Both backers and critics of coal are often seeing EPA's crackdown on mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia as inconsistent and tentative. "To each side, it looks like the EPA hasn't made up its mind. Which would make now the time to yell as loudly as possible."

"Kansas' largest electric company has agreed to upgrade pollution controls at its biggest power plant under a legal settlement announced Monday by the utility and federal officials."

"Facing a $5 million funding cut, the [Va.] state Department of Environmental Quality last summer scrapped the $365,000 PCB monitoring program."

"In the first enforcement of its kind against a public agency, the (Calif.) State Water Board on Tuesday said it has reached a $6.2 million settlement with the city of Long Beach for extensive violations of regulations governing the storage of petroleum and waste oil in underground storage tanks."

"AUGUSTA, Maine — State environmental officials began making their case Monday for a $200 million cleanup of the HoltraChem site in Orrington, arguing that contaminants in five outdated landfills threaten groundwater supplies and the Penobscot River."

"DALLAS -- Crews worked Sunday to protect two sensitive wildlife areas after a crude oil spill shut down parts of a major southeast Texas port, state Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said."

"More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found."

"Search warrants served on two Cook Inlet oil facilities last week were based on federal environmental regulators' suspicions that Chevron Corp. had knowingly violated its air pollution permits and made false statements, court filings show."

"Federal officials announced two major settlements on Thursday for reducing emissions from 28 glass and cement plants across the country."

"Hudson River dredging released almost 25 times more PCBs into the water than expected, General Electric said Thursday in calling for changes in performance standards before the massive Superfund cleanup resumes."

"An exhaustive report on Portland Harbor contamination -- written by industries and local government agencies that will likely have to pay for much of the cleanup -- tends to 'minimize the risks to human health and the environment' from harbor pollution, federal regulators say."

"While Windsor builds a $60-million riverfront basin to stop raw sewage overflows, the City of Detroit is dumping billions of gallons of untreated waste into the Detroit River."

"Nearly five years after fly ash and other debris flowed down Rostosky Ridge Road in Forward Township [Pa.], work was expected to begin to remove the final remains of that slide."

"A month after environmental groups alleged that an Eastern Shore chicken farm was polluting a Chesapeake Bay tributary, state regulators have yet to test the fouled waterway or the pile of sewage sludge said to be contaminating it, officials have acknowledged."

"Oil and gas operators are skirting federal law when they inject toxic 'fracking fluids' into wells, threatening drinking water supplies from Pennsylvania to Wyoming, according to a new report by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group."