National (U.S.)

"By year’s end, the Obama administration will announce a new plan to manage the nation’s 155 national forests for the next 15 to 20 years."

"Faced with a natural gas drilling boom that has sullied the air in some parts of the country, the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed for the first time to control air pollution at oil and gas wells, particularly those drilled using a method called hydraulic fracturing."

"The results of an unprecedented study published yesterday in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute have been rocketing around the Internet: 'Study Sees No Cellphone-Cancer Ties' .... [But] at least two prominent environmental health groups believe the study is fundamentally flawed... [and] 'actually quite troubling.'" The study was funded in part by a cell phone industry group."

The Interior Department scientist who first warned of climate change as a threat to polar bears in a 5-year-old peer-reviewed paper has been suspended. The Obama administration has been accused of hounding him so it can open up the fragile Arctic to drilling by Shell and other companies.

"As the capital's debt-limit drama enters its final act today, the last two solutions standing -- one Democratic, one GOP -- would slash long-term energy and environmental spending to a degree comparable with the fiscally austere deal struck to avert a springtime federal shutdown."

Claiming costs to oil and gas industry would outweigh health benefits to Americans, the oil industry is going behind closed doors at the White House to convince President Obama to overrule his EPA's effort to tighten smog controls.

"Rising sea waters may threaten U.S. coastal cities later this century, while the Midwest and East Coast are at high risk for intense storms, and the West could see compromised water supplies."

"A federal appeals court ruling that would require Clean Water Act permitting for stormwater runoff on logging roads has sparked a political backlash, leading to congressional action and possible Supreme Court intervention."

"The federal government and the West Virginia Coal Association want a judge to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at protecting Logan County’s Blair Mountain from surface mining and returning it to the National Register of Historic Places."
 

"Teams tallying damage from an Exxon Mobil Corp. oil spill into the Yellowstone River have found contamination on roughly 60 percent of shoreline areas inspected downstream from the pipeline break, state and federal environmental regulators said Tuesday."