Pollution

"LAKE WYLIE, N.C. -- For more than a year, one Charlotte environmental group has warned of what could happen if coal ash ponds leak into local lakes. Now, they say, it’s happening."

"BP and the U.S. government portrayed in public a united front as a runaway well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But they privately sought to withhold potentially critical information from each other, possibly slowing efforts to solve the crisis, according to new testimony."

"Seville, with a population of about 300, is one of dozens of predominantly Latino unincorporated communities in the Central Valley plagued for decades by contaminated drinking water."

"Salty bromide concentrations in the Monongahela River, which had risen in 2009 and 2010 due, at least in part, to discharges of Marcellus Shale gas drilling wastewater by sewage treatment plants, returned to normal levels in 2011 and this year, according to a Carnegie Mellon University river monitoring study."

"[Minneapolis] Metro cities could be on the hook for $1 billion or more in cleanup costs in coming years as they grapple with contaminated sludge in storm-water ponds that dot the metro area."

"Legacy contaminants are decreasing more quickly than previously reported in three of the Great Lakes, but have stayed virtually the same in two other lakes, according to new research."

"The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has created incomplete lab reports and used them to dismiss complaints that Marcellus Shale gas development operations have contaminated residential water supplies and made people sick, according to court documents and other sources."

Floods, sewage overflows, and power outages have made public drinking water supplies temporarily unsafe in many utility service areas across the states hit by superstorm Sandy. The best course of action for water users in those areas is to pay attention to messages from local utilities and state authorities.