"If all had gone according to plan, the Millennium Bulk Logistics Terminal near Longview, Wash., would have begun shipping coal to Asia in the late fall. The Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point, just north of Bellingham, Wash., would begin construction in 2013."

"The Portland City Council voted 5-0 during a raucous public meeting Wednesday morning to add fluoride to Portland's drinking water, ending the city's status as the only major U.S. city that hasn't approved fluoridation."

"PORTLAND, Ore. -- Who bears responsibility for an impoverished child with a mouth full of rotting teeth? Parents? Soda companies? The ingrained inequities of capitalism? Pick your villain, or champion. They are all on display here as the largest city in the nation with no commitment to fluoridating its water supply -- and one of the most politically liberal cultures anywhere -- has waded into a new debate about whether to change its ways and its water."

"Beside Seattle’s notoriously polluted Duwamish River, an excavator scoops up small pieces of waste metal and slings them onto a rusty mountain at Seattle Iron & Metals Corp. A pile of flattened cars and trucks squats nearby amid vast sheets of scrap metal. For at least the last four years, this auto-shredder and metal recycler has dumped more pollutants into the river than allowed under the federal Clean Water Act, government records show. The levels have ranged higher than 250 times above what’s known to harm salmon that migrate through the river."

"A U.S. study has found an unusually high incidence of gastrointestinal disease in a small U.S. town located downstream from a Teck smelter in Trail, B.C."

"In the early 1990s, anglers in the Upper Columbia River reported seeing beads of liquid mercury floating in the water."

"The Pacific Northwest may be the epicenter of U.S. coffee culture, and now a new study shows the region's elevated caffeine levels don't stop at the shoreline."

"When a bunch of wild pigs showed up around C.J. Strike in 2009, Idaho wildlife officials began to sweat."

After decades of conflict over the Klamath River, stakeholders including farmers, tribes, environmentalists, fishermen, governors, and federal officials, struck an agreement they thought served everybody. Then the Tea Party scotched it.

"BOARDMAN, Ore. -- A new link in the world's future energy supply could soon be built here on the Columbia River, and it would have nothing to do with the vast acres of wind turbines or the mammoth hydroelectric dams that give this region's power sources one of the cleanest carbon footprints in the nation."

"Public health officials have their hands full keeping your clam chowder and raw oysters safe. That's due, in part, to red tides."

"The states of Oregon and Washington can kill sea lions that have feasted on endangered Columbia River salmon, under an authorization given on Thursday by the federal government.

The decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) marked the latest reversal in the federal government's position on sanctioned killing of California sea lions. It upset animal rights advocates, who argue the creatures are unfairly blamed for low fish stocks.

"The Seattle City Council voted Monday to ban single-use plastic bags from groceries and other retail stores, joining a growing trend among cities that embrace green values."

"SEATTLE — So many pine, fir and spruce trees in the Northwest are riddled with bugs and disease that major tree die-offs are expected to rip through a third of Eastern Washington forests - an area covering nearly 3 million acres - in the next 15 years, according to new state projections."

"Whitebark pines may be among the earliest victims of a warming climate in the Northwest, as rising temperatures at higher elevations have brought the trees into contact with the destructive mountain pine beetle."

Craig Welch reports for the Seattle Times November 7, 2011.