"The National Park Service thought it had a good strategy for reining in the discarded water bottles that clog the trash cans and waste stream of the national parks: stop selling disposable bottles and let visitors refill reusable ones with public drinking water."

"Capitol Hill lawmakers from Louisiana have intervened on behalf of a New Orleans company that has failed to stop a decade-old oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico but lobbied for a refund of money reserved for spill containment work, according to letters obtained by The Associated Press through public records requests."

"Air pollution in the Twin Cities contributes to about 2,000 premature deaths every year, and sends 1,000 people to the hospital for asthma, lung and heart disease treatments."

"An Iowa utility will phase out coal at five plants in the state under a settlement announced Wednesday by the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency."

"Assurances from Enbridge Energy that the company's twin oil pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac are in 'excellent' condition and pose 'minimal' risks of a spill are not enough to resolve existing public concerns about the line's potential threat to the Great Lakes and Michigan's economy."

"A New Jersey judge has rejected a plea from environmental groups to intervene in a pollution settlement Gov. Chris Christie (R) negotiated."

"Almost one year after an unprecedented spill from a mine tailings pond in Canada’s largely pristine province of British Columbia, its government has given the green light for the mine to reopen — worrying environmentalists who say a number of other northern B.C. copper and gold mines are in various phases of approval, and could threaten downstream fishing communities in southeastern Alaska."

"More than half of the wastewater from fracked oil wells in California is disposed of in open, unlined pits and could contaminate groundwater, according to a state-mandated study of hydraulic fracturing issued Thursday."

"Environmental Defense Fund-backed studies of 30,000 Barnett Shale wells shows the EPA has vastly underestimated emissions."

"A federal appeals court upheld Monday the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to order pollution reductions by Maryland and all the other states that drain into the Chesapeake Bay.

In a 60-page ruling, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia brushed aside challenges from agricultural and home building groups to the 'pollution diet' that EPA imposed for the bay in 2010.