The Los Angeles Times is reporting this morning that former interior Secretary Gale A. Norton (above) is being investigated to determine if she illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Royal Dutch Shell hired Norton after she left the Interior Department. Interior in 2006 awarded three oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Royal Dutch subsidiary. Reporters Jim Tankersley and Josh Meyer wrote that a Rand Corp. expert said the "deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars."

"The investigation's main focus is whether Norton violated a law that prohibits federal employees from discussing employment with a company if they are involved in dealings with the government that could benefit the firm, law enforcement and Interior officials said," the Times reported. The investigation began during the last months of the George W. Bush administration.

Norton, 55, is the former attorney general of Colorado and has been a long-time backer of oil shale development. The leases were granted to the Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary in 2006 on the recommendation of a team representing several federal agencies. In December of that year, Norton went to work for Shell. Five leases covering up to 25,000 acres, mostly in rural Colorado, were granted. Shell was the only company to be granted more than one lease.

The New York Times published a massive story Sunday about how the nation's clean water laws are being neglected. The story begins outside of Charleston, West Virginia, where a family is bathing in water that caused "painful rashes," water so toxic that it ate away the enamel on children's teeth. “How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” one woman asked. 

It turned out that the community's water supply (if you can call this stuff water; see photo above) was polluted by neighboring coal companies. In fact, the companies reported that they were pumping illegal concentrations of chemicals into the ground — the same chemicals that came out of the tap in nearby houses. The companies violated the 40-year old Clean Water Act, but regulators never bothered to enforce the law. This was true all over the country, the Times found. "In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times," reporter Charles Duhigg wrote. "However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene."

The Times collected data from all over the country and the paper is making that information available to readers. If you go here, you can search your zip code, city or state for the names of Clean Water Act violators. 

The Hill reports, "Lobbyists for powerful farming interests are happy Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) took the gavel of the Senate Agriculture Committee." Former chair, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, has shifted over to the top spot at the Senate Health, Education, labor and Pensions Committee. The Hill notes that the ranking Republican on the Ag Committee is also a Southerner, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. 

Traditional, big-farm groups are pleased with the switch. “We are very happy. She is a real believer in agriculture and is going to fight for it,” said Mary Kay Thatcher, director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation. “We couldn’t have handpicked a chairman better than this.” The Hill reports that lobbyists expect rice and cotton to get more attention under the new leadership (and, yes, the rice and cotton organizations sent out press releases praising Lincoln's appointment). Tyson Foods grows quite a few chickens in Arkansas and has been one of Sen. Lincoln's largest political donors.

"Lincoln also has been skeptical of climate change legislation and has said the Senate should focus on a renewable energy bill instead," writes The Hill's Kevin Bogardus. "Lincoln could put the brakes on a Senate version of the climate change bill." “She had questions about the benefits of climate change instead of coming anywhere near close to the climate change bill coming out of the House,” one lobbyist said.

One of the people asked to sit in the President's box during his address to Congress Wednesday night was a rural doctor from Maine. VillageSoup reporter Andrew Benore tells us that Wayne Myers, a doctor and farmer who live in Waldoboro, Maine, was called September 8 about attending the speech.  Myers had participated in one of the White House's "listening sessions" on rural issues. Myers listened to the speech and then, afterward, met President Obama. (Myers is in top right in photo above.)

"I felt all along Obama should be more outspoken and aggressive about what he was going to insist on rather than waiting for Congress," Myers told Benore. "If we don't get the health care problem under control it will flat wreck the economy," Myers said. "It has gone from eating 3.5 percent of the economy to devouring 17 percent."

Dr. Myers has helped train doctors to work in rural areas and he served for two years as director of the Office of Rural Health Policy in the Clinton administration. Benore reports: "Myers said better access to heath insurance for rural families would help them do what they want to do, such as farming and starting new businesses. 'We would see a boom in small businesses developing in rural areas if people had some way to cover the rural health insurance problem,' Myers said."