"Local residents are calling it an environmental disaster. A breach of the tailings pond on Mount Polley Mine sent five million cubic metres of toxic waste into Hazeltine Creek, Quesnel Lake and Polley Lake, with fears it could spread far and wide in the coming days."
"Eight Democratic members of Maryland's congressional delegation wrote President Obama Monday urging him to reconsider his administration's plan to allow seismic testing for oil and gas off the mid-Atlantic coast."
"TOLEDO, Ohio — It took a serendipitous slug of toxins and the loss of drinking water for a half-million residents to bring home what scientists and government officials in this part of the country have been saying for years: Lake Erie is in trouble, and getting worse by the year."
"U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) has told The Blade she is demanding more transparency from environmental regulators after inadvertently learning during a conference call Sunday that Toledo's tap water has been as high as 3 parts per billion for the toxin found in microcystis algae - three times higher than the World Health Organization standard of 1 ppb."
"Billions of baby oysters in the Pacific inlets here are dying and Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington is busy spreading the bad news."
"With the removal of many dams, conservationists are seeing the return of the natural bounty that fed Native Americans and astonished European settlers."
"Pennsylvania has 86,000 miles of rivers, streams and creeks — a total length eclipsed only by the vast wilderness in Alaska."
Several hundred thousand residents of the Toledo, Ohio, area remained Monday morning under an advisory not to drink their tapwater. Labs found microcystin, a toxin produced by blue-green algae, in the water. The algae are blooming in western Lake Erie, from which the city draws its water, because of phosphorus frpm farm runoff, lawn fertilizer, and sewage overflow. At a 3 am news conference, Mayor D. Michael Collins said the advisory would ramain in effect for some hours although tests showed microcystin in the water returning to safe levels. The crisis disrupted people's lives on a massive scale as bottled water was distributed.
"More than half of California is now under the most severe level of drought for the first time since the federal government began issuing regular drought reports in the late 1990s, according to new data released Thursday."
North Carolina lawmakers said Thursday they still haven't reached agreement on legislation requiring Duke Energy to limit pollution leaking from its coal ash dumps across the state, nearly six months after a spill coated 70 miles of the Dan River with gray sludge."
Advertisement 
