"STE. GENEVIEVE, Mo. -- Ameren Missouri has spent the past four years engaged in a bitter fight with Labadie-area residents over a proposal to pile millions of cubic yards of coal ash on a plot of cropland by the Missouri River."

"GONZALES, Tex. -- In a dusty lot off the main highway in this South Texas town, Vern Sartin pointed to a collection of hose hookups and large storage tanks used for collecting wastewater from hydraulic fracturing jobs."

"HOUSTON -- Oklahoma's largest-recorded earthquake was triggered by injection wells used by the oil and gas industry, according to a report released this week."

"AKWESASNE — A $20 million settlement may remedy nearly 60 years of environmental pollution to the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation."

"Last year, two inspectors from California’s hazardous waste agency were visiting an electronics recycling company near Fresno for a routine review of paperwork when they came across a warehouse the size of a football field, packed with tens of thousands of old computer monitors and televisions."

"Hulking, pitch-black mounds resembling coal have grown exponentially in the last week along the banks of the Detroit River in southwest Detroit, prompting concern about potential pollution from residents and legislators on both sides of the river."

"Over the objections of environmentalists, community groups and neighboring Long Beach officials, Los Angeles harbor commissioners on Thursday approved a $500-million rail yard that could dramatically boost business but also drive more noise and dirty air into schools, parks and low-income neighborhoods."

"Forty years ago, when North Carolina banned using deep wells to permanently dump industrial waste, some thought the issue had been decided for good. Now state lawmakers who want to turn North Carolina into the nation’s next fracking hotspot are reopening the case for injecting brines and toxins deep underground."

"CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A federal grand jury returned an indictment against the owner of an oil and gas drilling company on Thursday, charging him with violating the Clean Water Act by dumping more than 20,000 gallons of fracking waste into a river in Youngstown."

"It is the most humble of vessels for New York City foodstuffs, ubiquitous at Chinese takeout joints and halal street carts. In pre-Starbucks days, coffee came packaged in its puffy embrace. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose regulatory lance has slain fatty foods, supersize sodas, and smoking in parks, is now targeting plastic foam, the much-derided polymer that environmentalists have long tried to restrict."

"Roy Derrick maneuvered his forklift with a pallet of neatly boxed expired produce and flowers and dropped it into an industrial compactor at Safeway's cavernous return center in Upper Marlboro. As the compactor hummed, compressed food and floral scraps spilled through a chute into a 40-foot trailer, one of five that would make the weekly trip to composting centers in Delaware or Virginia."

"Mexico City plans to draw drinking water from a mile-deep aquifer, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The Mexican effort challenges a key tenet of U.S. clean water policy: that water far underground can be intentionally polluted because it will never be used."

"The operator of three coal-fired power plants in Maryland has agreed to pay a total of $2.2 million in penalties and fix long-standing pollution problems at the landfills in Southern Maryland and Montgomery County where it disposes of the ash from those plants, according to court documents."

"DEPUE, Ill. -- This tiny village tucked into the Illinois River Valley is known for its lake, a tranquil body of tree-lined water that has drawn thousands of spectators to a national boat race for nearly 30 years. But most visitors heading to Lake DePue must pass another village landmark before reaching the shore — a pile of contaminated slag weighing at least 570,000 tons that looms over the main road into town, left behind by a zinc smelter that employed many locals for decades."

"A signature battle of the energy boom, a public fight over a waste-water deep disposal well, plays out amid scientific uncertainty over safety in a small town."