Pollution

"Thousands of people in the heart of Frisco [Texas] are exposed to toxic lead pollution from a battery recycling plant that wants to expand production."

City leaders celebrated the ground-breaking for New Bedford High School in 1970, apparently not knowing the risks of building it on a toxic dump.

"Today, as the anniversary of the Kingston mess approaches, the battle over potential new rules to protect coalfield communities and the environment from the dangers of toxic coal ash is just getting started."

"In 2005 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management offered up thousands of acres of federal land in Colorado to drilling. Because the land was in the heart of an area that supplies drinking water to 55,000 people in the western part of the state, the plan drew stong opposition from local communities."

"As environmental concerns threaten to derail natural gas drilling projects across the country, the energy industry has developed innovative ways to make it easier to exploit the nation's reserves without polluting air and drinking water." But are they used?

Residents of Treece, Kansas, try to go forward as they wait for buyouts at a Superfund site created by years of lead and zinc mining.

"If taxpayers end up paying only 1 percent of the cost of cleaning up PCB contamination in the Fox River, that could be between $10 million and $15 million. If the taxpayer obligation reaches 10 percent, the figure becomes $100 million or more."

After decades of putting hazardous and toxic waste into the Parker Street Dump, the city of New Bedford Massachusetts built a high school and middle school on the site. Today, the city is dealing with the toxic legacy.

"As a result of the largest environmental bankruptcy in U.S. history, $1.79 billion has been paid to fund environmental cleanup and restoration under a bankruptcy reorganization of American Smelting and Refining Company, ASARCO, federal officials announced today."