"Tornadoes tore through Western and Central Massachusetts yesterday, killing at least four people, injuring an untold number, and reducing schools, churches, and homes to splinters along its destructive path."

"A top New York State official filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Tuesday to force an assessment of the environmental risks posed by drilling for natural gas in the Delaware River Basin, arguing that a regulatory commission should not issue final rules governing the drilling until a study is completed."

"Key committees writing rules for New Jersey's new program to clean up contaminated sites are made up entirely of the polluting companies and their contractors."

The ugly truth in Massachusetts is this: after some three decades and $1 billion worth of Superfund cleamup work at scores of toxic sites, nobody knows whether they are still poisoning people.

"The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the New York City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, are both calling for replacing school light fixtures that are leaking PCBs in five years or less, putting more pressure on the Bloomberg administration to speed up its planned time line of 10 years."

Neighborhood organizers won a settlement Tuesday that promises better cleanup of "green water" runoff from a former chrome production plant in Jersey City.

"The Indian Point nuclear power plant is currently in violation of fire safety regulations and is seeking more than 100 exemptions from those regulations, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday."