Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"Drought and last winter’s hard freeze have caused a massive shortage, driving up prices by 500 percent or more."

"Exxon’s Baytown complex in the Houston-area has the third largest oil refinery in the U.S. and is requesting permit renewal for its olefins plant despite repeated violations to the Clean Air Act."

"Opponents of a sprawling national monument surrounding the Grand Canyon National Park on Monday launched a pair of lawsuits challenging the site, opening another front in a Republican effort to roll back presidential authority to protect federal lands."

"On the 30th anniversary of the first presidential executive order on environmental justice, a report from the fencelines in the booming Southeast Texas petrochemical corridor."

"Jaguars once roamed throughout the American south-west, but they were hunted to local extinction by the 1960s. In the 1990s, the elusive cat began to occasionally reappear in the rugged Sky Islands mountain ranges in New Mexico and Arizona. Now, a series of sightings in the region over the past year marks the endangered predators’ tentative return."

"Frigid weather this month caused industrial facilities across Texas to release unplanned air pollution as machinery froze, power went out and icy conditions blocked service crews."