"NEW YORK -- Two years before Hurricane Irene created the prospect of a flooding nightmare in New York City, 100 scientists and engineers met to sketch out a bold defense: massive, moveable barriers to shield the city from a storm-stirred sea."

"Walking into Riverview High School to hear a presentation by University of Michigan professor Paul Mohai and two of his colleagues last week, News Hits caught a whiff of the nauseating petrochemical stench spewing from the nearby Marathon oil refinery along I-75."

"Trading pollution 'credits' to reduce the cost of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay risks endangering the health of the region's poor and minority communities, a new report warns."

"BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATION, Mont. -- The mountains along the eastern edge of Glacier National Park rise from the prairie like dinosaur teeth, their silvery ridges and teardrop fields of snow forming the doorway to one of America’s most pristine places."

"The modern world has long thought of refugees in strictly political terms, victims in a world riven by competing ideologies. But as climate change continues unabated, there is a growing population of displaced men, women and children whose homes have been rendered unlivable thanks to a wide spectrum of environmental disasters."

"In the early 1990s, anglers in the Upper Columbia River reported seeing beads of liquid mercury floating in the water."

"LONDON -- The world is depleting underground water reserves faster than they can be replenished due to over-exploitation, according to scientists in Canada and the Netherlands."