NRG Energy Inc., one of Delaware’s largest industrial polluters, struck a deal with state regulators that will require it to shut down three of its four Indian River Power Plant generating units by 2013 in exchange for being allowed to continue to use one of its turbines without air emissions scrubbers for three more years.

A 2009 court order had mandated the shutdown of two of the plant’s turbines by 2011 and required the scrubber installation on a third turbine.

Nearly three decades after Congress first directed the Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the possibility of dredging the Delaware River, a federal judge last week cleared the way for the deepening to begin.

U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson denied an injunction Wednesday to stop the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from deepening a 13-mile stretch of river by an additional 5 feet this year without first obtaining a Delaware state permit and said opponents of deepening the river should give up.

A federal judge has rejected Delaware’s challenge to a plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deepen the Delaware River’s main shipping channel.

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control had challenged the agency’s plan, citing the potential for environmental damage. U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson sided with the Army Corps in an opinion issued yesterday, saying state officials failed to demonstrate irreparable harm that would override the federal agency’s authority over waterway maintenance.

The Ugandan government is close to finalizing a long-term irrigation plan in response to severe droughts affecting the nation’s food production.

Officials last year asked the ministries of agriculture and water and environment to develop a 25-year master plan on the feasibility, approach and cost of irrigation schemes. The ministries this month will submit the plan to the Cabinet, which in turn will send it to Parliament for approval.

In a hearing at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium yesterday, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) urged the stakeholders in the legal fight over invasive Asian carp to approach the issue rationally.

Durbin acknowledged that the ravenous fish are “a real threat to the future of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes,” saying Illinois is “not in denial.” But he criticized the legal strategy of Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox (R), which he said would cripple the shipping industry in Illinois and expose 14,000 homes or more to potential flooding.

The Nature Conservancy has led an effort to restore the lower Truckee River, located 8 miles east of Reno and home to the Mustang Ranch, the first licensed brothel in the United States.

“We joke that in Nevada that we only work on properties near brothels,” said Mickey Hazelwood, project director for the Nature Conservancy. “They like their privacy — they stay concentrated instead of developing out so they can keep an eye on things. It works for us.”

The Bolivian city of El Alto could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change.

The glaciers that have been long providing water and electricity to this southwestern Bolivian city and its neighbors are rapidly melting and disappearing. A World Bank report released last year found that many of the glaciers in the Andes would disappear within the next two decades, threatening the water supply and existence of nearly 100 million people.

A group of New Orleans residents yesterday vented their frustration with the Army Corps of Engineers during a working group meeting aimed at developing policy for coastal and wetlands restoration.

A panel of federal agency officials heard from coastal residents during the first of three days of meetings in Louisiana and Mississippi. One topic the Louisiana-Mississippi Gulf Coast Ecosystem Working Group is working to address is how to get other agencies to join in on resource projects that frequently are designed and built only by the corps.

More than 20 percent of the country’s water treatment systems violated environmental provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act at least once in the past five years. While some violations were one-time events, posing little risk, for hundreds of other systems, contamination persisted for years, unchecked by federal regulators.

“The previous eight years provide a perfect example of what happens when political leadership fails to act to protect our health and environment,” said Adora Andy, a spokeswoman for U.S. EPA.

Two bills introduced in Congress by Western legislators seeking to ease liability concerns for mine cleanups and reform mining regulations are not necessarily at odds, advocates say.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) has sponsored what is known as the Good Samaritan bill, which would seek to make it easier for groups to clean up abandoned mines without fearing they would then assume liability for the project’s adherence to the Clean Water Act. Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has proposed reforms to the nation’s 1872 mining law that would establish severance taxes to pay for cleanups.