"Hudson River dredging released almost 25 times more PCBs into the water than expected, General Electric said Thursday in calling for changes in performance standards before the massive Superfund cleanup resumes."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and New York City announced a pilot program Tuesday to address the problem of potentially hazardous PCBs in construction materials in some city schools."

"In a new setback for a controversial wind farm proposed off Cape Cod, the National Park Service announced Monday that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, guaranteeing further delays for the project."

City leaders celebrated the ground-breaking for New Bedford High School in 1970, apparently not knowing the risks of building it on a toxic dump.

After decades of putting hazardous and toxic waste into the Parker Street Dump, the city of New Bedford Massachusetts built a high school and middle school on the site. Today, the city is dealing with the toxic legacy.

"The owner of the highly polluted Kin-Buc Landfill in Edison has agreed to make the largest environmental clean-up contribution in the United States, $1.79 billion, as part of a bankruptcy settlement."

"An Ithaca environmental activist and 6,000 other individuals and organizations asked the governor Tuesday to withdraw the state's newly drafted regulations on natural gas drilling, saying the state's entire regulatory framework needs to be strengthened before more drilling occurs."

"Trees along big city streets have a rough life. Between pollution, development, and vandalism, street trees die off at a pretty alarming rate. One New York artist thinks if people knew more about street trees, they’d appreciate them more -- and treat them better."

"As the debate over the merits of Marcellus Shale development reaches a crescendo, an Ithaca researcher has culled a list of 270 files documenting wastewater spills, well contamination, explosions, methane migration and ecological damage related to gas production in the state since 1979."

"Hundreds of gasoline spills, which contain carcinogens like benzene, are reported each year in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Countless others go unreported or unnoticed. Cleaning them up can run into the millions and take decades to complete."

"Bowing to intense public pressure, the Chesapeake Energy Corporation says it will not drill for natural gas within the upstate New York watershed, an environmentally sensitive region that supplies unfiltered water to nine million people."

A trawl survey that has been conducted weekly for some 50 years in Narragansett Bay is finding profound changes in the composition of sea life there. Biologically, the news is bad. Despite huge investments in cleaning up the Bay, climate change seems to be the villain.

"A federal jury on Monday found Exxon Mobil liable for contaminating groundwater in New York City and awarded the city $104.7 million in compensatory damages."

"The state is poised to ban the use of mercury-tainted coal fly ash at a Ravena cement plant that is the state's second largest source of airborne mercury pollution."

"Twenty percent of the drinking fountains and faucets at Utica elementary schools tested positive for lead, according to results of a voluntary testing program released Tuesday."