National (U.S.)

"HARRIMAN, Tenn. — Streets of empty houses sit with dark windows around the glittering coves of the Emory River. A glance away, giant earth-moving machines scoop, pull and push ash, the unwelcome trespasser that nearly three years ago belched from a failed landfill to ooze over 300 acres and the river. As the machines reshape the muck, massive tankers continually sprinkle water to keep dangerous silica floaters out of the air and out of people’s lungs."

"President Obama's plan that calls for shipping interests to pick up more of the tab for channel-deepening projects and repairing and upgrading locks and other infrastructure along waterways is facing fierce industry opposition."

"FORT PIERRE, S.D. -- A summer of record flooding along the Missouri River is leaving a band of destruction—broken roads, drowned farmland and condemned houses—through the nation's midsection."

"Top White House officials debated the political implications of President Barack Obama’s May 2010 visit to Solyndra, just before his trip to the California solar company, after hearing from one of Obama’s top 2008 fundraisers, according to internal email excerpts released Monday by House Democrats.

Steve Westly, a prominent California venture capitalist and a member of Obama’s 2008 national finance committee, raised warning flags to senior Obama advisers regarding the solar company’s finances.

"Bryan and Kathleen Borres worried that Marcellus shale drilling near their Murrysville home might affect their well water. During the summer, the couple had a baseline test done. The results surprised them — the water they had been drinking from the well, drilled in 2005, contained coliform and E. coli bacteria."

"LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Pickup trucks believed present at the world's first nuclear bomb test, coke and whiskey bottles, a calendar and a toothbrush are just a few of the items unearthed by a cleanup of one of Los Alamos National Laboratory's original toxic dump sites, where the detritus of the 1940s Manhattan Project was strewn through some of northern New Mexico's most scenic mesas and canyons."

"The scale of operations at the Hanford Site, scene of a multi-billion-dollar cleanup of a half-century of accumulated hazardous waste, cannot fail to impress."

"In a remote desert spot in northern Nevada, there is a geothermal plant run by a politically connected clean energy start-up that has relied heavily on an Obama administration loan guarantee and is now facing financial turmoil."

Salmonella bacteria are pervasive in much U.S. chicken, and sicken an estimated 1 million people a year.

For many poor families in California's rural San Joaquin Valley, the drinking water that comes from the tap is unhealthful -- often polluted by the same large-scale agriculture that gives them jobs. Pollution of private wells is a problem that spreads nationwide.

Mark Grossi reports for the Fresno Bee October 1, 2011.

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