"A proposal to build the largest oil train terminal in the Pacific Northwest could result in a derailment every two years and an oil spill from a derailment once every 12, according to a draft analysis by a Washington state agency."

"The Energy Department has proposed a 17-year delay in building a complex waste treatment plant at its radioactively contaminated Hanford site in Washington state, pushing back the full start-up for processing nuclear bomb waste to 2039."

"Walking down almost any street in Seattle’s historic downtown, Eric Holdeman sees danger. Holdeman ran the King County Office of Emergency Management for 11 years. He doesn’t think the area around Pioneer Square would do well in a powerful earthquake."

"Portland's city council voted unanimously on Wednesday for a resolution opposing new projects that would increase oil train traffic near Oregon's capital and in the neighboring city of Vancouver, Wash."

"At homes and day care centers throughout Central Washington, children play in yards contaminated with lead and arsenic."

"Retiring and replacing Montana’s Colstrip Generating Station, an important supplier to Puget Sound Energy, could be distressingly complicated and costly, public officials and energy executives are finding."

"One of the country’s fastest-growing cities suddenly has a long-term water problem."

"The U.S. government has failed to adequately safeguard crews involved in the decades-long cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, leaving workers sickened by exposure to toxic vapors, the state said in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday."

"Against the backdrop of rocky bluffs, a pod of orcas repeatedly jumped out of the emerald waters of the Puget Sound one recent sunny afternoon before splashing their massive black-and-white bodies back into the water."