"A key piece of the state's approach to controlling water pollution from Pennsylvania's fast-expanding natural gas drilling activity cleared a major hurdle Thursday."

Amish farmers in Pennsylvania, whose plain living goes with a faith-based stewardship of the environment, are facing growing scrutiny for some practices the government says pollute streams.

"Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine was a 'ticking time bomb' where workers feared for their lives but worried that complaints about growing safety problems would cost them their jobs, members of a congressional committee heard Monday."

"Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay entered a new phase [Tuesday] as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, its co-plaintiffs, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency settled their lawsuit with a binding agreement that will require pollution to be reduced across the nation's largest estuary."

Nitro, West Virginia, is still struggling with the toxic legacy of a long-shuttered Monsanto weedkiller plant that has polluted soil and water with dioxin.

"Four environmental groups have just filed a major new water pollution lawsuit against Massey Energy."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered air pollution limits tightened on a Baltimore trash-to-energy incinerator after finding the state improperly relaxed them and did not require adequate monitoring of the plant's toxic emissions."

"Baltimore's revitalized waterfront draws millions of visitors a year, but could it ever be a place where people actually take a dip? Or catch fish? That's the vision of a local group that wants to make Baltimore's harbor swimmable and fishable within a decade."

"The Chesapeake's blue crabs, in decline for a decade, are in the middle of an extraordinary comeback, officials in Maryland and Virginia said Wednesday. The estuary's crab population has more than doubled in two years, they said, reaching its highest level since 1997."
 

"Maryland is failing to ride herd on water pollution in the state because of serious funding shortfalls and its own flawed enforcement practices, according to a Washington-based think tank."

"An O'Malley administration proposal to ease Maryland's stringent new storm-water pollution rules won legislative approval [Monday] night, capping a fierce debate over whether the Chesapeake Bay would suffer from giving developers more time and leeway in having to clamp down on rainfall washing off their building projects."

"MONTCOAL, W.Va. -- Twenty-five miners were killed Monday after a huge explosion at a Massey Energy mine in Raleigh County, the worst mine disaster in the United States in more than a quarter-century."

"Alleging that a Brandywine landfill is discharging toxic pollutants into local waterways, the Maryland Department of the Environment filed suit against the site's operator Friday in federal court. ... The landfill stores the waste byproducts of coal combustion from Mirant's Chalk Point Generating Plant in Aquasco."

"In Maryland, messing with Big Chicken can bring big trouble. The latest case study is playing out in Annapolis, where the state Senate wants to impose greater scrutiny on the University of Maryland's environmental law clinic. The reason? Apparently, it's the law clinic's pro bono work for an environmental group that is suing an Eastern Shore chicken farmer and the poultry giant Perdue Farms."

With the Chesapeake's once-abundant oysters reduced 99 percent, Maryland Natural Resources Police go undercover to catch poachers.