obama administration

May 23, 2013 - Under legal pressure from environmental advocates, North Carolina regulators are seeking court orders to force Duke Energy to clean up groundwater contamination from unlined coal ash storage ponds at power plants near Asheville and Charlotte, where the pollution threatens the region's drinking-water supply.

May 10, 2013 - Activists hauled polluted water from Appalachia to Washington, D.C. this week to draw attention to the plight of communities affected by mountaintop removal coal mining. The action comes as legislation was reintroduced in Congress to protect coalfield waterways.

May 2, 2013 - The United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights recently visited West Virginia communities affected by the controversial mining practice and said allegations of health damage, water pollution, failure to protect cemeteries, and harassment of opponents should be investigated and addressed.

April 29, 2013 - An ad campaign featuring images of Exxon Mobil's Arkansas oil spill disaster targets the federal regulators in charge of approving the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project.

April 29, 2013 - Former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), now president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, claims that unauthorized immigrants are a burden on the social safety net -- but the numbers don't bear that out.

March 27, 2013 - The first comprehensive assessment of the health of the nation's rivers and streams finds that many in the Southern Appalachians and Coastal Plain are unable to sustain life.

March 25, 2013 - MIT physicist Ernest Moniz is an academic who has also served on boards or advisory councils of large energy companies, including BP.