"A week after a historic vote to ban hydraulic fracturing (or fracking — the controversial drilling method that forces oil and gas from shale formations with pressurized water, sand and a host of chemicals), Denton, Texas, has been told the state will continue to issue drilling permits within the city limits."

"A day after voters decided to make Denton the first city in Texas to ban hydraulic fracturing, the reaction by the energy industry and government was swift."

"A half-century ago, the owner and operator of a Pasadena paper mill sent its waste for burial to a site along the San Jacinto River. The black bisque of cancer-causing chemicals eventually leaked from the pits, turning these murky waters into one of the nation's most polluted places."

"When Twa-le Abrahamson-Swan tested her Spokane, Washington, home for radon, she already knew about the dangers of the invisible, odorless radioactive gas."

"TUCSON, Ariz. — Authorities are testing water from the San Pedro River in southern Arizona that may be contaminated with toxic waste that traveled north after a massive copper mine spill in Mexico this summer."

"Texas has proposed re-writing school text books to incorporate passages denying the existence of climate change and promoting the discredited views of an ultra-conservative think tank."

"Residents from a modest southeast Houston neighborhood pointed Sunday toward a lagoon of algae-covered water with a pungent chemical smell that filled the parking lot of an abandoned cleaning facility for chemical trucks. Only some weeds and a cyclone fence separate the facility from homes and a charter school."