Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"Thousands of abandoned oil wells dot the Permian Basin in west Texas and New Mexico, endangering humans and wildlife. With oil costs plummeting, they’re likely to proliferate. Who is going to cover the cleanup costs?"

"An urban wildlife refuge is meant to alleviate generations of environmental racism that has beset the historic neighborhood of Mountain View. That’s assuming it can meet the community’s needs".

"Two New Mexico Native American communities have sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a revision to federal rules regarding waterways they argue violated federal responsibilities toward tribes."

"New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas filed a lawsuit against the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission intended to block a project to build a temporary storage facility for high-level nuclear waste in southeast New Mexico.

The project was proposed by New Jersey-based Holtec International and would be designed to hold spent nuclear fuel rods from plants across the country temporarily while a permanent repository was designed and built.

"Wildfire experts in Northern New Mexico are urging the community to prepare for a hot, dry summer with potentially worse conditions than previous years, and they say the idea of a wildfire “season” is slowly dissipating as climate change makes the state’s forests more susceptible to blazes year-round."

"New Mexico oil and gas regulators on Thursday adopted new rules to limit most venting and flaring in the oilfield as a way to reduce methane emissions."

"Texas is crisscrossed by thousands of miles of freeways, but a Houston-area county is suing the state to stop one of them being expanded, arguing the air pollution and displacement will primarily harm minority communities."

"In Houston’s poorest neighborhoods, an unfamiliar winter storm stoked a familiar anguish, one fueled by recurring floods and what residents see as a pattern of neglect."