Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"In Texas, there were more than 2,700 spills at oil and gas sites last year. But the state tracked only about half of those."

"The EPA has already spent $100 million to remediate decades of mining."

"The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved expanding a wastewater permit for a South Texas coal mine over vocal opposition from locals Wednesday."

"The number of earthquakes in Oklahoma has fallen 25% in 2016 compared with a year earlier, a decline attributed in part to actions by state regulators to police the oil and gas industry’s practice of pumping wastewater from its operations deep underground."

"BOKOSHE, Oklahoma — Here in the land of wind-whipped, rolling plains, the gray dust, which sparkles in just the right light, seems inescapable. Residents of this town near the Arkansas line say they have spotted it on their grass, trees, ponds, barns, furniture and cars."

"New Mexico has filed a lawsuit against Colorado in the nation’s highest court alleging the state should be held responsible for the Gold King Mine spill and its handling of the contaminants that have leached from surrounding mines for decades."

"Firefighters across Arizona and New Mexico battled 31 wildfires on Wednesday, their efforts complicated by a relentless heat wave and bone-dry conditions. And in the Angeles National Forest, on the northern edge of Los Angeles, two fires kept more than 300 families from their homes as the fires threatened to merge into one."

"Ten years after a federal agent crashed a pow-wow of a Texas tribe and seized their ceremonial eagle feathers, the tribe has won a settlement that lets members keep the feathers – and get court costs paid, too."

"In a victory for Big Bend ranchers and conservationists, a Presidio county special commission has awarded six landowners about $2.8 million in compensation for the use of their property to construct the Trans-Pecos pipeline and the resulting loss in property value."

"The wind that blows through Bokoshe, Okla. is an ominous one. A small, low-income town near the Arkansas border, Bokoshe sits in the shadow of a coal power plant. Its toxic byproduct, coal ash, is trucked daily to a nearby dump, and when the wind blows through town, that ash rains down on its residents. They believe it is to blame for the asthma and cancer that runs rampant there."