"Some Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers — Del. Glen Glass of Harford County included — are convinced that they don't want a smart meter wirelessly sending data about their energy usage day in and out."

"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."

"Chesapeake Bay oysters are being resurrected from the dead. Blue crabs are roaring back. And after taking a huge blow from the monster storm called Sandy, the weakened bay proved in the fall that it could right itself and come back looking fresh."

"With the new year, Maryland becomes the first state to ban the use of additives containing arsenic in chicken feed, a practice already prohibited by Canada and the European Union."

"Friends say he has the vigor of a younger man, but Ed Merrifield knows the truth. He is tiring at age 65, and ready to give up his demanding third career as the Potomac riverkeeper."

Many anglers who pull fish out of the Anacostia River near Washington, DC, eat them despire health warnings.

"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."

"Contractors worked throughout the night to remove and replace an 800-foot swath of Interstate 77 that turned from asphalt to cinder in a massive natural gas line explosion that also flattened four homes and damaged five more but caused no deaths."

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Details began to emerge Wednesday of previous problems at a Harrison County coal-slurry impoundment, as CONSOL Energy continued its efforts to locate a coal miner missing and presumed dead following last week's collapse of an embankment at the facility."

"Salty bromide concentrations in the Monongahela River, which had risen in 2009 and 2010 due, at least in part, to discharges of Marcellus Shale gas drilling wastewater by sewage treatment plants, returned to normal levels in 2011 and this year, according to a Carnegie Mellon University river monitoring study."

"An anonymous donor is giving Georgetown University $20 million to support a major initiative for the study of the environment, school officials say."

"PHILADELPHIA -- Pennsylvania officials reported incomplete test results that omitted data on some toxic metals that were found in drinking water taken from a private well near a natural gas drilling site, according to legal documents released this week."

"The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has created incomplete lab reports and used them to dismiss complaints that Marcellus Shale gas development operations have contaminated residential water supplies and made people sick, according to court documents and other sources."

"Animal rights activists filed a lawsuit on Thursday to try to stop a plan to cull deer in a Washington park, saying it would create a 'killing field' in the heart of the U.S. capital."

"Already divided over the issues of climate change and sea-level rise, Delaware politicians, voters and communities now face a costly debate over short- and long-term rescue options for eroding beaches along the Delaware Bay and Delaware River."