Environment: Easy to be green. You don't have to ditch leather or sell your car to help the environment. [News Source]

County programs help reduce waste. Perhaps 2006 will be remembered as the year "climate change" entered the American public discussion as a mainstream issue. [News Source]

Color infrastructure bonds green, clean. The $37 billion question is: Will they spend the money in a way that helps solve air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions? [News Source]

Fair shake. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Environmental Protection Agency rules for forcing state cleanups of smog don't meet Clean Air Act requirements. [News Source]

New storm-water ordinance protects creeks from pollution. Placer County in California is taking new steps to keep all but storm water out of the area's storm drains - and ultimately out of local creeks. [News Source]

Kerr-McGee plaintiffs could soon get court date. Decades after playing in the shadow of a wood treatment plant, some 4,000 people from Avoca and nearby areas have sued claiming pollution from the plant made residents sick and even resulted in many dying from disease. [News Source]

PSNH’s wood-burning plant makes power practical. Depending on how you look at it, PSNH’s new wood-burning boiler at the venerable Schiller Station power plant in Portsmouth is either enormous or tiny. [News Source]

OEPA fines company over asbestos.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency announced that it has imposed a $4,000 fine on a Cleveland company in connection with the demolition of the abandoned NIBCO Foundry building.

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National spotlight on Brooklyn. Park Slope was honored as the fourth best Eco-Neighborhood in the nation behind Ashville, North Carolina, Austin, Texas and Bozeman, Montana. [News Source]

Cash for credits creates mercury pollution loophole. In a controversial trading plan, South Carolina and other states plan to dish out special mercury emissions credits to power companies. [News Source]

Is our water clean enough? The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation earlier this year listed 135 Midstate rivers and streams as polluted and impaired. [News Source]