Great Lakes (IL IN MI MN OH WI)

"FLINT, MI – Federal prosecutors are investigating Flint's water crisis, an official said."

"California governor’s state-of-emergency declaration includes requirement that gas utility pay to fully mitigate the leak's emissions of methane."

"For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?"

In a complex legal settlement with the Sierra Club, Ohio's American Electric Power Company would eventually convert three coal-burning plants totalling 1,500 megawatts to natural gas and bring online 900 megawatts of wind and solar.

"As in the oceans, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could throw off water chemistry in large freshwater bodies like the Great Lakes, putting the food web at risk."

"Imagine an oil slick quickly growing through the Straits of Mackinac from a rupture of the 62-year-old, twin pipelines known as Line 5 traversing the bottom of where Lakes Michigan and Huron connect."

"A concerted 30-year effort has seen substantial improvement in the health of the largest freshwater habitat on Earth, but persistent and emerging problems exist prompting calls for further investment, legislation and long-term planning".

"It official: The algae bloom that covered Lake Erie this past summer was the biggest and baddest ever recorded."

"Of 32 BNSF train cars that hurtled off the tracks near Alma, Wis., on Saturday, five of them broke open and spilled at least 18,000 gallons of ethanol into the Mississippi River, the railroad company said."

"In the past five years, lead poisoning has set at least 10,000 Cleveland area children on a potential path to failure before they've even finished kindergarten."