Pollution

"U.S. power company Duke Energy Corp agreed to a $2.5 million settlement proposed by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality relating to the 2014 coal ash spill into the Dan River in North Carolina, the DEQ said on Friday."

"Five generations of Philip Vinson's family have labored using tongs to pull oysters from Apalachicola Bay's shallow waters. He fears there won't be a sixth."

"A remedy for a concentrated pool of solvents directly under the manufacturing site where at least 1,500 people still work may take years to find."

"Ohio's governor is set to put in place new rules that should help cut down on the pollutants feeding the algae in Lake Erie."

"A new report from the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council has analyzed the data on spills and other violations at oil and gas wells across the country. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the report is how little data the group was able to turn up."

"California is suffering from 'second-hand smog' drifting in from Asia and other places, researchers said on Tuesday, even as the state's prolonged drought has made air quality worse."

"The Obama administration reaffirmed a 2008 government auction of Arctic drilling rights on Tuesday, delivering a major victory to Shell Oil Co. as it aims to resume exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea this summer."

"The White House Monday started its final review of a proposal to improve the efficiency of large trucks and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions."

"In the frozen far north, in Arctic Quebec, the Inuit have relied on the same nutritious foods culled from the oceans for centuries: beluga whale, fish, seal, and walrus. But some of these traditional foods have become so contaminated with brain-damaging mercury that the IQs of schoolchildren in remote Arctic villages are abnormally low."