Pollution

"Alabama's biggest waste dump inflicts misery on residents of Uniontown, whose complaints to the EPA have gone unheeded".

"The air in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, is expected to clear up now that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized agreements with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and port terminal operators that will cut air pollution caused by idling diesel trucks at the port."

"DENVER — A million-gallon mine waste spill that sent a plume of orange-ish muck down a river in southwest Colorado on Thursday was caused by a federal mine cleanup crew."

"In August 2014, chemicals from a Grupo México mine contaminated a main waterway. A Mexicoleaks Alliance investigation reveals that the spill control equipment at the Buenavista Copper Mine was not in compliance with regulations that federal authorities had failed to enforce since 2011. Now residents of seven Sonora municipalities are filing suit."

As August warms waters seasonally in many parts of the U.S., harmful algal blooms are causing health hazards. A prime example is Toledo, where high levels of an algal toxin made city drinking water unusable last year. Algal blooms in the warm, shallow Lake Erie are worsened by agricultural runoff. With climate warming, new algal blooms are showing up in new places, like the Pacific Ocean.

"The city of Spokane has filed a lawsuit against the international agrochemical giant Monsanto, alleging that the company sold chemicals for decades that it knew were a danger to human and environmental health."

"California water quality regulators have asked state Attorney General Kamala Harris to consider enforcement action against the owner of an oil pipeline that ruptured near Santa Barbara in May, spilling petroleum onto beaches and the Pacific Ocean."

"A device commonly used to measure the methane that leaks from industrial sources may greatly underestimate those emissions, said an inventor of the technology that the device relies on."

"The U.S. Coast Guard was investigating a large, patchy oil sheen that appeared off the Southern California coast west of Santa Barbara on Wednesday, not far from the site of a petroleum pipeline spill in May, officials said."

"RIO DE JANEIRO — Athletes in next year's Summer Olympics here will be swimming and boating in waters so contaminated with human feces that they risk becoming violently ill and unable to compete in the games, an Associated Press investigation has found."