"RALEIGH, N.C. -- Conservation groups have asked judges in Wake and Mecklenburg counties to reject a $7 million agreement between [North Carolina] and Duke Energy to settle years of groundwater contamination violations."

"At homes and day care centers throughout Central Washington, children play in yards contaminated with lead and arsenic."

"Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed legislation on Thursday that bans plastic microbeads, giving his state one of the country’s strongest laws against the tiny abrasives used in exfoliators and other products."

"The body examining the practices of the car industry following the Volkswagen emissions scandal has been accused of a major conflict of interest after it emerged that nearly three quarters of its funding comes from the companies it is investigating."

"Volkswagen's pollution-control chicanery has not just been victimless tinkering, killing between five and 20 people in the United States annually in recent years, according to an Associated Press statistical and computer analysis."

"Mosaic Fertilizer has reached a $2 billion settlement with state and federal environmental regulators and the U.S. Department of Justice over funding for the long-term disposal of massive phosphogypsum waste piles and the treatment of 60 billion pounds of wastewater from its plants in Florida and St. James Parish, authorities and the company said Thursday."

"The U.S. pipeline safety office has fined Exxon Mobil Corp $2.63 million for spilling crude oil in an Arkansas residential area in 2013, the regulator said on Thursday."

"The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a major new regulation on smog-causing emissions that spew from smokestacks and tailpipes, significantly tightening the current Bush-era standards but falling short of more stringent regulations that public health advocates and environmentalists had urged."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving forward with new rules to reduce water pollution around the country. Power plants will face restrictions on discharging toxic pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, lead, and selenium into the water."

"In August 2011, as President Obama prepared to unveil a major new environmental regulation on smog, his political advisers issued a warning: The rule would affect power plants and factories throughout the Midwest, slowing the economy in states like Ohio that would be crucial to the president’s re-election."