"LOGAN, W.Va. — For 51 years he’d lived in the same hollow and for two decades he’d performed the same job, mining coal from the underground seams of southern West Virginia. Then, on June 30, Michael Estep was jobless. His mine shut down, and its operator said “market conditions” made coal production unviable.
"HARRISBURG — An unfinished piece of business with state oversight of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling continues to rear its head. That’s the matter of how Pennsylvania should track and evaluate potential public health problems caused by hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking."
"Drilling-wary Maryland is one of several East Coast states considering whether to open their lands to fracking as public health concerns mount."
"CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Department of Health and Human Resources lacks a program and properly trained staff to assess community-wide chemical exposures like those that followed the Elk River chemical leak in January, federal public health officials said in a new review made public Tuesday."
"CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- Dominion Virginia Power's plan to close its coal-fired power plant on the Elizabeth River would leave nearly a million tons of fly ash in a waste dump that has leaked arsenic and other contaminants into groundwater for more than a decade, company documents show.:"
"Back in April 2006, officials from West Virginia American Water told state regulators they were planning to review the Elk River watershed to find out what potential contamination sources were upstream from their Kanawha Valley water treatment plant."
"MIDDLESEX, Pennsylvania — If you stand beside Bob and Kim Geyer’s farm on Denny Road at 3:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, it is mostly quiet, except for the faint sounds of the local high school’s flag team band practicing in the distance."
"In Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River, one of the longest in the northeast, male smallmouth bass are sprouting female egg cells in their testes. According to a United States Geological Survey report released in June, these intersex fish appear in water — both in this river and two others in the state — that has become saturated with estrogenic compounds, natural and artificial hormones in animal manure and, to a smaller degree, sewage."
Just over a year after an oil-train explosion in Quebec killed 47 people, information on the threats oil trains present to public safety is starting to seep through a long blackout in which railroads convinced pliable federal regulators that the public was better off not knowing. Journalists from the AP and McClatchy FOIA'd information loose from Amtrak on Maryland and Pennsylvania, two of the states that have been reluctant to disclose.
"PITTSBURGH — Where 600 flights used to take off and land every day here at Pittsburgh International Airport, there are now about 300. Partway down Terminal B, the moving sidewalk that used to lead to a dozen gates now stops abruptly at a plain gray wall."
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