"The Obama administration is ordering an ambitious cleanup of the Chicago River, a dramatic step toward improving an urban waterway treated for more than a century as little more than an industrialized sewage canal."
The Bureau of Reclamation report says major changes often are expected, with the magnitude varying substantially by location. The data and information provided allow you to dig into the details to some degree for the watersheds of interest to your audience.
"Federal pollution authorities have quietly stepped in to help Minnesota force a huge sugar beet processor near Renville to end its long history of fouling streams that lead to the state's most troubled river."
"A few momentary blasts, flashes of orange light, and the Mississippi River began pouring through a wide hole in a Missouri levee, intentionally blown open by the Army Corps of Engineers in the hope of saving a small Illinois town."
"Federal and state officials are cracking down on a smelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood after tracing high levels of toxic lead in the air outside an elementary school less than two blocks away."
A top Wisconsin Republican party official on March 17 filed a request under the state's freedom-of-information law for emails written by University of Wisconsin's William J. Cronon, after the professor blogged about the American Legislative Exchange Council, an anti-regulatory group that lobbies state legislatures.
"Wild rice is sacred to the Ojibwe of Minnesota, but that may not be enough to protect it from the promise of jobs that a new copper-nickel mining industry would bring to the state."
Air pollution is worsened in Chicago by the Fisk coal-burning power plant built in 1903. It is grandfathered against Clean Air Act requirements for modern pollution controls. Will EPA cave in to Republican pressure to let its pollution keep harming health of Chicagoans?
"Average lead levels at [Chicago's] Perez Elementary School were at or above federal limits during three three-month periods in 2010, the data show."
Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency is trying to address the impact of dissolved chlorides in Twin Cities lakes -- road salt harming aquatic life. It may require changes in what it means to be a good neighbor in the snowy state.
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