Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the desert Southwest."

"Environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over a plan to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The groups say the sale violates a core environmental law and threatens coastal communities and endangered whales."

"The Trump administration’s expected rollback of an oil and gas drilling ban around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon is pitting tribes and environmental groups against each other as they prepare for possible legal challenges."

"Oil companies have polluted groundwater and the environment by injecting oil field waste deep into the earth at pressures high enough to violate Oklahoma law. ... The regulatory agency says it ... has not fined any company for wastewater leaks in the last five years."

"Bats love to munch on insects like stink bugs and moths. Some farmers are now relying on the mammals for pest control – and ditching chemicals."

"Only about one-fifth of applicants for federal disaster assistance from Kerr County have been deemed eligible to get financial help so far, leaving hundreds without governmental aid more than three months after deadly floods ravaged the county on July 4."

"A Texas county is suing EPA over the agency’s cancellation of nearly $250 million in solar energy grants." "The lawsuit says the Trump administration unlawfully revoked funding for low-income communities to access clean, affordable energy."

"The water isn’t always brown, but Scarlet Weathers lives like it is. Not once has she drank the tap water from her kitchen sink in her house in Sweeny, Texas. She knows, like everyone else in the town, that it can’t be trusted. Even her small grandchildren have noticed it during bathtime. Why is the water brown?"

"For as long as 55-year-old Hopi Chairman Tim Nuvangyaoma has been alive, high-voltage power lines have cut across Hopi lands in northeast Arizona, carrying vast amounts of power long distances throughout the Southwest. But residents of the Hopi Reservation have never been connected to that grid."