National (U.S.)

"Releases from six Missouri River reservoirs, already at historic levels, will be increased again this month, say water managers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

"A moratorium on new uranium mining around the Grand Canyon expires in six weeks, and the Interior Department is under pressure from conservation groups and mining companies over what to do about it."

Former energy lobbyist and GOP presidential non-candidate Gov. Haley Barbour (MS) at a House hearing Thursday blamed the devastation of the Gulf oil spill not on BP, but on the news media for showing a "chocolate pelican."

"BP succeeded in sinking the oil from its blown well out of sight — and keeping much of it away from beaches and marshes last year — by dousing the crude with nearly 2 million gallons of toxic chemicals. But the impact on the ecosystem as a whole may have been more damaging than the oil alone."

"The Energy Department ignored the law by shutting down a controversial Nevada nuclear waste site because of opposition within the state, Republican and Democratic lawmakers complained at a hearing on Wednesday."

"House appropriators [Thursday] cleared a $30.6 billion spending bill for the Energy Department and Army Corps of Engineers that could see a floor vote before August."

"Floodwaters around the South Dakota capital of Pierre are rising and they're about to get much higher. The dams along the Missouri River can't hold back a massive surge of water spurred by record rains in Montana."

"Union Pacific and the Environmental Protection Agency are ending their decade-long dispute over lead contamination in Omaha with a settlement that reduces the railroad's share of the cost to $25 million instead of the more than $200 million originally sought."

Reversing course, the Obama administration's Interior Department scuttled a policy that it had touted barely five months before as reversing the wilderness policies of President Bush.

"An oil and gas trade group has taken the rare step of challenging a U.S. EPA information request, saying the agency is seeking too much data as it revisits a George W. Bush-era analysis of refineries' cancer-causing emissions."