"In December, the Justice Department announced a settlement in one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in U.S. history. The American Smelting and Refining Company, known as Asarco, will pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution at 80 sites in as many as 20 states."

"A drilling technique that is beginning to unlock staggering quantities of natural gas underneath Appalachia also yields a troubling byproduct: powerfully briny wastewater that can kill fish and give tap water a foul taste and odor."

"President Barack Obama on Wednesday will outline a government strategy to boost development of U.S. biofuels and address their environmental challenges, an administration official said."

"What do Nike, REI, the Vancouver Olympics, and the Washington state government have in common? They've all promised to eliminate their impact on the climate by going "carbon–neutral." REI aims to have zero output of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide by the year 2020. But since REI set the zero–impact goal, its emissions have been heading rapidly in the opposite direction."

"The study that first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, acrimonious debate over the safety of vaccines has been retracted by the British medical journal that published it. The withdrawal supports the scientific evidence that vaccinations don't cause autism, but isn't likely to persuade advocacy groups that believe in a link."

"FRANKFURT -- Carbon trading registries in half of Europe have been hit by hackers who broke security systems to steal emissions rights certificates from companies last week to sell them on, the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing officials."

Environmental groups fear President Obama's plan to guarantee loans for private power companies to build nuclear plants -- loans too risky for free-market lenders to touch -- would be a set-up for another corporate bailout.

"Weighing the future of a controversial wind farm project, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar toured Nantucket Sound on a Coast Guard cutter Tuesday, surveying the 24-square-mile area where the proposed project would loom."

"The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity has put the U.S. EPA on notice that it intends to sue the agency for failing to adequately evaluate and regulate nearly 400 pesticides harmful to hundreds of endangered species across the country as well as human beings."

CDC has increased 10-fold the number of contaminants it tracks in people since starting its biomonitoring program in 2001. But the agency is hitting limits that likely will slow future growth, and no one else is picking up the slack, leaving us ignorant for years to come about more than 99% of the possible toxics in our bodies.

"ARLINGTON, Va. -- Industry and environmental groups sparred at a public hearing here today over U.S. EPA's planned reconsideration of the George W. Bush administration's 2008 smog standard."

"A national environmental group with deep pockets and specialized legal expertise is joining the effort to block a permit for one of the [Kansas City] area’s biggest development projects."

"A New Mexico neighborhood offers a case study in the successes, and failures, of the environmental justice movement."

"Radioactive tritium, a carcinogen discovered in potentially dangerous levels in groundwater at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, has now tainted at least 27 of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors — raising concerns about how it is escaping from the aging nuclear plants."

"Take a walk, or take a canoe, down the Anacostia River. Here -- in the story of one smelly, trashy and sporadically beautiful stream -- is the unfinished business of the American environmental movement, 40 years after the first Earth Day."