Pollution

Some residents are worried about a rural Nevada dump where decades of toxic refuse lie buried in shallow trenches.

"Sierra Club and Environment Texas filed an air pollution lawsuit today in federal district court against Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP. The groups claim that Chevron Phillips has repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act at its Cedar Bayou chemical plant in Baytown, Texas."

A Duke Univ. study found the highest concentrations of toxic metals in coal ash to be in the smallest particles -- the ones most likely to be kicked up as dust and breathed in by people.

One resident says the Little Pee Dee River is unsafe for swimming because of fecal coliform bacteria from hog farming.

"In rural west Michigan, food processors have sprayed so much wastewater onto fields that heavy metals seeped into groundwater, contaminating wells."

The Obama EPA, like the Bush EPA, is cleaning up fewer Superfund hazardous waste sites -- saying the remaining sites are getting harder to clean up. Unline Bush, however, Obama is seeking to reinstate the lapsed tax on petrochemical companies that originally funded the cleanup of abandoned sites.

"As it races to replenish phosphate supplies for its weed-killing cash machine Roundup, Monsanto Co. insists its history of polluting southeastern Idaho’s high country shouldn’t prevent it from digging fresh open pits here."

Methane problems in drinking water wells are more common than has been acknowledge by state regulators in Pennsylvania, which is one of the states experiencing a natural gas drilling boom.