"Underfunded agency faces the challenge of finding answers to key questions: When did Exxon's pipeline rupture and when did the company learn of the spill?"
"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Scientists backed by a $15 million industry-funded research project are picking apart -- and trying to disprove -- a series of studies that found coalfield residents near mountaintop-removal mining operations face greater risks of serious illness and premature death."
"Nearly 800 hazardous waste sites are located in Erie, Niagara and Cattaraugus counties, and the majority of them are a threat to the largest source of fresh water in the world – the Great Lakes."
"CLEARWATER -- Despite warnings from scientists, rising sea levels still seem little more than a distant, imperceptible threat, a phenomenon whose change is measured in centimeters over decades."
"RONAN, Mont. -- In a place where the lives and histories of Indian tribes and white settlers intertwine like mingling mountain streams, a bitter battle has erupted on this land over the rivers running through it."
"Billions of gallons of raw sewage and contaminated stormwater surge every year into the waterways and onto the streets of New England, as a 40-year-old pledge to clean America's lakes, rivers and streams remains unfulfilled."
"As the Obama administration launches a broad investigation of flame retardants used in furniture and other household goods, the nation's top environmental regulators are running into the limitations of a federal law that makes it practically impossible to ban hazardous chemicals."
"The Environmental Protection Agency issued a sharply critical assessment of the State Department's recent environmental impact review of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, certain to complicate efforts to win approval for the $7-billion project."
Reporters aren't the only ones frustrated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's clampdown on press coverage, which prompted SEJ recently to call it "one of the most closed, opaque agencies" in the federal government. Patrick Boyle, former chief of public affairs for EPA's Mid-Atlantic regional office, says politically motivated "message control" didn't begin with the Obama administration, but it's gotten much worse under a president who promised greater transparency in government.
InvestigateWest's Robert McClure and Jason Alcorn explain how to spin the local angle about how parks built or improved with money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund are increasingly being illegally privatized or converted to something other than parks — including sharing their searchable database of almost 40,000 park grants.
