Pollution

"Even as they cheer U.S. EPA's first steps toward a drinking water standard for perchlorate, environmental and public health groups are warily predicting Pentagon and industry resistance to proposed limits on the rocket fuel chemical during a behind-the-scenes federal review process."

"For more than six years, a power plant that towers over Chicago's Southeast Side repeatedly has belched out smoke so thick it violates air pollution laws and aggravates respiratory illnesses for residents nearby."

"For the first time a state government has submitted a petition to the federal government to set aside state-owned mountain ridgelines as unsuitable for coal surface mining."

"In a move that seems to fly in the face of its moniker -- the Garden State -- New Jersey is getting ready to put the pinch on fertilizer."

"ARLINGTON, Texas — Mayor Robert Cluck wants to test the air near every new gas well in Arlington and a neighboring city has started its own air quality study."

"The Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel that has contaminated drinking water supplies, reversing a decision made under the Bush administration."

"University researchers said on Thursday they recently found alarming levels of cancer-causing toxins in an area of the Gulf of Mexico affected by BP's oil spill, raising the specter of long-lasting health concerns."

"Illinois is failing to crack down on water pollution from large confined-animal farms, the Obama  administration announced Wednesday in a stinging rebuke that gave the state a month to figure out how to fix its troubled permitting and enforcement programs."

"The tension between drillers in Pennsylvania's gas-rich Marcellus shale and communities trying protect natural resources has reached a fevered pitch in Clinton County, where a zoning hearing board resigned rather than allow a water withdrawal station at a scenic bend of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River that draws kayakers, hang gliders, hunters and fly fishermen."