"Maryland’s ravaged Chesapeake Bay oyster population shows signs of revival inside the state-created sanctuaries that have been off-limits to harvesting for the past decade, according to a report from the Department of Natural Resources."

"Times are tough for Chesapeake oysters. For one thing, they used to be bigger. "If you look at what people were saying back in the 1600s and 1700s about oysters, people had to cut them in half before they could even eat them," says Denise Breitburg, an ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center."

"AMBLER, Pa. -- U.S. EPA's Greg Voigt opens a chain-link gate, pushes aside waist-high weeds and scrambles to the highest point in this Philadelphia suburb: a 100-foot pile of industrial waste."

"A federal appeals court [Tuesday] upheld U.S. EPA's retroactive veto of a water permit for a West Virginia mining project in a big win for the Obama administration."

"It’s the kind of choice that climate change will be forcing over and over."

"Federal government scientists on Friday released the final update of their study of Crude MCHM, without answering several important questions about the potential health effects of the January 2014 chemical spill that contaminated the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of residents in Charleston and surrounding communities of the Kanawha Valley."

"Nature wrought the inlet that separates this narrow strip of dunes and brush from Ocean City just to the north, but humans have sought to control the shifting sands ever since."

"Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has issued an executive order aimed at finding a way of cutting carbon dioxide pollution in the state that does not require approval from the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly."

"The summer crab season has begun on the mid-Atlantic seaboard and supplies of the crustaceans in the largest U.S. estuary are improving, according to a survey, meaning crab lovers will enjoy bountiful feasts."

"Officials in flood-stricken areas of West Virginia shifted their attention Sunday to repairing damage inflicted by the historic deluge that killed at least 25 people as it washed out homes, roads and bridges. Search and rescue operations continued in some pockets of the state."