Both backers and critics of coal are often seeing EPA's crackdown on mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia as inconsistent and tentative. "To each side, it looks like the EPA hasn't made up its mind. Which would make now the time to yell as loudly as possible."

"Facing a $5 million funding cut, the [Va.] state Department of Environmental Quality last summer scrapped the $365,000 PCB monitoring program."

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Federal investigators began to descend on DuPont Co.'s Belle chemical plant Monday after a worker who was sprayed in the face by the poison gas phosgene died and U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd warned of 'a severe breakdown in even the most basic safety protocols.'"

"A month after environmental groups alleged that an Eastern Shore chicken farm was polluting a Chesapeake Bay tributary, state regulators have yet to test the fouled waterway or the pile of sewage sludge said to be contaminating it, officials have acknowledged."

"Nearly five years after fly ash and other debris flowed down Rostosky Ridge Road in Forward Township [Pa.], work was expected to begin to remove the final remains of that slide."

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Bayer CropScience has not properly maintained or tested the underground storage tank where it keeps roughly 200,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate, the deadly chemical that killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India, in 1984, state inspectors have alleged."

"West Virginia regulators are going to stop processing surface mining permits that propose to dump waste rock and dirt into streams while they develop new guidelines that force coal operators to reduce water quality impacts downstream from valley fills."

After missing the last self-imposed deadline for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, mid-Atlantic governors say they are getting serious. Now EPA is taking over an effort the states have failed at.

"Patriot Coal will cut in half the length of streams buried by its Hobet 45 mountaintop-removal mine, but still produce nearly the same amount of coal as the company originally hoped, under a deal announced Tuesday by the Obama administration."

"A federal appeals court has upheld Maryland's decision to deny a water quality certification for a liquefied natural gas terminal at Baltimore's Sparrows Point."