"North China is dying. A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities — 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone — has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill."
"Union Pacific and the Environmental Protection Agency are ending their decade-long dispute over lead contamination in Omaha with a settlement that reduces the railroad's share of the cost to $25 million instead of the more than $200 million originally sought."
"Philadelphia got the green light Wednesday for a $2 billion storm-water plan that will transform the way the city deals with rain. The 25-year plan, which has been hailed as a national model, envisions green roofs on office buildings, porous pavement on city streets and parking lots, and plants and trees with tubs of gravel below ground to hold water and stall runoff in a storm."
"Danish navy commandos have ended the occupation of an Arctic drilling rig by Greenpeace by breaking into the protesters' survival pod hanging off the drilling platform."
"After a series of legal twists that led to a stinging rebuke from a federal judge last week, U.S. EPA has decided to exempt a planned natural gas power plant in California's San Joaquin Valley from new air pollution rules, including limits on greenhouse gas emissions."
"A top New York State official filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Tuesday to force an assessment of the environmental risks posed by drilling for natural gas in the Delaware River Basin, arguing that a regulatory commission should not issue final rules governing the drilling until a study is completed."
"As residents confront a gigantic cleanup following the tornado that savaged Joplin, experts say environmental dangers could lurk amid the mountains of debris in the southwestern Missouri city and even in the water and air."
"The federal government has explored hiring a professional public relations firm and organizing trips for international leaders to promote Canada's oilsands industry, while fighting back against foreign climate change policies requiring it to reduce its pollution, a newly released federal document has revealed."
"Key committees writing rules for New Jersey's new program to clean up contaminated sites are made up entirely of the polluting companies and their contractors."
"The federal government has acknowledged it deliberately excluded data indicating a 20 per cent increase in annual pollution from Canada’s oilsands industry in 2009 from a recent 567-page report on climate change that it was required to submit to the United Nations."
