"While lawmakers and the White House ratchet up efforts to keep Asian carp out of Lake Michigan, boating and fishing communities along the Illinois River are under siege."

"Federal authorities on Monday presented a $78.5 million plan intended to block Asian carp, a hungry, huge, nonnative fish, from invading the Great Lakes."

"Downtown Chicago has the highest peak levels of nitrogen dioxide in the country, and is the only site in violation of new stricter guidelines against the irritant, which inflames asthma and other lung conditions."

"Chemicals used in Scotchgard and Teflon are regulated, but metal plating companies got a pass by Bush's EPA."

"Opponents of planned wood-burning power plants in southern Indiana are watching closely as state officials finish work on an air permit that would dictate what types of wood products the first of the plants can burn."

"General Motors and Delphi Corp. spent 60 years making door and trunk latches, seat-belt fasteners and other metal parts for cars and trucks before shutting the Franklin Township [OH[ factory in 2007."

"The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request by the state of Michigan for an injunction to force the closing of two Chicago-area waterway locks to keep Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes."

"Joliet is pushing the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to more than double the concentration of cancer-causing radium it's allowed to dump onto farmland in the south suburbs, expanding the potential for deadly radon gas in these increasingly urban communities."

"Since 2004, [Ohio] has allowed 42 treatment facilities, power plants and factories to ignore federal limits on dumping mercury into lakes, rivers and streams."

"Toxic chemicals have crept into the drinking water in a corner of rural Grundy County [Illinois], stoking fears and raising suspicions about who is to blame."

The effluent stream of an East Chicago, Indiana, wastewater treatment plant is clean enough to fool salmon into spawning there.

"Government regulators have found high levels of manganese, a dangerous metal that can affect the brain, in the air outside a school in eastern Ohio."

"If taxpayers end up paying only 1 percent of the cost of cleaning up PCB contamination in the Fox River, that could be between $10 million and $15 million. If the taxpayer obligation reaches 10 percent, the figure becomes $100 million or more."

"Federal stimulus funding has provided $242 million to Illinois to weatherize more than 25,000 homes, but poor oversight of that work puts the funding at risk and in some cases puts the residents of poorly weatherized homes in danger, an audit report warns."

"The Great Lakes are under threat from the Asian carp, an invasive species of fish whose presence is pitting neighboring states against Illinois in a showdown with no clear resolution."