Florida environmental agencies said they are not legally required to notify homeowners whose well water was contaminated by a sinkhole at a major phosphate operation.

"MENOMINEE RESERVATION, Wisc. — Guy Reiter was an archaeologist before he was an activist. But the two merged after a dream six years ago. 'I was in a van and when we drove by the White Rapids I looked over and saw an elder sitting on a dam, in full Indian regalia,' Reiter says. 'He flagged me down, I climbed the dam, and he started talking to me in Menominee.'"

"Indonesian forest fires that choked a swath of Southeast Asia with a smoky haze for weeks last year may have caused more than 100,000 deaths, according to new research that will add to pressure on Indonesia's government to tackle the annual crisis."

"For decades, a creek in the mountains west of Denver sometimes ran yellow from toxic waste gurgling out of abandoned mines — a painfully familiar story in the picturesque wreckage of Colorado's 1859 gold rush. But after a three-decade, $62 million Superfund cleanup, Clear Creek now lives up to its pristine-sounding name, at least most of the time."

"Drivers are starting to see gas prices jump across the East Coast. A leak in Alabama has shut down part of an important pipeline providing gas to the Eastern US."

"Health workers are piecing together a complicated puzzle in El Paso County, Colo. In January, three cities — Security, Fountain and Widefield — noticed synthetic chemicals known as PFCs in the drinking water."

"Southern California Gas Co. agreed to pay $4 million to settle criminal charges over the massive gas leak near Porter Ranch last year, but the utility still faces potentially costly civil actions from both residents and regulators."

"Officials around [Pennsylvania] are optimistic about the impact of Shell’s new ethane cracker on the local economy. It will bring thousands of construction jobs to western Pennsylvania and 600 permanent ones once it’s built along the Ohio River in Beaver County. The plant will produce 1.6 million tons of plastic a year out of the region’s natural gas."

"A Volkswagen engineer pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring to defraud regulators and car owners, in the first criminal charges stemming from the American investigation into the German carmaker’s emissions deception."

"A coalition of researchers, utilities and state regulators have made progress tracking an unregulated and unwelcome contaminant in river water feeding drinking water supplies. Can they stop it?"