"Intense rainfalls are getting bigger and more frequent, causing local governments, engineers and landowners to rethink whether sewer systems and other drainage features are up to their tasks."

"The average amount of ice covering the Great Lakes declined 71 percent over the past 40 winters, with Lake Superior ice down 79 percent, according to a report published by the American Meteorological Society.

'There was a significant downward trend in ice coverage from 1973 to the present for all of the lakes,' states the study appearing in the society’s Journal of Climate.

"LUDINGTON, Mich. (AP) — On many a summer evening, Jim Fay joins dozens of onlookers on this tourist town's waterfront, exchanging friendly waves with passengers and crew members as the S.S. Badger chugs into the harbor after a 60-mile voyage across Lake Michigan from Manitowoc, Wis. It's a cherished ritual in Ludington, and its days may be numbered. "

"Chicago's two coal-fired power plants will shut down sooner than expected under a deal to be announced today by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and environmental groups."

"Move over, Solyndra. Conservatives opposed to the Obama administration's spending on clean energy have a new whipping boy.

The electric Chevrolet Volt is the new focus of angry conservative blog posts, testy congressional hearings and joking videos. And Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have taken shots at the car's puny sales and size, with Gingrich jeering, 'You can't put a gun rack on a Volt.'

"Ships entering the Great Lakes should be made to kill all the creatures that hitch a ride in their ballast tanks, environmental groups said on Tuesday, challenging as too lax a proposed government standard to combat invasive species."

"Michigan environmental regulators said Thursday that they reached a long-sought deal with Dow Chemical Co. to clean up to 1,400 residential properties in Midland, home of its corporate headquarters and a plant that polluted the area with dioxin for much of the past century."

The closing of an 83-year-old coal-fired power plant near Chicago, one of the area's top polluters, will have economic consequences.

"One in 10 babies along Minnesota's North Shore are born with unhealthy levels of mercury in their bodies, according to a new report on contamination around Lake Superior, the first to look for the pollutant in the blood of U.S. infants."

"Keeping the invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes will involve re-reversing the flow of the Chicago River -- an engineering marvel completed a century ago through a complex network of rivers, canals, and locks, a new study said on Tuesday."

"The Palisades nuclear power plant, which sits on the shores of Lake Michigan, could soon be downgraded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a status making it among the nation's five worst-performing nuclear plants after a year of accidents, unexpected shutdowns and safety violations."

"D&L Energy Inc. is best known for its brine-injection well in the city that is suspected of triggering 11 Mahoning Valley earthquakes this year. But a Vindicator investigation conducted prior to the well shutdown Friday and Saturday’s magnitude-4.0 earthquake revealed the company has a history of at least 120 violations at 32 injection and extraction wells in Ohio and Pennsylvania during the past decade."

"McDONALD, Ohio - Officials said Saturday they believe the latest earthquake activity in northeast Ohio is related to the injection of wastewater into the ground near a fault line, creating enough pressure to cause seismic activity.

The brine wastewater comes from drilling operations that use the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale. But Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Jim Zehringer said during a news teleconference that fracking is not causing the quakes."

"WEST ALLIS, Wis.--Plans to develop an open-pit iron mine in northwestern Wisconsin are the latest flash point in a growing national debate that weighs the prospect of new jobs against concern about environmental damage."

"Federal and state authorities today unveiled a legal settlement intended to finally complete the Deep Tunnel, the Chicago region’s massive flood- and pollution-control project."