"The nation gets its chance this week to blast or praise the Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping plan to cut climate-warming emissions by 2030."

"WASHINGTON — A progressive business advocacy group said that small business owners from around the country support greater efforts by the federal government to protect the nation’s water, according to a poll the group commissioned."

"For years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been frustrated in its efforts to pursue hundreds of cases of water pollution — repeatedly tied up in legal fights about exactly what bodies of water it has the authority to monitor and protect. Efforts in Congress to clarify the EPA's powers have been defeated. And two Supreme Court decisions have done little to decide the question."

"A Boulder County District Court judge has struck down Longmont's fracking ban but said the ban can remain in place while the city considers an appeal."

"A recent accident highlights how state fracking laws protect corporate trade secrets over public safety."

"EPA's non-responsiveness in the Texas air pollution story is troubling because it keeps taxpayers in the dark about a critical issue."

"From all of the commotion around the new federal school lunch standards, you'd think they were really Draconian. Republican legislators have railed against them. Districts have threatened to opt out. The School Nutrition Association (SNA), the industry group that represents the nation's 55,000 school food employees, has officially opposed some of them—and doubled its lobbying ....  Here's who doesn't mind the new standards: kids."

"A nonprofit group backing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is spending $2 million-plus this month on TV ads that slam his Democratic challenger, a campaign partly dedicated to impugning her record on coal that leads some political observers to wonder if the industry is behind the curtain."

"The decision by a small coastal city in Maine to ban the export of crude oil from its harbor brought threats of lawsuits from the oil industry Tuesday and put South Portland on the front lines of a battle over development of Canada’s huge and controversial tar sands deposits."

"WASHINGTON -- The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday strongly defended the approach and legitimacy of an Obama administration power plant rule that Republicans attacked as regulatory overreach and Democrats said was vital."