Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"The tribe has survived for more than a thousand years in the arid mesas. The megadrought gripping the Southwest is testing that resilience."

"Texas oil and gas regulators make big bucks from the industries they oversee and fail to recuse themselves when arbitrating conflicts or determining penalties for companies they’ve invested in, according to a new report."

"The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released some findings on Thursday from an investigation into February’s deadly winter storm and blackouts. Regulators faulted Texas energy policy for much of the disaster."

"At the edge of a sandstone outcropping, Teresa Leger Fernández looks out on the Rio Chama. The river tracks a diverse landscape from the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains through rugged basalt hillsides, layers of volcanic tuff, and the red and yellow cliffs made famous by painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Here marks the genesis of New Mexico’s centuries-old tradition of sharing water through irrigation systems known as acequias."

"Federal officials have cleared the way for construction of a dump in West Texas that could hold spent nuclear fuel for up to 40 years."

"Environmental activists applaud funding increases but wonder why some money is going for road expansion. And why, they ask, is there no focus on environmental justice?"

"There's a certain smell that reminds Dianna Cormier-Jackson of her childhood on Leila Street in Houston's Fifth Ward. When she was young in the early 1960s, she recalls the air there feeling "heavy," as if it was thick with oil and gasoline. Some days, the heavy smell would be so strong that her parents would make her and her siblings stay in the house. But on school days, they marched out into the rank air."

"Acequias, the fabled irrigation ditches that are a cornerstone of New Mexican culture, have endured centuries of challenges. Can they survive the Southwest’s megadrought?"