Northwest (OR WA)

Fuel barges on the Columbia River are having more accidents, although none so far has resulted in a known spill. The Coast Guard refuses to disclose information about the incidents, citing investigations which it has not completed in periods of up to 16 months.

"Pollution from burning wood in stoves, fireplaces and elsewhere is the top cancer risk in Oregon's air, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis."

The Oregon legislature Monday sent to the governor a bill that would phase out the longstanding practice of burning off agricultural fields growing grass seed.

The 1988 highway death of a family in Oregon, blinded by smoke from fields being burned for weed control, was a story so moving that it spawned a novel. Field burning is so common in Oregon that it threatens people's lungs and health. A legislative struggle to ban it remains unresolved.

Lawsuits and tree-sits are among the tactics that activists in the Eugene, Oregon, area are using to resist clearcutting of a patch of ancient forest under the BLM's Western Oregon Plan Revisions.

The economic stimulus will bring another $2 billion in cleanup funds to the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

"Rows of tall turbines have already remade the landscape on wheat farms and ridgelines on private land around the region. But so far there have been no wind farms built on public land in the Northwest. That's about to change."