Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"A federal buyout of homes and businesses in the Tar Creek Superfund site is nearly complete and is expected to cost about $10 million less than original estimates."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency order against a gas driller in Texas on Tuesday, accusing the company of contaminating an aquifer and giving it 48 hours to provide clean drinking water to affected residents and begin taking steps to resolve the problem."

"The Texas agency that regulates industrial pollution should be more responsive and transparent to the public, according to a state analysis released Thursday."

"As a young state attorney in the early days of environmental regulation, [Pamela Giblin] built up the laws that regulate pollution of the state's water and air. Today, age 64 and still raven-haired and self-effacing, she is the senior attorney for some of the state's largest polluters — dedicated, some would say, to finding cracks in those same laws."

"Lynda Lovejoy, a state senator in New Mexico, and her running mate, Earl Tulley, have lost their bid to become the first woman and the first environmental leader to lead the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian tribe."

"In a significant legal victory for Navajo campaigners, a federal judge has voided a permit for the expansion of one of two operating mines on the Navajo reservation, calling for a more thorough review of the project's impact on the environment and on cultural sites."

People in Bokoshe, Oklahoma, say they are sick because the state and EPA have failed to regulated fly ash from a nearby coal-burning power plant.

A study claiming that California's Proposition 23 would create jobs failed to disclose that it was funded by big out-of-state oil companies and the Koch brothers, who have been anonymously funding political causes that boost profits of their oil business. Proposition 23 would delay California's climate change law, which environmentalists say would create green jobs.

"There is a new front in the fight over whether Texas should build more coal-fired power plants -- water."