"A plea deal was reached Monday for the fired former head of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's division responsible for overseeing Flint’s water source switch."

"Tackling cumulative exposures, rather than one pollutant at a time, is key to correcting environmental injustice, experts say. But progress remains too slow in the most affected neighborhoods."

"In recent years, thousands of children started kindergarten in Cleveland public schools already poisoned by lead, which threatens their chances to achieve and poses steep challenges for the district charged with educating them."

"The children fell ill, one by one, with cancers that few families in this suburban Indianapolis community had ever heard of. An avid swimmer struck down by glioblastoma, which grew a tumor in her brain. Four children with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer. Fifteen children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, including three cases diagnosed in the past year."

"The results landed on Nikolai Vitti’s desk on a late summer afternoon, days before Detroit’s nearly 50,000 public school students would return to class. The findings were definitive and disturbing: In initial tests, two-thirds of schools showed alarming levels of lead in the water."

"Michigan legislators were poised Tuesday to remove legal protections from many of the state’s wetlands and other inland waterways, which provide wildlife habitat and perform vital tasks such as preventing floods."

"LANSING – Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation Wednesday to create a new authority to oversee a proposed Line 5 tunnel in the Straits of Mackinac and named a top aide, an academic and a labor leader as its three members."