"MONUMENT VALLEY, Utah (AP) — The stretch of high desert on the Arizona-Utah border gives way to towering rock formations that resemble huge mittens, chimney spires and castles. But to the west of Monument Valley lies a reminder of what has been blamed for much heartache and tragedy in Elsie Mae Begay's family: A mesa stained with a gray streak where uranium was mined decades ago."

"As Miami prepares to dredge its port to accommodate supersize freighters, environmentalists are making a last-ditch effort to protect threatened coral reefs and acres of sea grass that they say would be destroyed by the expansion."

"At the rim of the Arctic Circle in Canada, gold mining firm Agnico-Eagle is learning how tough it is to operate in a remote region with temptingly large, but frustratingly inaccessible, reserves of oil, gas and minerals. Commentators rarely mention nightmarish logistics, polar bears and steel-snapping cold when they confidently predict that as the Arctic warms up, melting sea ice and shorter winters will open up the expanse to exploration."

"The State Department gave a crucial green light on Friday to a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline that would carry heavy oil from oil sands in Canada across the Great Plains to terminals in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast."

"In December, the Interior Department will hold the first oil and natural-gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico since last year’s massive oil spill that devastated the region."

"STOCKHOLM — Population growth and water stress are driving Earth to a food and environmental crunch that only better farming techniques and smarter use of the ecosystem will avert, a UN report issued on Monday said."

"Seattle is the home of the U.S. Coast Guard's entire fleet of polar-class icebreakers.

Both of them.

Capt. George Pellissier commands both the Polar Sea and the Polar Star. He has spent much of his career on these ships, which were built in Seattle in the 1970s.

The Obama administration has for the first time recommended setting aside as wilderness a key part of the Arctic National Wildlife refuge known as the 1002 Area. But the chance of action on the recommendation by the current Congress is considered remote.

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Appalachian residents support strengthening Clean Water Act restrictions on mountaintop removal and would punish at the ballot box public officials who work to weaken strip-mining regulations, according to a new poll released Tuesday."

"The Obama administration on Thursday will pump $100 million into a little-known program that is going a long way toward redefining Everglades restoration.

The money won’t go to build reservoirs. It will go to ranchers.

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia regulators should examine whether hundreds of additional abandoned coal mine sites need new water pollution treatment under a legal settlement announced last week, a member of a Department of Environmental Protection advisory committee said Wednesday.

Mining engineer John Morgan urged the Special Reclamation Fund Advisory Council to look into the matter in the wake of a deal between DEP and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy to set pollution discharge limits at certain abandoned sites.

"Volcano Lake, Calif. -- The news is distressing: A cratering real estate market, tight-fisted banks unwilling to make loans and no appetite among elected officials to let go of a dime. So why are conservationists smiling?"

Western Wisconsin is in the middle of a sand rush -- as companies mine the silica used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to produce natural gas. The mining operations have stirred concerns about effects on land and groundwater and health impacts on nearby residents.

"The federal government and the West Virginia Coal Association want a judge to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at protecting Logan County’s Blair Mountain from surface mining and returning it to the National Register of Historic Places."
 

"The Obama administration [Tuesday] roundly denounced a proposal by Republican lawmakers that would release several million acres of protected public lands into local management plans, potentially opening them to timber harvests, oil and gas development, motorized recreation and other uses."