine Fisheries Service regulations would double that and would also close off a half-mile channel off San Juan Island between May and September, The Seattle Times reports.

The rules would apply to whale-watching boats and recreational boaters but not to commercial fishermen, cargo ships and, in some cases, people trying to reach their own island property.

Federal wildlife agents say whale-watchers threaten the killer whales by getting too close so that engine noise interferes with their communication and boats sometimes hem them in. Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound, says the proposed rules are too tough on whale-watchers and not hard enough on fishermen, who are in competition with the whales for salmon.

An 80-year-old man was rescued from a septic tank in Delhi Township, Ohio, after a dog alerted others to the man’s predicament, the dog’s owner says.

Stacey Walsh said when she came to investigate unusual barking by her 9-year-old dog Murphy on Tuesday, she found her elderly neighbor trapped inside a 15-foot deep septic tank, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

“He was barking like he was being attacked — like he’s never barked before,” said Walsh, who identified the senior citizen as Paul Paff. “He was pointed in the direction of the hole. Then we heard Mr. Paff yelling for help.”

After rescuers spent hours removing waste from the septic tank, Paff was rescued using a rope and pulley system. He was then decontaminated and taken to an area hospital where he reportedly was in stable condition.

“It may have been as long as 3 1/2 hours before he was discovered… so he was in the hole five to six hours,” Delhi Township Fire Chief Bill Zoz told the Enquirer of Tuesday’s accident. “The rescuers commented he was a pretty tough old guy — friendly.”

The cause of the accident was not reported.

A Philadelphia Eagles fan says stadium guards refused to allow her in Sunday because she was wearing a T-shirt that took a swipe at quarterback Michael Vick.

Kori Martin’s offending garment said “Losers fight pitbulls” on the front and had Vick’s name crossed out, the Philadelphia Inquirer said Wednesday.

Martin, 32, Broomall, Del., told the newspaper that security at Lincoln Financial Field would not let her in until she turned the T-shirt inside out.

She called the move an impingement of her right to free speech.

Martin said the guards told her that the shirt was offensive to the Eagles players and was to be barred under team policy. An Eagles official told the newspaper Tuesday she knew of no such policy.

The Obama administration says it is moving to update the regulation of thousands of chemicals used in U.S. consumer products and in workplaces.

Both public health advocates and chemical industry representatives welcomed the plan, the latter because they see it as a way to end moves by U.S. states and cities to regulate chemicals on their own and to reassure worried consumers, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Wednesday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving to replace the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was passed in 1976 and which the newspaper said is seen as so ineffective, it did not allow the government to ban asbestos, a known carcinogen, decades ago.

The Inquirer said under the provisions of the proposed legislation, chemical makers would need to share more risk information about both existing products and new creations, while their ability to withhold data on claims of trade secrets would be cut.

“We can create a system that will result in an enhanced level of consumer confidence,” American Chemistry Council President Calvin Dooley told the newspaper.

U.S. civil engineers say they are developing a geopolymer concrete technology using fly ash, a byproduct of coal-fired power plants.

Louisiana Technical University Assistant Professor Erez Allouche and colleagues say they are conducting research on geopolymer concrete, which can help curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Inorganic polymer concrete — geopolymer — is an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilizes “fly ash”, one of the most abundant industrial by-products on Earth, as a substitute for Portland cement, the most widely produced man-made material.

The scientists said Portland cement production is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, with up to eight percent of all human-generated atmospheric CO2 worldwide produced by the concrete industry.

Switching to geopolymer concrete, the researchers said, has the potential to substantially curb CO2 emissions, produce a more durable infrastructure capable of design life measured in hundreds of years instead of tens, conserve hundreds of thousands of acres currently used for disposal of coal combustion products, and protect aquifers and surface bodies of fresh water by eliminating fly ash disposal sites.

The new technology will be one of the topics presented Nov. 5 in Shreveport, La., during an Energy Systems Conference sponsored by the university.

A massive emergency effort was underway Wednesday in the Samoan Islands after a tsunami killed more than 100 people and erased entire villages, officials said.

Three 5-foot tsunamis were triggered by a magnitude 8 earthquake that hit the South Pacific islands Tuesday.

Officials said at least 113 people were confirmed dead, including 22 people killed in American Samoa, 84 in Samoa, and seven in Tonga, CNN reported.

Officials said they feared the death toll could rise as rescue workers began reaching outlying areas.

“I thought it was the end of the world,” said Dr. Salamo Laumoli, health services director at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Tropical Medical Center in American Samoa. “I have never felt an earthquake like that before.”

President Barack Obama Tuesday declared a major disaster exists in the territory. The declaration orders federal aid to help local recovery efforts in the aftermath of the event, and makes federal funding available to affected individuals on American Samoa, the White House said.

“I am closely monitoring these tragic events, and have declared a major disaster for American Samoa, which will provide the tools necessary for a full, swift and aggressive response,” Obama said in a statement Wednesday. “We also stand ready to help our friends in Samoa and the region. Going forward, we will continue to provide the resources necessary to respond to this catastrophe, and we will keep those who have lost so much in our thoughts and prayers.”

A U.S. Defense Department official said 75 members of the Hawaii National Guard were ordered to American Samoa to begin helping with medical relief, search-and-rescue operations and provide communications capabilities on the island.

The U.S. Coast Guard delivered humanitarian aid and more than 20 officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to American Samoa, John Hamill, FEMA external affairs officer in Oakland, Calif., said. The team includes debris experts, housing experts, members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other disaster relief specialists, he said.