Both backers and critics of coal are often seeing EPA's crackdown on mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia as inconsistent and tentative. "To each side, it looks like the EPA hasn't made up its mind. Which would make now the time to yell as loudly as possible."

"Mine operators are spreading serious amounts of coal combustion waste in W.Va. before the EPA declares it to be a hazardous material."

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Federal investigators began to descend on DuPont Co.'s Belle chemical plant Monday after a worker who was sprayed in the face by the poison gas phosgene died and U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd warned of 'a severe breakdown in even the most basic safety protocols.'"

"Facing a $5 million funding cut, the [Va.] state Department of Environmental Quality last summer scrapped the $365,000 PCB monitoring program."

"Nearly five years after fly ash and other debris flowed down Rostosky Ridge Road in Forward Township [Pa.], work was expected to begin to remove the final remains of that slide."

"A month after environmental groups alleged that an Eastern Shore chicken farm was polluting a Chesapeake Bay tributary, state regulators have yet to test the fouled waterway or the pile of sewage sludge said to be contaminating it, officials have acknowledged."

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Bayer CropScience has not properly maintained or tested the underground storage tank where it keeps roughly 200,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate, the deadly chemical that killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India, in 1984, state inspectors have alleged."

"West Virginia regulators are going to stop processing surface mining permits that propose to dump waste rock and dirt into streams while they develop new guidelines that force coal operators to reduce water quality impacts downstream from valley fills."

"Patriot Coal will cut in half the length of streams buried by its Hobet 45 mountaintop-removal mine, but still produce nearly the same amount of coal as the company originally hoped, under a deal announced Tuesday by the Obama administration."

After missing the last self-imposed deadline for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, mid-Atlantic governors say they are getting serious. Now EPA is taking over an effort the states have failed at.

"A federal appeals court has upheld Maryland's decision to deny a water quality certification for a liquefied natural gas terminal at Baltimore's Sparrows Point."

"Maryland advocates for a ban on a toxic flame retardant that accumulates in the environment and has been linked to cancer and brain development problems intend to pursue an earlier phaseout of the chemical than the timeline currently spelled out in a recent federal agreement."

"A coalition of former governors, congressmen, scientists and others sent the Obama Administration their proposed Chesapeake Bay restoration strategy, a plan much tougher than the one being developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."

"Environmental groups gathered along the Delaware River Wednesday to call on the Delaware River Basin Commission to protect the Delaware from toxic chemical contamination related to natural gas drilling."

"Kiddie Kollege, a day-care center that opened inside a heavily contaminated building in Gloucester County with a fresh coat of paint and little else, is about to be razed, nearly four years after state inspectors discovered the contamination."