"Irrigation Nation"
"How an esoteric piece of farm equipment created America’s breadbasket—and threatens to destroy it."
"How an esoteric piece of farm equipment created America’s breadbasket—and threatens to destroy it."
"MINOT, N.D. — Donna Bye's tour of the city she loves takes you by her old home, the red one on the left that, in 2011, flooded with 5 feet of Souris River water and backed-up sewage."
"Enbridge Energy Partners announced Thursday it will delay its controversial proposed Sandpiper oil pipeline through northern Minnesota."
"An earthquake struck northern Oklahoma early Saturday morning, rattling houses and waking residents in the region around Pawnee, about 74 miles north of Oklahoma City. Preliminary measurements show the quake had a magnitude of 5.6 — believed to be one of the strongest in state history."
"The Iowa Utilities Board has approved a wind turbine operation it says will be the nation's largest wind energy project."
"ST. LOUIS -- Water samples from 16 schools in the city school system contained lead levels that exceeded those most commonly found in homes in Flint, Mich., after a contamination crisis there, according to results released Thursday by an environmental engineering company."
"The Ogallala aquifer turned the region into America's breadbasket. Now it, and a way of life, are being drained away."
Agriculture in the High Plains states from Texas to South Dakota has depended on irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer. But pumping has depleted it and and it is not being replenished. What will happen when it is gone?
"The US government is set to unleash drones that fire vaccine-covered M&Ms in a bid to save the endangered black-footed ferret, a species that is facing a plague epidemic across America’s great plains."
"A coalition of state wildlife regulators today announced that the population of lesser prairie chickens in the wild has fallen by more than 13 percent since the last annual aerial survey -- a troubling outcome the Obama administration predicted earlier this year."