Laws & Regulations

"Seven environmental groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging safety rules issued earlier this month for trains carrying oil, arguing the regulations are too weak to protect the public."

"As Duke Energy pleaded guilty Thursday in a North Carolina courtroom to nine criminal violations of the federal Clean Water Act, federal prosecutors recounted examples where time and again the nation's largest electricity company failed to prevent its illegal pollution."

A federal judge Wednesday rejected Freedom Industries' bankruptcy proposal and ordered the company to clean up the site where its January 2014 chemical spill contaminated Charleston, W.V., drinking water.

"Enbridge Energy and its affiliates will pay $75 million to settle a 2010 oil spill into Michigan's Talmadge Creek and Kalamazoo River that dumped 800,000 gallons of oil, state officials said on Wednesday."

"The House voted Tuesday to overturn an Obama administration rule aimed at redefining which streams, ponds, wetlands and other waterways are under its jurisdiction."

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation violated its own guidelines in 2013 when it investigated environmental advocates who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, the F.B.I. acknowledged on Tuesday."

"The drought across much of the Western U.S. is now in its fourth year. In California — where it's the most intense — farms are not under the same strict orders to conserve as cities are."

"The Obama administration gave conditional approval on Monday for Shell Gulf of Mexico, Inc. to start drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean this summer."

"Railroad tracks where an oil train derailed Wednesday in central North Dakota had been inspected by BNSF Railway a day earlier and by the Federal Railroad Administration about three months before the fiery derailment, an FRA spokesman said Friday."