"Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit over a decades-old oil spill and related environmental contamination in Brooklyn, New York, state Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said."
New York state is strewn with abandoned wells -- the relics of drilling booms before the current gas bonanza. Their owners are long gone, but they have left a legacy of pollution, sticking taxpayers with the cleanup costs.
"A tightening congressional race in upstate New York could become the first public referendum on shale-gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing."
"Hundreds of people opposed to drilling for natural gas in South Fayette's residential areas packed an auditorium Monday night to tell the township's five commissioners not to permit gas wells near the sprawling school campus."
"A federal jury in Utica has found Certified Environmental Services, Inc., two of its managers and one of its employees guilty of falsifying lab reports to make it appear as if asbestos had been removed from homes, schools, and other buildings when, in fact, asbestos remained in the buildings."
"A coalition of elected officials and unions called on Thursday for faster action from the city and federal government to monitor and, if necessary, remove hazardous chemicals known as PCBs from as many as 700 city schools, calling the problem a 'serious health threat.'"
"In a move that seems to fly in the face of its moniker -- the Garden State -- New Jersey is getting ready to put the pinch on fertilizer."
"The tension between drillers in Pennsylvania's gas-rich Marcellus shale and communities trying protect natural resources has reached a fevered pitch in Clinton County, where a zoning hearing board resigned rather than allow a water withdrawal station at a scenic bend of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River that draws kayakers, hang gliders, hunters and fly fishermen."
A study involving hundreds of families in Maine is finding high levels of arsenic in drinking water. The highest risk is for those drinking from private wills, which are not subject to regulation. In Maine, 56 percent of residents live in homes with private wells.
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