Pollution

"DE KALB, Miss. — Looming like a spaceship over pine and sweet-gum forest, the high-tech power plant under construction in rural Kemper County is a $5 billion wager on an energy future that includes coal."

Duke Energy lobbyists asked the GOP-controlled North Carolina legislator for a legal loophole protecting it from having to clean up coal-ash pollution, after environmentalists sued to force clean-up. The legislature obliged, and GOP Gpovernor Pat McCrory signed it.

"Duke Energy, the giant utility whose spill of toxic waste into a North Carolina river last month is under federal investigation, released wastewater last week from a second site upriver of Raleigh that state regulators said could be illegal."

"Four years after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, BP is being welcomed back to seek new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico."

Eighteen coal facilities in Ohio are operating with expired pollution-discharge permits under an agency where allegations of coal-industry influence arose during a personnel flap last year, an Associated Press review has found.

"LOS ANGELES -- Elevated levels of lead have been found in the soil of homes and a preschool near a battery recycling plant in Vernon, south of downtown Los Angeles, prompting officials to issue health warnings and order more testing in adjacent neighborhoods."

"WASHINGTON -- A report due to be released Tuesday aims to offer an object lesson to President Barack Obama: Free trade deals have high costs in unintended consequences for the environment, people's way of life, and local sovereignty."

"As Japan marks the third anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Tepco is struggling to find a solution for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water."

"Records show GE was warned about health threats of PCBs decades before anti-dredging campaign."

Last week's Canadian green light for a pipeline flow reversal may mean that oil sands crude will be travelling to New England. Some New Englanders think that's a bad idea.