Environment

May 20, 2016 - A leak from a damaged pipeline at a Royal Dutch Shell deepwater production field off the Louisiana coast last week came amid mounting protests urging the Obama administration to halt new drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic.

May 5, 2016 - After local residents began raising concerns about cancer clusters near Duke Energy coal ash waste pits, the state cancer registry conducted a study that it claims shows there's no cause for worry — but a epidemiologist who reviewed the state's analysis says it does nothing of the sort.

April 29, 2016 - More than two decades ago, Louisiana created a tax exemption for horizontally drilled oil and gas wells that's still in place — and it's costing the cash-strapped state billions in revenues.

April 27, 2016 - While offshore drilling in the Atlantic is canceled for now, plans are still underway to conduct seismic blasting for oil and gas reserves. As scientists, environmentalists, local communities and some elected leaders press to block the tests, the industry has been contributing unprecedented amounts of money to influence key federal lawmakers.

April 20, 2016 - A look at what we've learned about the long-term health effects of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the sixth anniversary of the disaster.

April 15, 2016 - As pressure grows on power companies to move toxic coal ash out of leaky, wet impoundments and into dry, lined landfills, the experience of an African-American community near one such landfill in rural Alabama highlights the potential problems with that approach.

April 8, 2016 - The U.S. announced a deal last week to move weapons-grade plutonium from Japan and ship it to the Savannah River Site on the South Carolina-Georgia border, where there are longstanding concerns about the environmental health risks that low-income and African-American communities disproportionately bear.

April 5, 2016 - BP will be able to write off most of the $20 billion settlement it has agreed to pay for its 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill as an ordinary business expense, resulting in a potential tax windfall of over $5 billion.

April 1, 2016 - North Carolina's carcinogen-contaminated drinking water near Duke Energy's coal ash dumps — and the political fight over what to do about it — should serve as a warning for problems to come in other historically coal-dependent states due to a lack of federal oversight for drinking water and coal ash disposal.

March 25, 2016 - A week after the Obama administration canceled plans to auction off an oil and gas lease in the Atlantic, an auction of 43 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico was disrupted by hundreds of protesters chanting, "Shut it down!" The winning bids came to just $156 million, the fourth-lowest total since 1983.