"TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — The Environmental Protection Agency proposed stricter requirements Wednesday for cleaning ballast water that keeps ships upright in rolling seas but enables invasive species to reach U.S. waters, where they have ravaged ecosystems and caused billions of dollars in economic losses."

Maryland is struggling with a backlog of water pollution violations.

"A federal appeals court today rejected nearly all the claims environmentalists had made against an Army Corps of Engineers decision to issue a permit for a major development in Florida wetlands."

"A highly toxic industrial chemical has been spreading under a Garfield neighborhood for almost three decades, slowly seeping into homes and threatening the health of thousands."

New Jersey was once the poster child of hazardous waste sites. After four decades of promises, legislation, and considerable cleanup action, it is still littered with sites where cleanup has failed.

"The Obama administration controls the tie-breaking vote on a plan to begin drilling for natural gas in the Northeast, shining a spotlight on its efforts to find a middle ground on the use of hydraulic fracturing to tap deep shale rock formations for energy.

Thirty years after companies stopped dumping dangerous wastes into the Mahoning River, near Youngstown, Ohio, it is still too polluted for fishing or recreation. Most of the companies are long since gone out of business, but nobody has taken action to clean the river up.

"A settlement outlined Wednesday between a major manufacturer of Chinese-made drywall and homebuilders who used the tainted product in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi could affect anywhere from 800 to 1,500 homes, attorneys said."