"The very first trail I step on is sand — and not just a dusting of the stuff either, but the soft, deep, undulating variety you’d expect to find near a beach. In honor of its designation in February as the 61st and newest national park, I’ve chosen to work my way across Indiana Dunes — formerly a national lakeshore — on a sunny Saturday in April, and picked West Beach as my starting point."

"The nation’s largest public utility on Thursday agreed to dig up and remove about 12 million cubic yards (9.2 million cubic meters) of coal ash from unlined pits at a Tennessee coal-burning power plant."

"Senators at a Clean Water Act hearing expressed interest in reopening the law to clarify which wetlands and waterways it protects. But that effort would likely be stymied by the fact that participants in the Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, including ranking member Tom Carper (D-Del.), expressed confusion over basic concepts of Clean Water Act jurisdiction."

"After a 10-month wait, preliminary work began Thursday on the delicate task of removing barrels sitting in Wallowa Lake marked as containing defoliants used in Agent Orange."

"Prosecutors dropped all criminal charges Thursday against eight people in the Flint water crisis and pledged to start from scratch the investigation into one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in U.S. history."

""Houston, Texas, has flooded every year for the past five years. At the same time, Texas is also known for dire water shortages. What if people were to capture the floodwater and store it for later in aquifers — underground layers of permeable rock, gravel and sand that allow water to pass through?"

"Two oil tankers came under attack on Thursday in the Gulf of Oman, forcing their crews to abandon ship and setting at least one vessel ablaze, a month after four tankers were damaged in the same waterway, a vital thoroughfare for much of the world’s oil products."

"The world’s oceans will likely lose about one-sixth of their fish and other marine life by the end of the century if climate change continues on its current path, a new study says."

"Canada has made it illegal to catch and hold whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity."

"A coalition of environmental groups on Tuesday filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Interior Department’s rollbacks of safety measures put in place by the Obama administration in the aftermath of the fatal 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill."