"More than a dozen Kanawha Valley residents filed suit Tuesday afternoon to try to stop Bayer CropScience from restarting the methyl isocyanate unit at its Institute plant until new government safety reviews are completed."

"A former top Pennsylvania official warned Maryland lawmakers to go slow in allowing drilling for natural gas in Marcellus shale deposits underlying the state's western mountains or risk the environmental and social problems his state is now experiencing from a poorly regulated wave of energy exploration."

"The Chesapeake Bay's beleaguered oyster population spawned a bumper crop of babies last year, state officials announced Monday, and there are signs that the diseases that have ravaged the bay's bivalves for more than two decades might have loosened their stranglehold."

"Virginia is about to limit state regulators' ability to protect public health and the environment from toxic discharges entering state waters from surface coal mines."

"In a special report, The Baltimore Sun chronicles a movement under way to purge the trash, bacteria and pollution that have long infected the city's watery heart."

"It was not enough for Pennye Jones-Napier to sell eco-friendly chew toys or fair-trade collars at her Takoma Park pet store, the Big Bad Woof. She wanted to make sure her customers could hold her accountable to the sustainable practices she preached."

Federal investigators Wednesday outlined allegations of safety violations as the likely factors that combined to produce the huge explosion that killed 29 miners on April 5 at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine.

"Arch Coal Inc. could have cut the stream damage from its proposed Spruce Mine in half without significantly increasing coal-production costs, according to a previously secret engineering report prepared for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."

"The Maryland Department of the Environment has formally threatened to sue the operator of three coal-fired power plants in the state for allegedly polluting ground and surface water with coal ash it's dumping in two unlined landfills."

"State environmental officials approved new coal-ash landfill in southeast Baltimore Tuesday, saying "state-of-the-art" pollution controls there should allay nearby residents' fears that the power plant waste will blow into their neighborhoods and leak into the Patapsco River."

In many states, polluted wastewater from gas drilling is required to be disposed of thousands of feet underground. But Pennsylvania only requires minimal treatment before the stuff is pumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.

"The storms blew through Hampton Roads on a Thursday in August, and after the storms came runoff, lots of it, shooting off roofs and pavement into storm drains, and a week after the runoff came the red tide. At Ocean View in Norfolk, the waves were mahogany with pale-red caps, stained by a sudden growth spurt of algae."

"The water in almost 15,000 D.C. homes that received repairs during a massive effort to remove lead pipes may still be contaminated by dangerous levels of the metal, according to a report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

"After Pittsburgh City Council gave final approval Tuesday to a ban on natural-gas production in the city, industry opponents vowed to press for similar prohibitions at the Allegheny County and state levels."

"The Chesapeake Bay does not like your lawn. That green grass is probably coated with pesticides and fertilizers and studded with pet poop. All that washes off in the rain and causes environmental problems downstream in the Chesapeake."