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Hydraulic fracturing

Red and white trucks flank a tall drilling well pictured against the sky

Trying to measure fracking’s toll on human health

Environment

The fracking boom has transformed large swaths of rural America, turning towns from idyllic to industrial and threatening the physical and mental health of many inhabitants.

Aerial view fracking pads

Fracking causes environmental damage and birth defects, new study shows

Environment
The treatment tanks at the SRE salt water disposal well.

Earthquakes from underground water injection can occur many miles away

Ethane cracker Singapore

Making the plastics found everywhere in modern life comes with a cost: more pollution

Environment
Under the new federal fracking rules, wastewater must be managed onsite and in closed tanks, not in the open pits seen here.

Fracking is about to change, and almost no one is happy about it

Environment
Nellis Solar Power Plant

Natural gas and solar power have been growing together. Can that last?

Environment

Solar power and natural gas seem like competitors in the race to create new power generating capacity. And that’s true — to an extent. But they both may be crucial to helping meet future global energy needs — and reducing the risks of climate change.

The Alberta Tar Sands in Canada. The Keystone Pipeline, which is designed to carry tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast has become a huge political issue. President Obama has said he will veto recent Congressional legislation approving the pipeline

Even with a GOP Congress, here’s how a lame-duck Obama can help the environment

Environment

A new year, a new Congress — with both chambers now controlled by Republicans. But that doesn’t seem to have cowed President Barack Obama. Despite limited support on Capitol Hill, he seems eager to fight for a legacy that includes taking action on climate change.

Greenpeace activists sit chained in front of Chevron's drilling site for shale gas during a protest in the village of Pungesti, Romania.

American and Russian energy giants battle over a small Romanian town

Conflict

Residents of a rural Romanian town claim to have driven American oil company Chevron out of town over its plans for gas exploration. But who’s really behind the conflict?

Sediment from a stream bed containing fracking wastewater (jars on the left) developed orange residues after 90 days; sediment from a clean stream bed (jar on the right) did not.

As fracking booms, waste spills rise — and so do arsenic levels in groundwater

Environment

Wastewater created by fracking contains many toxic elements and chemicals that can contaminate groundwater. The good news? Microbes in the soil feast on the metals and help clean up the spill. The bad news? This process can release high levels of arsenic into the groundwater.

In Ohio, concerned citizens can bring water from their wells to a monthly water monitoring program.

Fearing pollution, some local governments are demanding back zoning control over oil and gas

Environment

Oil and gas wells in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania present risk for local residents, but in many places, local government have no say in the zoning decisions that govern those wells. Now a movement is growing to bring that control back down to towns and cities to ease pollution worries