Pollution

Residents say goodbye to Picher, Oklahoma, a town undermined and polluted by mining operations.

Environmentalists say Florida officials are thwarting a 2-year-old law banning the spreading of sewage sludge on the Everglades.

"AmerenIP hopes to begin a massive environmental clean-up at the former site of McCabe Scrap Iron & Materials Co. [in Galesburg, Ill.,] by September or October. Galesburg Gas Light & Coke Co. produced gas beginning in 1861 at the 3-acre site, with coal tar as a waste product."

The century of mining that built Treece, Kansas, has left it a toxic ghost town. EPA says the residential areas have been cleaned up, but Sen. Pat Roberts is poised to file a bill to buy out residents if EPA does not spend stimulus money to do so.

"Federal regulators said Thursday an Idaho mine that Monsanto Co. depends on to make its Roundup weed killer has violated federal and state water quality laws almost since it opened, sending selenium and other heavy metals into the region's waterways."

From an immense mansion in the Hamptons, Ira Rennert oversees a private industrial empire that includes one of the most toxic sites in the world.

"Aboriginal leaders welcomed an agreement announced Monday between the federal and Ontario governments to clean up 16 abandoned Cold War radar sites in northern Ontario at an estimated cost of more than $100 million."