"Oil industry lobbyists sought to gain an exemption from the leading California environmental law as they pushed back against legislation mandating oversight of hydraulic fracturing, multiple people familiar with the activities said."

"When a powerful storm unleashed 2 inches of rain on Allentown over six hours last summer, that water didn't just saturate lawns, flood roads and dampen basements. It also filled storm sewers with cascading water that blew the tops off manholes along the bloated sewage collection system."

"FRESNO, Calif. -- For decades, this city in California's agricultural heartland relied exclusively on cheap, plentiful groundwater and pumped increasingly larger amounts from an aquifer as its population grew."

"A meat inspection program that the Agriculture Department plans to roll out in pork plants nationwide has repeatedly failed to stop the production of contaminated meat at American and foreign plants that have already adopted the approach, documents and interviews show."

"Procter & Gamble is phasing out the use of two chemicals by 2014 from its beauty and personal care products. Activist groups have targeted P&G and other manufacturers of consumer products to end the use of phthalates and triclosan, chemicals that advocates say have been linked to birth defects and infertility."

"WASHINGTON -- House Republicans scouring for evidence of overreaching environmental regulations are taking aim at a two-decade-old, taxpayer-funded scientific study by Harvard researchers that linked air pollution to disease and death."

"In the reality TV series 'Prospectors,' gem hunters on a peak in central Colorado face the dangers of high-altitude lightning, rock falls, cave-ins and whiteouts while digging for valuable rocks 'just like their predecessors 150 years ago.'"

"WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency this week quietly withdrew two draft rules dealing with the regulation of chemicals. The potential rules were in limbo at the Office of Management for several years."

"ST. PETERSBURG -- Transcending their disagreements over Syrian chemical weapons, the G-20 leaders managed to reach agreement on confronting climate change in two ways. They will phase down refrigerant greenhouse gases and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies."

"ODANAH, WIS. -- While laughing children bob in kayaks along the sandy shores of Lake Superior, their somber parents hunch over picnic tables talking about their wild rice, their water, their fish and their way of life. Members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians worry about what is to become of their lake, a life source for their people."

"MIAMI -- The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be more active than normal, has turned out to be something of a dud so far as an unusual calm hangs over the tropics."

"As the season heads into the historic peak for activity, it may even enter the record books as marking the quietest start to any Atlantic hurricane season in decades.

'It certainly looks like pretty much of a forecast bust,' said Jeff Masters, a hurricane expert and director of meteorology at the Weather Underground."

"Japanese authorities are unable to control the radioactive water leaking out of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. Now the government plans to install a wall of ice around the facility to contain the contaminated water. Ed Lyman, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, tells host Steve Curwood that the new ice wall plan is likely an act of desperation, and that some American reactors are at risk for the same kind of flooding disaster."

"CLEWISTON, Fla. -- On wind-whipped days when rain pounds this part of South Florida, people are quickly reminded that Lake Okeechobee, with its vulnerable dike and polluted waters, has become a giant environmental problem far beyond its banks."

"Arsenic in rice occurs at such low levels that it poses no short-term health threat, Food and Drug Administration says, although it is still studying long-term effects. The arsenic in rice is thought to come from water on the ground, which is where rice is grown."

"George Washington National Forest is more than just one of the largest expanses of pristine land in the East. It’s the leafy cradle of the Shenandoah, James and Potomac rivers, a source of drinking water for millions of people in greater Washington."