Pollution

"As cities across the nation overhaul their aging, increasingly fragile drinking water systems, some municipal leaders are digging deeper to erase a toxic legacy that endangers millions of Americans: lead water pipes connecting homes to street mains." Not Chicago.

"Meet U.S. EPA's new standards for airborne lead, which are the same as the agency's existing standards for the toxic metal."

"U.S. EPA [Monday] released the final version of closely watched guidelines intended to make it easier for states to get a pass on air pollution violations outside their control because of 'exceptional events.'"

Florida environmental agencies said they are not legally required to notify homeowners whose well water was contaminated by a sinkhole at a major phosphate operation.

"MENOMINEE RESERVATION, Wisc. — Guy Reiter was an archaeologist before he was an activist. But the two merged after a dream six years ago. 'I was in a van and when we drove by the White Rapids I looked over and saw an elder sitting on a dam, in full Indian regalia,' Reiter says. 'He flagged me down, I climbed the dam, and he started talking to me in Menominee.'"

"Indonesian forest fires that choked a swath of Southeast Asia with a smoky haze for weeks last year may have caused more than 100,000 deaths, according to new research that will add to pressure on Indonesia's government to tackle the annual crisis."

"For decades, a creek in the mountains west of Denver sometimes ran yellow from toxic waste gurgling out of abandoned mines — a painfully familiar story in the picturesque wreckage of Colorado's 1859 gold rush. But after a three-decade, $62 million Superfund cleanup, Clear Creek now lives up to its pristine-sounding name, at least most of the time."

"Drivers are starting to see gas prices jump across the East Coast. A leak in Alabama has shut down part of an important pipeline providing gas to the Eastern US."

"Health workers are piecing together a complicated puzzle in El Paso County, Colo. In January, three cities — Security, Fountain and Widefield — noticed synthetic chemicals known as PFCs in the drinking water."

"Southern California Gas Co. agreed to pay $4 million to settle criminal charges over the massive gas leak near Porter Ranch last year, but the utility still faces potentially costly civil actions from both residents and regulators."