Pollution

"House Republicans want to drop one of the key components of the Interior Department's overhaul of the troubled agency responsible for oversight of offshore drilling -- expanding the enforcement of regulations to contractors."

"West Virginia regulators will temporarily take the lead on regulating Marcellus shale drilling while lawmakers attempt to craft long-term rules for developing this rich natural gas reserve, acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced Tuesday."

"A gas company that legally doused a patch of West Virginia forest with salty wastewater from a drilling operation killed ground vegetation within days and more than half the trees within two years, a new report from the U.S. Forest Service says."

"For over 75 years, Blau Oyster Co. has relied on Washington state's cool clean waters to grow the plump oysters that are as prized in the Northwest as salmon and orcas. But too much pollution from animal and human waste has been washing into Samish Bay in north Puget Sound, prohibiting shellfish harvests 38 days already this year."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking an inventory of more than 30,000 coastal shipwrecks — some of them casualties of the 1942 Battle of the Atlantic — and identifying those that pose the most significant threat."

Lake Ontario, the farthest downsream of the Great Lakes, suffers from water quality problems.

"Small fish living in a region of the Pacific Ocean where floating trash collects in a huge, slowly swirling bowl eat as much as 24,000 tons of plastic waste each year, scientists have found."

"The 1,300-acre, man-made [Gaillard Island off Alabama's Gulf coast] is hosting more than 50,000 birds this summer as nesting pairs gather to raise babies. That number would be considered high in any year, but it's a particularly surprising sight a year after oil from the BP spill fouled surrounding waters."

"The Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission said it plans to lease portions of its 43,000 acres of waterways for natural gas exploration to generate money to rebuild more than a dozen dams that are in danger of collapse."