Great Lakes (IL IN MI MN OH WI)

"GRAND PORTAGE, Minn. — For moose, this year’s winter-long deep freeze across the Upper Midwest is truly ideal weather. The large, gangly creatures are adapted to deep snow: Their hollow fur insulates them like fiberglass does in a house. And the prolonged cold helps eradicate pests that prey on moose, like ticks and meningeal worm, or brain worm. Yet moose in Minnesota are dying at an alarming rate, and biologists are perplexed as to why."

"Already targeted as a source of lung-damaging air pollution, a company that has been piling petroleum coke on Chicago's Southeast Side now faces new accusations that it illegally allowed contaminated runoff to spill into the Calumet River."

"TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A freshwater channel that separates Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas is a premier Midwestern tourist attraction and a photographer's delight, offering spectacular vistas of two Great Lakes, several islands and one of the world's longest suspension bridges. But nowadays the Straits of Mackinac is drawing attention for something that is out of sight and usually out of mind, and which some consider a symbol of the dangers lurking in the nation's sprawling web of buried oil and natural gas pipelines."

"How much is an old coal power plant worth? With natural gas production booming and environmental rules looming, in Illinois the answer is clear: It can be hard to even give one away."

"Less than three years after signing legislation opening up Ohio state parks and forests to fracking, Gov. John Kasich now opposes the controversial horizontal drilling for oil and gas on public lands."

"Top advisers to Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) were aware of a plan that the state's Department of Natural Resources was undertaking to target the "eco-left" as it pushed forward on efforts to promote drilling in state parks and forests, the Associated Press reports."

"CHICAGO — It might be back to the drawing board for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' sweeping proposal to spend billions of dollars and 25 years to block an Asian carp invasion of the Great Lakes."

"A controversy flared in January when environmentalists learned that Radio Disney had joined with the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program to tour elementary schools and science centers, teaching about the energy industry. They worried that the show sold children a positive image of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — the process of pumping millions of gallons of water and chemicals underground to break rock to free oil and gas."

"ST. PIERRE-JOLYS, Manitoba — Several thousand people in southern Manitoba have been told that a pipeline explosion could mean they will be without natural gas service for up to several days as temperatures dip below zero."

"The Perry nuclear power plant is leaking tritium, a radioactive form of water with a half-life of more than 12 years. The radioactive water has been found in groundwater at concentrations more than twice the
federal drinking water limit outside of a building where the leak was discovered Monday. No other, more dangerous radioactive isotopes were found." John Funk reports for the Cleveland Plain Dealer January 21,
2014.