"On the days when the municipal trash incinerator known as Old Smokey fired up its furnace, Delphine Bennett could sit on the porch of her shotgun-style house and watch the flames flicker from the chimney. On warm, dry evenings, the escaping embers ignited brush fires in empty lots nearby. More than once, she recalls, the roof of a neighbor's home caught fire."

"L.A. Waterkeeper inspectors collect samples during rainstorms and have them analyzed in an effort to force polluters to clean up."

"An investigation by North Carolina Health News finds water-quality issues from coal waste in municipalities near a Duke Energy coal plant outside of Eden."

"North Carolina regulators are joining with Duke Energy in appealing a judge's ruling on cleaning up groundwater pollution leeching from the company's coal ash dumps."

"The global mining firm Rio Tinto announced Monday that it will divest its 19 percent stake in the controversial Pebble Mine project in Alaska,  donating its shares to two state charities."

"A chemical plant holding a 'minor' stormwater discharge permit caused a major drinking water disaster in Charleston, W.Va., in February. That incident raises questions about risks from thousands of industrial chemicals used daily along waterways such as the Ohio River — the source of drinking water for more than 5 million people from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Ill."

"For more than 50 years farmers across North America have been spraying atrazine, a pesticide, on crops, mainly corn, applying millions of pounds a year."

"Outside Alicia Barksdale’s living room, high above Upper Manhattan, the brick chimney atop the building next door belches black smoke all winter long, and even into the spring."

"Exxon Mobil Corp, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, has agreed to disclose more information about the environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing, the process known as fracking."

"The Interior Department has thousands of mismanaged injection wells on federal lands, threatening the nation's underground supply of drinking water, according to a newly released inspector general report."