Great Plains (IA KS ND NE MO SD)

"For years, when spring rolled around in St. Louis, Mich., songbirds dropped to the ground, dead."

"Hundreds of construction workers will be put to work in Fremont over the next couple summers building a massive $275 million facility for producing broiler chickens, and the utility lines and roads to serve it, as well as upgrading the city’s water treatment plant."

"The people of Hendricks, Minn., thought they had won the feedlot war two years ago when they sued to stop a mega-dairy slated for a hilltop just across the border in South Dakota."

"Almost all of North and South Dakota were under blizzard, ice storm or winter storm warnings on Sunday as wintry weather was forecast to hit the Central U.S., meteorologists said."

"U.S. pipeline regulators on Wednesday ordered Belle Fourche Pipeline Co to improve leak detection, along with other actions, after a Dec. 5 incident that spilled about 4,200 barrels of oil in North Dakota."

"Roughly 288,000 Iowans rely on private water supplies but may not know what is in their water because their wells’ water quality is unregulated."

"Three years and three months later, a massive oil spill in North Dakota still isn't fully cleaned up. The company responsible hasn't even set a date for completion."

"A pipeline leak has spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into a North Dakota creek roughly two and a half hours from Cannon Ball, where protesters are camped out in opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline."

"Missouri’s largest peach producer has filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Co., alleging that the biotech company bears responsibility for illegal herbicide use suspected of causing widespread crop damage in southeast Missouri and neighboring states."