Pollution

"For the public officials who safeguard Milwaukee's water, Cryptosporidium changed everything."

"With smoke and tar from faulty light fixtures leaking into New York City public school classrooms at alarming rates, the Bloomberg administration said on Tuesday that it would cut in half the time it needed to replace them."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has some fresh news from World War II: Thirteen Merchant Marine ships sunk by the German navy in the Battle of the Atlantic threaten to release oil from their watery graves."

"WATFORD CITY, North Dakota -- In towns across North Dakota, the wellhead of the North American energy boom, the locals have taken to quoting the adage: 'Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting.'"

"BATON ROUGE, La. -- Shirley Bowman noticed the smell after 8 a.m. on June 14, 2012, her 61st birthday. In Baton Rouge, where the petrochemical industry dominates the landscape, foul odors resembling burnt rubber or propane are perennial. But this odor, caustic and potent, seemed especially foul — 'like some sort of chemical,' she recalls."

"Experts say Wisconsin lakes’ chemical cocktail likely similar to Minnesota's"

"JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -- As she flipped through the cemetery register, Mary Blakely's eyes filled with tears. On line after line, the entry read simply 'Baby Boy' or 'Baby Girl,' followed by a surname and a burial date."

"MEXICO CITY -- Fed up with oil spills from facilities belonging to Mexico’s state oil company Pemex, residents of two communities in the southeastern state of Tabasco are taking the country’s largest company to court in a bid for compensation for damage to the environment and agriculture."

"The Obama administration said Thursday it will require companies that drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands to publicly disclose chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations. The new "fracking" rule replaces a draft proposed last year that was withdrawn amid industry complaints that federal regulation could hinder an ongoing boom in natural gas production.

"If the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency isn’t going to ensure Seattle’s Duwamish River is clean enough for needy residents to fish there for their dinner, the agency needs to ensure those people get fish some other way – even if that means supplying seafood through food banks. Or building clean urban fishing ponds. Or giving people shares in a seafood cooperative akin to a community-supported-agriculture operation."