A recent 6 to 3 vote in the Supreme Court, ruled that fill material from mines will no longer count as pollution. In accordance, toxic tailings from mines can now be deposited directly into our waterways. Such dumping is set to happen at the Kensington gold mine in Lower Slate Lake in Alaska, not to mention into other waterways throughout the U.S. The ball is now in the Obama administration’s court— they can allow this dumping or revert back to a definition of fill material that fits the original intent of the Clean Water Act. Host Steve Curwood talks with the environmental lawyer, Tom Waldo, who argued this case before the Supreme Court.

In 1804, the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark expedition got lost in the Great Plains for 16 days. Today, poet Campbell McGrath gives voice to the young man and his imagined adventures in a new epic, "Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition." Host Steve Curwood talks with McGrath about his hero's triumphs and losses as he wanders the prairie alone, among buffalo herds and under the big Western sky.

Sliding into a seat on the city bus, you may think you’re doing your part to save the environment. But UC-Berkeley researcher, Mikhail Chester, compared the energy and emissions of trains, buses, airplanes, and cars and found this is not always the case. He shares his surprising results with host Steve Curwood.

Coal supporters like to point to the jobs and economic activity that coal mining brings to communities. But a new study argues the human costs of coal mining in Appalachia far outweighs its benefits. Michael Hendryx, a researcher at West Virginia University, talks with host Steve Curwood about coal's toll and policy options that would encourage richer, healthier communities in coal country.

About thirty percent of America’s carbon dioxide emissions come from coal-fired power plants. And since coal is cheap and abundant, big energy companies are feeling pressured to produce so-called “clean coal.” This fall, American Electric Power will test-run the first carbon capture and storage project at an existing U.S. power plant. AEP boasts their carbon removal process is the technology of the future, but critics charge it’s untested, expensive, and doesn’t address the environmental problems of mining for coal. Ann Murray reports.

The modern recycling movement started thirty years ago in an effort to reduce the amount of garbage going into landfills. It worked. In the process it also became a multi-billion dollar business, with thousands of new products being made out of recycled material. But the global recession has hit the recycling industry hard. Christine Parrish visits a recycling plant in Massachusetts to find trash that used to be turned into cash has sunk to junk value.

Salt Marsh Diary’s Mark Seth Lender observes the brilliant white of the Snowy Egret does little to camouflage the bird, nor does it explain how the egret will survive the changing climate.