Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

Another Lawsuit Filed over Arsenic from South Carolina Coal Ash

"CONWAY, SC -- Pollution from a pair of coal ash ponds at Santee Cooper’s retired Grainger electric generating plant here has sparked another lawsuit – this one filed by The Southern Environmental Law Center, which alleges the state-owned utility is violating the federal Clean Water Act."

Source: Myrtle Beach Sun News, 04/30/2013

"NM Grapples With Tough Choices as Drought Persists"

"HATCH, N.M. -- In southern New Mexico, the mighty Rio Grande has gone dry -- reduced to a sandy wash winding from this chile farming community to the nation's leading pecan-producing county. Only puddles remain, leaving gangs of carp to huddle together in a desperate effort to avoid the fate of thousands of freshwater clams, their shells empty and broken on the river bottom."

Source: AP, 04/25/2013

Toolbox: Database Helps Track Broken Promises on Parkland Conservation

Seattle-based InvestigateWest published a feature package last summer documenting illegal parkland conversions in Michigan, New York City, and Oklahoma. They could not cover all the other states — that was left for you to do, with the assistance of their database of some 40,000 federal grants under the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

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Texas Fertilizer Explosion Re-Raises Buried Hazmat Disclosure Issues

News stories about the April 17, 2013, explosion of a fertilizer storage plant in the town of West, Texas that killed 15 people have so far focused on the plant operator's risk-disclosure failure, instead of the likely fact that government agencies knew the nature and magnitude of the hazard — or should have known. The bigger story is the regulatory failure — and industry's decades-long campaign to keep the public ignorant of the threats they face. Photo: AP/LM Otero/Available through Creative Commons.

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"Oil’s Financial Ties to Texas Legislators"

"Friendliness toward the drilling industry is typical for Texas, where many lawmakers receive campaign contributions from oil and gas groups or have investments in drilling companies. The three elected members of the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees the oil and gas industry, have received significant contributions from the very industry they regulate."

Source: Texas Tribune, 04/12/2013

"Texas Provides Clues of Climate Change Impacts"

"A city administrator looks out at the Gulf of Mexico from this Southeast Texas town, wondering what vicious hurricanes it may spawn. In the Panhandle, a farmer tries new techniques to keep soil from turning to dust. In West Texas, ranchers watch prairie grass die. Others grow algae as water becomes too salty for other crops. And statewide, reservoirs dry up. Want to see what happens when the impacts of climate change are felt? Well, just look at Texas, some scientists say."

Source: AP, 04/08/2013

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