Pollution

Eighteen coal facilities in Ohio are operating with expired pollution-discharge permits under an agency where allegations of coal-industry influence arose during a personnel flap last year, an Associated Press review has found.

"LOS ANGELES -- Elevated levels of lead have been found in the soil of homes and a preschool near a battery recycling plant in Vernon, south of downtown Los Angeles, prompting officials to issue health warnings and order more testing in adjacent neighborhoods."

"WASHINGTON -- A report due to be released Tuesday aims to offer an object lesson to President Barack Obama: Free trade deals have high costs in unintended consequences for the environment, people's way of life, and local sovereignty."

"As Japan marks the third anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Tepco is struggling to find a solution for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water."

"Records show GE was warned about health threats of PCBs decades before anti-dredging campaign."

Last week's Canadian green light for a pipeline flow reversal may mean that oil sands crude will be travelling to New England. Some New Englanders think that's a bad idea.

"CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Duke Energy's CEO says while the company and its shareholders will pay to clean up a coal ash spill in the Dan River, its customers will shoulder the costs of closing the rest of the utility's coal ash ponds across North Carolina."

"RALEIGH — After much debate over how to deal with coal-ash hazards at Duke Energy power plants in North Carolina, a Wake County Superior Court judge says the answer is to take “immediate” action."

"A dozen years ago, neighborhoods around Riverside, an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles, had the nation’s worst soot: Every three days, on average, the air was declared unhealthful, and people were breathing twice as many microscopic particles as deemed safe."