Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

Residents of Salt Lake City neighborhoods peppered Chevron VP Bryan Tucker with questions and complaints at a community meeting following an oil spill there.

"The owners of a closed uranium mine near Golden have been ordered by the state health department to stop discharging polluted water into a creek that flows into a Denver-area reservoir."

"CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A state agency that oversees oil and gas development voted Tuesday to require energy companies to disclose what chemicals they're pumping underground to improve the flow of oil and gas into well bores."

The roundup of bison that have strayed from their refuge in Yellowstone National Park, part of a Quixotic plan to protect domestic cattle from the disease brucellosis, is an example of Western environmental gridlock.

"Gayla Benefield and Eva Thomson are sisters who have grown used to death. For two decades, they have watched asbestos from a nearby vermiculite mine strangle their parents, Thomson's husband, an aunt, several in-laws and numerous neighbors and friends."

Scientists in Idaho have dug up living specimens of the giant Palouse earthworm -- a foot-long white worm said to smell like lilies and thought to be extinct.