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A vote on whether to allow Hess to build a controversial natural gas power plant in Newark will go in front of the city's planning board this week.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection wants to improve ways to prevent sewage from polluting local waterways during heavy rainfalls through a long-term plan involving green infrastructure.

Captain Charles Moore, environmentalist and researcher, talks about discovering of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the summer of 1997, when he was sailing from Honolulu to California. In Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Ocean Moore looks at the secret life and hidden properties of plastics—from milk jugs to polymer molecules small enough to penetrate human skin or be unknowingly inhaled.

Elizabeth Shogren, who covers environmental stories on the national desk at NPR, and Jim Morris, project manager at the Center for Public Integrity, discuss a joint project from NPR and CPI, which found that the Environmental Protection Agency maintains a watch list of the worst polluters in the country.

Captain Charles Moore, seafaring environmentalist and researcher, talks about discovering of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the summer of 1997, when he was sailing from Honolulu to California. He had stumbled upon the largest garbage dump on the planet-a spiral nebula where plastic outweighed zooplankton, the ocean's food base, by a factor of six to one. In Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Ocean Moore looks at the secret life and hidden properties of plastics—from milk jugs to polymer molecules small enough to penetrate human skin or be unknowingly inhaled.

A new report from the environmental group Riverkeeper confirmed what many New Yorkers long suspected: sewage pollution can make the Hudson River unsafe for swimming.

The city has now closed four beaches — one in Brooklyn and three on Staten Island — after a wastewater treatment facility dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Hudson River following a four-alarm fire last week.

Cas Holloway, NYC's Department of Environmental Preservation Commissioner, discusses the millions of gallons of sewage released into the Hudson after a fire at the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Harlem this week.

Co-directors Maro Chermayeff and Micah Fink discuss their documentary “Mann v. Ford,” about one of the worst environmental disasters in the United States, which was located just 19 miles from New York City. This toxic Superfund site is at the former home of the Ford Motor Plant in Mahwah, NJ, where thousands of cars were produced, along with toxic paint sludge, which was dumped on nearby Ramapough Mountain Indian land. This film tells the story of Wayne Mann, the leader of a small Native American community, who stands up to Ford. “Mann Vs Ford” is playing July 18 at 9 pm on HBO.

Randy Newman captured a moment of national anger in "Burn On," a song about the polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969. That environmental disaster pushed Congress and the Nixon administration to create the Environmental Protection Agency and pass laws like the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. But today's guest warns that these laws are woefully outdated, and that clean water is becoming increasingly scarce. Access to freshwater, he argues, is the most urgent problem we face in the twenty-first century.

Josh Fox, director of "Gasland", talks about his Oscar nominated film, and discusses the effects of the controversial 'fracking' method of natural gas extraction on the health and safety of communities.

Twenty years ago, the Amazon River in Ecuador was heavily contaminated after chemical-laden wastewater was dumped into it. The effects on the surrounding population were devastating: illness, death, and economic loss. Chevron Corp., the U.S.'s second largest oil company, is the alleged culprits, and the company may have to pay at least $8 billion to repair damages after a ruling yesterday. In a statement, Chevron reacted, saying "The Ecuadorian court's jumdgment is illegitimate and unenforceable. It is the product of fraud and is contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence. Chevron will appeal this decision in Ecuador and intends to see that justice prevails."

Hypercolor clothes may have gone out of style in the '80s, but there's a new thermochromic sweatshirt in town.

New York's beaches have the seventh worst water quality in the nation because of pollution from storm runoff and sewer overflows, according to the annual beach report from the Natural Resources Defence Council.

In his film Crude: The Real Price of Oil, documentarian Joe Berlinger chronicled the story behind a law suit filed by thousands of indigenous Ecuadorians against Chevron for oil pollution in the Amazon river. Earlier this month, a New York judge ordered him to turn over hundreds of hours of outtake footage from the film to Chevron.

Forty years ago, the Cuyahoga River caught fire. The river, riddled with pollution, burned for 30 minutes. Time magazine covered the bizarre event and their article helped jumpstart the environmental movement of the late 60s.

It has been 40 years of recovery for the Cuyahoga River. How far has the river and the surrounding environment come since June 22, 1969? Dan Moulthrop is the host of the Sound of Ideas on WCPN in Cleveland and he joins us now from the Cuyahoga river with a look back, and

forward.

Here's a cautionary tale about river pollution:

It's a common assumption that plants grow best in clear sunny weather, but scientists say this isn't always the case. Research has shown that forests and crops can also thrive in hazy conditions because clouds and particles, that's right, pollution, in the atmosphere scatter sun light so that it bathes more leaves, enhancing photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn light and carbon dioxide into food. All this pollution we humans have created has dimmed the skies and this so-called global dimming actually increased plant productivity (in the photosynthetic way) by as much as a quarter from 1960 to 1999. That amounts to more than a ten percent increase in carbon dioxide storage, which is good! To help us see through the smog, Matt McGrath, BBC Science Correspondent, joins The Takeaway with this report.