After 18 months of resistance from the White House Office of Management and Budget, the US EPA has withdrawn proposed guidelines for cleaning up dioxin-contaminated soil at polluted sites. EPA says other guidelines issued in the meanwhile made them unnecessesary. Environmental groups condemned the move and the chemical industry applauded it.

"Old swaths of Appalachian forest land left barren by decades of coal mining may find their past is their future, if efforts to restore the American chestnut tree in reclaimed coal fields are successful."

"The reversal of fortune in America’s energy supplies in recent years holds the promise of abundant and cheaper fuel, and it could have profound effects on what people drive, domestic manufacturing and America’s foreign policy.

Cheaper fuel produced domestically could reduce the cost of shipping and manufacturing, trim heating and cooling bills, improve the auto market and provide tens of thousands of new jobs.

"In an announcement that stunned scientists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cancelled grant applications for what was supposed to be a $20-million, four-year green chemistry program."

"The Treasury Department's $9 billion renewable energy grant program supported as many as 75,000 jobs each year it was available, according to a new report from the Department of Energy that counters Republican criticism of the grant-in-lieu-of-tax-credit effort."

"Natural-gas companies are taking concerns about looming Interior Department 'fracking' regulations to the White House with efforts that include a meeting between a major producer and the Obama administration’s top regulatory official."

"Over half of 2 million frogs imported to Bay Area annually carry disease that endangers local amphibians."

"The U.S. natural gas market is bursting at the seams. So much natural gas is being produced that soon there may be nowhere left to put the country's swelling surplus. After years of explosive growth, natural gas producers are retrenching."

"Dave Mauser walked the edge of a mudflat, peering underneath the dried brown rushes where one coot after another had gone to hide and then die."