Greenwire

Top lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee want a say in a GOP bill that takes aim at the science underpinning U.S. EPA regulations.

LOS ANGELES -- Sunny Southern California for many years has been seen as the land of swimming pools in the backyard and lush lawns in the front. But that's changing as homeowners and businesses are opting to go grass-free, motivated by the desire to pay less for water, reduce maintenance and, in many cases, reap cash incentives offered by local water agencies.

Sydney has installed high-tech "reverse vending machines" that swallow up empty recyclable waste in return for bus tickets and other rewards.

The European Union yesterday proposed a trash-reduction plan that calls for Europe to recycle 70 percent of urban waste and 80 percent of packaging waste by 2030.

Insurgents from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant today seized control of Syria's largest oil field, near the Iraqi border, activists said.

Utah wildlife officials yesterday announced the state's first official wolverine sighting since 1979, a month before the Fish and Wildlife Service decides whether to list the rare predator as endangered.

New Jersey is moving to stop an ocean research project opposed by the state, fishing groups and environmentalists.

Advocates of a ballot measure requiring mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods said yesterday they submitted more than enough valid signatures to ensure a vote on the proposal in November.

An Israeli inventor claims his new scanner can quickly identify the chemical makeup of foods, drugs and other common items.

National Transportation Safety Board correspondence shows the agency had doubts that vinyl chloride exposure levels were as low as first claimed after a train accident in Paulsboro, N.J., in 2012.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is mulling converting its Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis, Tenn., to burn natural gas instead of coal, the federally backed utility announced yesterday.

Cleanup workers are getting ready to enter one of the most hazardous sites at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where a worker was once exposed to the highest dose of radiation from one radioactive element ever recorded.

The coal mining industry's pension plan system is facing massive shortfalls and could require a government bailout.

A contractor that packaged radioactive waste blamed for a leak that occurred at the nation's nuclear waste dump is laying off 115 workers because its contract expired June 30, the date Los Alamos laboratory was supposed to have finished shipping out the waste, a laboratory spokesman said yesterday.

A second Chinese citizen has been arrested in a seed-theft case, according to U.S. authorities.

A Texas county is suing several companies involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, claiming the disaster caused the local government to lose tax revenue to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Several Bristol Bay-area tribes are seeking to join Pebble LP's lawsuit against U.S. EPA over the agency's potential pre-emptive veto of the company's copper and gold mining project in southwestern Alaska.