Ian Urbina

As natural gas drilling has spread across the country, energy industry representatives have sat down at kitchen tables in states like Texas, Pennsylvania and New York to offer homeowners leases that give companies the right to drill on their land.

And over the past 10 years, as natural gas has become increasingly important to the nation’s energy future, Americans have signed more than a million of these leases.

State regulators will require Honeywell International to conduct a $448 million cleanup of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, one of the nation's most polluted bodies of water, according to people who have seen the plan, which is to be announced today.

FORT MONTGOMERY, N.Y., Oct. 26 - Twelve years ago, when a new gasoline additive held the promise of reducing air pollution, New York State made a huge bet that the technology would work. It supported the use of the additive, M.T.B.E., to be mixed with gasoline at some of the highest concentrations in the nation, from 12 to 15 percent, while also allowing the additive to be used in parts of the state where air pollution was less of a problem.