"Since 2004, [Ohio] has allowed 42 treatment facilities, power plants and factories to ignore federal limits on dumping mercury into lakes, rivers and streams."

"Toxic chemicals have crept into the drinking water in a corner of rural Grundy County [Illinois], stoking fears and raising suspicions about who is to blame."

The effluent stream of an East Chicago, Indiana, wastewater treatment plant is clean enough to fool salmon into spawning there.

"Government regulators have found high levels of manganese, a dangerous metal that can affect the brain, in the air outside a school in eastern Ohio."

"If taxpayers end up paying only 1 percent of the cost of cleaning up PCB contamination in the Fox River, that could be between $10 million and $15 million. If the taxpayer obligation reaches 10 percent, the figure becomes $100 million or more."

"Federal stimulus funding has provided $242 million to Illinois to weatherize more than 25,000 homes, but poor oversight of that work puts the funding at risk and in some cases puts the residents of poorly weatherized homes in danger, an audit report warns."

"There are places where some wildlife that once thrived, are now gone. In Wisconsin, the Pine Marten has been wiped out. The shy animal looks a bit like a ferret. Pine Martens are members of the weasel family. Jeff Wilson and Dan Haskell are trapping pine martens in Minnesota for relocation to northern Wisconsin."

"The Great Lakes are under threat from the Asian carp, an invasive species of fish whose presence is pitting neighboring states against Illinois in a showdown with no clear resolution."

"The Department of Natural Resources' efforts to combat chronic wasting disease -- an illness that threatens Wisconsin's entire deer herd -- have had little effect after seven years and nearly $41 million in state and federal spending, data and interviews indicate."

"A push to scrap a Minnesota law barring new nuclear power plants gained a pair of influential supporters Tuesday, adding intensity to a debate before a state Legislature that has narrowly resisted the change."