"Ohio's state parks will be open for oil and natural gas drilling for the first time under legislation the state Senate passed on Wednesday."

"WOODSTOCK, Ill. -- The paving industry closely is watching McHenry County as its officials consider a ban on toxic asphalt sealants commonly used on driveways."

"The Obama administration is ordering an ambitious cleanup of the Chicago River, a dramatic step toward improving an urban waterway treated for more than a century as little more than an industrialized sewage canal."

"Federal pollution authorities have quietly stepped in to help Minnesota force a huge sugar beet processor near Renville to end its long history of fouling streams that lead to the state's most troubled river."

"A few momentary blasts, flashes of orange light, and the Mississippi River began pouring through a wide hole in a Missouri levee, intentionally blown open by the Army Corps of Engineers in the hope of saving a small Illinois town."

"Federal and state officials are cracking down on a smelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood after tracing high levels of toxic lead in the air outside an elementary school less than two blocks away."

"Wild rice is sacred to the Ojibwe of Minnesota, but that may not be enough to protect it from the promise of jobs that a new copper-nickel mining industry would bring to the state."