Pollution

"A pollutant that has leached into California aquifers since farmers first began using synthetic fertilizer continues to accumulate and would not be removed from groundwater even if the state’s agriculture businesses abruptly quit using nitrogen-based materials to boost the productivity of their crops."

"These Catholic social justice advocates are exemplars of the force behind We Are Seneca Lake, one of the nation’s longest-running campaigns of civil disobedience."

"The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general won’t investigate allegations that a top EPA adviser knowingly used flawed data in an influential study of methane emissions from oil and natural gas production."

"Science advisers to the Environmental Protection Agency Thursday challenged an already controversial government report on whether thousands of oil and gas wells that rely on hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” systemically pollute drinking water across the nation."

"North Carolina’s state epidemiologist resigned Wednesday to protest her employer’s depiction that “deliberately misleads” how screening standards were created to test private wells near Duke Energy’s power plants."

"An unknown amount of diesel fuel has leaked from a Transocean Ltd. drilling rig that ran aground in Scotland, authorities in the U.K. said Wednesday."

"North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's administration on Tuesday again lashed out against a state toxicologist who said in sworn testimony he worried that state officials cleared well water near Duke Energy coal ash pits as safe to drink despite a chemical known to cause cancer."

"From Appalachia to Wyoming, surging demand for cheap natural gas, tougher environmental regulations and multiple coal company bankruptcies have left behind a devastated coal business, lost jobs and billions of dollars in cleanup work. Many of the jobs are gone for good, but ex-miners can repair the damaged land and shape a post-coal economy, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said on a recent visit to coal country, offering up a future starkly different from Donald Trump's."

"U.S. states should force coal companies to set aside collateral to pay for future mine cleanups and protect taxpayers as the industry braces for further declines, a leading federal regulator said on Tuesday."

"Drinking water supplies serving more than six million Americans contain unsafe levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked to potentially serious health problems, according to a new study from Harvard University researchers."