"The day after the Jan. 26 snowstorm swept through the Washington region, knocking out power for 220,000 Pepco customers, the utility's parent company, Pepco Holdings, announced a $60 million dividend payment to its shareholders."

"A former top Pennsylvania official warned Maryland lawmakers to go slow in allowing drilling for natural gas in Marcellus shale deposits underlying the state's western mountains or risk the environmental and social problems his state is now experiencing from a poorly regulated wave of energy exploration."

"More than a dozen Kanawha Valley residents filed suit Tuesday afternoon to try to stop Bayer CropScience from restarting the methyl isocyanate unit at its Institute plant until new government safety reviews are completed."

"Virginia is about to limit state regulators' ability to protect public health and the environment from toxic discharges entering state waters from surface coal mines."

"The Chesapeake Bay's beleaguered oyster population spawned a bumper crop of babies last year, state officials announced Monday, and there are signs that the diseases that have ravaged the bay's bivalves for more than two decades might have loosened their stranglehold."

"In a special report, The Baltimore Sun chronicles a movement under way to purge the trash, bacteria and pollution that have long infected the city's watery heart."

"It was not enough for Pennye Jones-Napier to sell eco-friendly chew toys or fair-trade collars at her Takoma Park pet store, the Big Bad Woof. She wanted to make sure her customers could hold her accountable to the sustainable practices she preached."

Federal investigators Wednesday outlined allegations of safety violations as the likely factors that combined to produce the huge explosion that killed 29 miners on April 5 at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine.