"Last year, a backyard in Butte, Mont., collapsed without warning. No one was hurt, but a 30-foot sinkhole yawned where a children's wading pool once sat. At the bottom was a century-old mine shaft that had never made the state's list of abandoned mines needing attention."

"“It’s really a complete myth when people say that we’re recycling our plastics,” says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, which campaigns against the illegal waste trade."

"EPA scientists wanted their agency to ask for a new environmental review of the proposed Pebble mine project but were overridden by political staffers, according to several sources and a key document obtained by E&E News."

"Federal regulators have found unsafe construction practices at work sites on the Atlantic Coast pipeline, spelling more trouble for a project that's already facing setbacks in court."

"High lead levels have been found in drinking water of all five Vermont schools tested so far in a new state program."

"Environmental officials say heavy metals from coal ash have seeped into groundwater at a Duke Energy complex along Florida’s Gulf Coast."

"Plastic was the furthest thing from Gregory Wetherbee’s mind when he began analyzing rainwater samples collected from the Rocky Mountains. “I guess I expected to see mostly soil and mineral particles,” said the US Geological Survey researcher. Instead, he found multicolored microscopic plastic fibers."

"New test results indicate that the extent of the lead contamination crisis in Newark, N.J., may be broader than previously thought and the state now says it needs federal help to respond, according to new court filings."

"Over and over, Michigan environmental regulators sounded alarms as they reviewed a proposed large, open-pit ore mine in the Upper Peninsula near the Menominee River, prized for walleye fishing and a major tributary to Lake Michigan. ... Then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and then-Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved the mine anyway."

The changing story about an explosion in Russia that released radioactivity looks like "the same parade of misdirection happened during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986."