"While the global fracking boom has stabilized North America’s energy prices, Chicago — America’s third largest city and the busiest crossroads of the nation’s railroad network — has become ground zero for the debate over heavy crude moved by oil trains."
"Every 10 days, Thad Smith enters a piece of land that is otherwise forbidden to most people: The empty acreage around Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It’s there that Smith and his crew from the Westside Bee Boyz tend to 75 beehives. Last year, he and his fellow beekeepers harvested 1,600 pounds of honey in the otherwise unoccupied land beneath O’Hare’s airspace."
"Environmental activists say Michigan’s tourism slogan -- “Pure Michigan” -- may no longer be accurate unless the state takes stronger action to prevent a 62-year-old oil pipeline from rupturing in a sensitive waterway."
"New study finds fracking releases cancer-causing chemicals into the air many times higher than the EPA considers safe."
""Pipeline giant Enbridge, Inc., is in a standoff with a Wisconsin zoning committee over the company's plans to vastly increase the amount of tar sands oil pumped through one of its lines."
"Enbridge Energy and its affiliates will pay $75 million to settle a 2010 oil spill into Michigan's Talmadge Creek and Kalamazoo River that dumped 800,000 gallons of oil, state officials said on Wednesday."
"Lake Mille Lacs resort owners are angry, anglers are frustrated, and they all have an opinion on what’s to blame for the shocking decline in walleye in Minnesota’s favorite fishing destination."
"Alarming levels of brain-damaging lead are poisoning more than a fifth of the children tested from some of the poorest parts of Chicago, even as the hazard has been largely eliminated in more prosperous neighborhoods, a Tribune investigation has found."
"Minnesota declared a state of emergency on Thursday over a fast-spreading strain of avian flu that has led to the extermination of more than 7.3 million birds in the country. It followed Wisconsin's action on Monday."
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