Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

July 28, 2025

DEADLINE: Next Gen Radio Project

NPR’s Next Gen Radio is a five-day, audio-focused, digital journalism project (some people in-person, some not). Next up: Texas Newsroom, ​Aug 24-29, 2025. Apply by Jul 28. Learn how to report and produce a non-narrated audio piece and a companion multimedia story.

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Trump Cuts EPA Grants to Address Health Risks on Hopi and Navajo Reservations

"Red Feather, which works to improve housing on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, is just one of hundreds of groups that have had grants meant to help disadvantaged communities terminated by the Trump administration." 

Source: Inside Climate News, 06/16/2025

"Developers Propose More Than 100 New Gas Power Plants in Texas"

"Companies plan to build more than 100 new gas-fired power plants in Texas in the next few years amid a race to meet enormous electrical demand from energy-hungry industries, according to a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit."

Source: Inside Climate News, 06/12/2025

Battle Over Gas Power Facility Generates Months-Long Investigation

A private social media message piqued Arizona Republic reporter Joan Meiners’ interest in rural retirees’ efforts to block construction of a gas-fired peaker plant next to their homes. Her year-long, grant-funded investigation in 2024 uncovered questionable local government actions and utility executive motives, and concluded with action against the facility. Read Meiners’ account of how rural Arizonans became unlikely climate activists, in the latest FEJ Storylog.

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Will DOGE Evaporate Crucial Water Data?

Streamflow data gathered by thousands of U.S. Geological Survey gauges helps track the country’s floods and droughts. But it may be lost if the Trump administration follows up on a decision not to renew leases of USGS water science centers that read the gauges and disseminate the measurements. Reporter’s Toolbox on the value of this database and the risk of its loss.

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"Data Centers Are Building Their Own Gas Power Plants in Texas"

"Not so long ago, developers of the massive server farms talked about powering them with wind and solar power. But now, with the coming of power-hungry AI platforms, they’re bypassing the grid, building their own gas-fired power plants on site." 

Source: Inside Climate News, 06/06/2025

"Is The Oil And Gas Boom Harming New Mexico’s Students?"

"Fossil fuel revenues bankroll education spending in this state, but schools exposed to industry pollution face environmental risks that can affect children’s health and performance." 

Source: Searchlight NM/AP, 06/02/2025

Ancestral Eyes: Storytelling Under The Night Skies Of The Stargazer Highway

"Against the black night, the darker-than-night silhouettes of Monument Valley buttes graced the horizon. Overhead, stars were scattered across the sky—a prank by Coyote, according to Navajo legend—and the stripe of Milky Way stars arced brilliantly across the sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon."

Source: National Parks Traveler, 05/30/2025

Appeals Court Revives Tribal Challenge To $10B SunZia Transmission Project

"A federal appeals court has sided with Native American tribes in their fight against the federal government over a $10 billion energy transmission line designed to carry wind-generated electricity from New Mexico to customers as far away as California."

Source: AP, 05/30/2025

Colorado River Is Running Low. Groundwater Looks Even Worse, Study Says.

"The dwindling flow of the Colorado River has alarmed the American West for years, but the water losses happening underground are even worse, according to a new study that uses satellite data to measure groundwater supplies across the Colorado River Basin."

Source: Washington Post, 05/29/2025

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