"Feel like a nice cool glass of ice water? Before you take a sip, you might want to take a quick tour of your home. How’s the fill valve in your toilet? Do you have a vacuum breaker on your outside spigots? What about your boiler?"
"NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH, N.C. -- A crane swung a new roof truss into place above a house being built on this belt of sand last week, helping to expand development on what some experts say is one of the most dangerous islands to build on in the United States."
"BLUE ANCHOR, N.J. — 'Heads up!' Deep in the woods, the whine of chain saws pierced the fall air, and Steve Garcia shouted a warning to fellow loggers as a 40-foot pitch pine crashed to the ground. He was chopping down trees to save the forest as part of New Jersey’s effort to beat back an invasion of beetles."
"MARIETTA, Okla. -- The ground had been shaking for a week, on and off, when the biggest of the earthquakes hit. People here heard two loud booms. Then the picture frames started falling. Wendy Gillham turned to see her flat-screen television crash to the floor only a foot or so from her infant girl. Then she looked outside and saw her chimney in pieces on her driveway."
"China can learn from U.S. struggles to reduce pollution as it confronts recent high-profile incidents of poor air quality paralyzing major cities, the top U.S. environmental regulator said on Monday."
"Long before disaster struck, the 5,900 residents of Lac-Mégantic had grown accustomed to the sight of large oil tankers rolling through their small, tightly knit community in the Eastern Townships of Quebec."
After 4 railcars plunged into a creek a year ago near Paulsboro, N.J., spilling vinyl chloride, the effects are still being felt by local residents.
"Nothing seemed special about the plates from which students at a handful of Miami schools devoured their meals for a few weeks last spring -- round, rigid and colorless, with four compartments for food and a fifth in the center for a carton of milk."
"The publisher of a controversial and much-criticized study suggesting genetically modified corn caused tumors in rats has withdrawn the paper after a year-long investigation found it did not meet scientific standards."
An alliance of Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest have joined forces to push states there for water quality standards that protect populations who eat more fish from toxic effects.
