Mid-Atlantic (DC DE MD PA VA WV)

The District of Columbia's city council is poised to tax disposable plastic and paper bags and to use the revenue to clean up the trash-strewn Anacostia River.

American shad are struggling with little success to make a comeback in Virginia's James River. Historically abundant, this "founding fish" disappeared for years because its spawning was blocked by dams.

"The thick, milky white liquid looks like Elmer's glue, though it's greasy to the touch. It has a sweet, alcohol smell. It's not your father's heating oil, to be sure. But it will do the same job, says Cary J. Claiborne, and a lot more cleanly.

Claiborne is president and chief executive officer of New Generation Biofuels, a Florida-based startup that's producing fuel from vegetable and soybean oil at a small production plant it set up this year in southern Baltimore.

Zebra mussels, which have caused an estimated $5 billion in damage to the Great Lakes, have been found in a Maryland tributary of Chesapeake Bay. If they spread, they could threaten the less-salty waters of the Bay.

West Virginia's environmental agency says it's OK for fish there to contain more mercury than the federal EPA recommends -- because West Virginians consume less fish than the national average.

"The Obama administration has cleared more than three-dozen new mountaintop removal permits for issuance by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, drawing quick criticism from environmental groups"

A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought the American Shad them back from the brink.

President Obama issued an executive order empowering EPA to set a more demanding timetable for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and to penalize states that fail to meet it.