New York state is strewn with abandoned wells -- the relics of drilling booms before the current gas bonanza. Their owners are long gone, but they have left a legacy of pollution, sticking taxpayers with the cleanup costs.

"Scientists are bracing for a new wave of attacks and investigations by the incoming House majority."

"Cap-and-trade legislation is 'dead for the foreseeable future,' Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said this weekend as military leaders cited climate change as one of the world's top security challenges."

Many cities in Wisconsin still face toxic contamination from municipal gas plants closed six decades ago. Similar sites are found in other states.

Hurricane Tomas seems to be worsening conditions favorable to the spread of cholera in Haiti, where some streets have been turned into rivers.

"The causes of the massive Gulf oil spill will be laid out for the first time Monday by investigators working for President Barack Obama's independent commission, potentially shifting the blame and settling disputes between companies over the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history."

"New federal air quality rules, expected in the coming weeks, will likely trigger a wave of emission controls on industries in Southwest Florida, and the possibility of motor vehicle inspections."

"Technicians at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant will begin work Monday morning to fix a pipe that leaked radioactive water and forced the plant to shut down."

"A brown substance is killing coral organisms in colonies located 4,600 feet deep about seven miles southwest of the failed BP Macondo oil well, according to scientists who returned Thursday from a three-week cruise studying coral reefs in the northern Gulf of Mexico."

"In the face of  probes by a state attorney general, hints of  hostile congressional hearings and assaults from  critics in the blogosphere, hundreds of members of the American Geophysical Union are forming a rapid-response team aiming to challenge disinformation and misinformation deployed in the policy wars over global warming."