The 16-kilometer (10-mile) stretch of the Missouri River where it passes Great Falls,Montana, was once so swift, roiling, and precipitous that, in 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition spent 11 days hauling equipment and boats on an overland portage to continue their transcontinental journey. Earlier this year, the same fast-flowing reach again came to national [...]

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The Marcellus shale formation stretches through a wide swath of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, underlying large parts of the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.  Energy extractors have been planning large-scale natural gas “fracturing” operations for the past decade.  State environmental regulators are attempting to understand the process and impacts of [...]

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