Mid-Atlantic (DC DE MD PA VA WV)

"Chesapeake Bay oysters are being resurrected from the dead. Blue crabs are roaring back. And after taking a huge blow from the monster storm called Sandy, the weakened bay proved in the fall that it could right itself and come back looking fresh."

"With the new year, Maryland becomes the first state to ban the use of additives containing arsenic in chicken feed, a practice already prohibited by Canada and the European Union."

"Friends say he has the vigor of a younger man, but Ed Merrifield knows the truth. He is tiring at age 65, and ready to give up his demanding third career as the Potomac riverkeeper."

"A signature battle of the energy boom, a public fight over a waste-water deep disposal well, plays out amid scientific uncertainty over safety in a small town."

Many anglers who pull fish out of the Anacostia River near Washington, DC, eat them despire health warnings.

"Contractors worked throughout the night to remove and replace an 800-foot swath of Interstate 77 that turned from asphalt to cinder in a massive natural gas line explosion that also flattened four homes and damaged five more but caused no deaths."