Pollution

"Four decades after the passage of the Clean Water Act, regulators haven’t kept up with the pollution pressure that growing populations put on America’s shorelines."

"President Obama’s budget proposal for 2016 includes a significant cut in funds for the Great Lakes Initiative, and some groups have responded by calling the president’s proposal a ' non-starter.'"

"Wastewater is arguably worse for the environment than oil, killing vegetation and leaving farmland sterile for generations. Some say the state isn't doing enough to get its spill problem controlled."

"Regulators in California, the country's third-largest oil-producing state, have authorized oil companies to inject production fluids and waste into what are now federally protected aquifers more than 2,500 times, risking contamination of underground water supplies that could be used for drinking water or irrigation, state records show."

"The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with a new rule that will limit the amount of pollution from household wood heaters."

"In a year the Republican-controlled Congress is expected to take a significant whack at President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, GOP lawmakers on Wednesday told top environmental officials they should scrap what was once a fairly obscure proposal to define what is and isn’t considered a body of water by federal law."

"After a massive coal ash spill coated the Dan River in North Carolina with 70 miles of toxic gunk a year ago, state lawmakers required coal ash stored at four Duke Energy plants in North Carolina to be moved to safer locations."

"The ailing Chesapeake Bay is slowly recovering from pollution and overfishing but still has problems that include a drop by half in a key segment of the blue crab population, a report on the largest U.S. estuary said on Tuesday."

"Major voluntary strategies used on Midwest farmland to curb fertilizers that feed the annual low oxygen "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico don't remove enough nutrients to succeed, according to a new, peer reviewed scientific study."

"Explosions used to be no big deal for residents of sleepy rural towns in north Louisiana's piney woods near the Arkansas border. Blasts meant jobs."