"Five ethanol facilities in Minnesota have been cited in the past 12 months for widespread air and water quality violations. They have paid more than $2.8 million in penalties and corrective actions."

"A South Carolina utility company that drew fire for allegedly tainting a local water supply with coal ash residue, a by-product of burning coal that is known to cause serious illness, recently purchased 987 acres in Colleton County to build a new landfill for the waste."

"Surprise inspections of deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico dwindled to about three a year over the past decade, even as exploratory drilling far from shore increased, according to federal data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal."

"Since the [Superfund] program was launched 30 years ago, only three of the 13 [hazardous waste] sites in Bergen and Passaic counties have been fully cleaned. Eight sites have been on the list for more than 25 years."

Plans for one of the first new nuclear power reactors in decades -- a third unit at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, were put on hold by Constellation Energy. The Energy Department said the project is so risky that Constellation must pay high fees if it wants the U.S. taxpayers to guarantee construction loans. But those subsidies were not high enough for Constellation. The demise of its poster child raised questions about the so-called "nuclear renaissance."

"The Department of Energy and Washington State Department of Ecology have reached agreement on a consent decree that sets new court-enforced deadlines for emptying Hanford tanks of radioactive waste and treating the waste."

"The White House is pushing back against the draft reports the National Oil Spill Commission released Wednesday  on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that included scathing criticism of the administration's handling of the disaster. The reports' harshest criticism was directed toward the administration's handling of information about the size of the spill and the extent of the damage."

"Alaska native corporations would lose their special contracting privileges under legislation that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) intends to introduce next month, a move that will stir debate about the billions of dollars' worth of federal set-aside contracts that the companies receive."

"Earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state of Ohio's ban  on labels that identify milk as rBST- or rBGH-free, meaning produced without the use of artificial bovine growth hormone. Consumer and organic food groups were jubilant at the Ohio news, which may have far-reaching repercussions not only for all milk, but for genetically engineered foods."