Pollution

"The five-day-and-counting mega-engineering challenge continues at Total's Well-from-Hell in the North Sea. That name was coined by Frederic Hauge of Bellona, a Norwegian group that monitors the oil industry:

"California's long-running campaign to reduce air pollution has indirectly helped create a new problem: its oil refineries produce more greenhouse gas emissions than refineries anywhere else in the country."

"ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The Minnesota Department of Health is taking a closer look at a variety of chemicals that make their way into the water supply. Federal and state regulators have already placed limits on many contaminants found in drinking water, among them lead and mercury. But health officials are turning their attention to other chemicals that are not widely known, including those in fragrances, prescription drugs and bug spray."

"ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Federal offshore drilling regulators on Wednesday approved Shell Oil's spill response plan for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea, drawing strong criticism from environmental groups that claim oil companies cannot clean up oil in ice-choked waters."

"NEW ORLEANS -- After months of laboratory work, scientists say they can definitively finger oil from BP's blown-out well as the culprit for the slow death of a once brightly colored deep-sea coral community in the Gulf of Mexico that is now brown and dull."

"A proposed cleanup of Montana air pollution would force three industrial plants to spend $90 million on measures to improve visibility in some of the nation's prized public lands, including Yellowstone and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks."

"Michigan’s environmental regulator will reinspect a shuttered plant that’s part of Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s auto parts empire following complaints that the chrome-plating site used a chemical that causes cancer."

"MASSENA, N.Y. -- Larry Thompson sits high in his tractor cab and drives to a chain-link fence along his family property on the Mohawk Indians' Akwesasne Reservation, where they fished, grew vegetables and played as children. He points to a toxic landfill about 30 feet away, stretching toward the St. Lawrence River."

A recycling facility for contaminated soils and other hazardous waste in the California desert community of Mecca is causing major problems. The problems are made worse by the fact that the facility is on tribal land, making state and federal regulation more difficult.

"In January 2009, Riverside County fire Capt. Robert Fish ventured to the scrubby desert outpost of Mecca to check on the busy contaminated-soil recycling plant there.

He found something unusual, worrying enough to alert his superiors.