"The Obama administration is ordering an ambitious cleanup of the Chicago River, a dramatic step toward improving an urban waterway treated for more than a century as little more than an industrialized sewage canal."

"The flooding Mississippi River is done watching and waiting. And anyone who doubts that the river has become T.S. Eliot's personification of 'a strong brown god' need only walk up the slope of the levee and peer over the top."

"During an audit last year, federal authorities found an industrial plant had flushed pollutants into Columbia’s sewer system without making sure the contaminants were at legal levels."
 

"The Ohio and Mississippi River levels were falling Wednesday at the site where engineers blasted holes in a Missouri levee to relieve pressure. But unleashing torrents of water across 35 miles of farmland in what has already been a terrible flooding season could carry other consequences. One risk, scientists cautioned, is fertilizer runoff from the flooded farm country along the Mississippi."

"A proposal to build a large water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is incomplete, confused and plagued by a number of scientific gaps despite years of study, according to a National Research Council report."