Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

Arizona's groundwater addiction hasn't been controlled by legal and regulatory measures so far, and may soon threaten the state's economic well-being.

Homes are "contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the Navajo Nation."

An abandoned river -- the Trinity -- runs through Dallas. Storms wash old industrial poisons into it via ditches. As poisons accumulated in its sediments, fish became dangerous to eat. "So people stayed away, and over time, it no longer mattered which came first -- the toxic fish or the abandoned river."

"Thirty years ago today, an earthen tailings dam near the United Nuclear Corp. Church Rock Uranium mine collapsed, spilling ninety million gallons of liquid radioactive waste and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes into the Rio Puerco. The spill contaminated water, land and air at least 50 miles downstream on Navajo Nation land in New Mexico and Arizona."

"TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Long dependent on wellwater and supplies sent hundreds of miles by canal from the Colorado River, this desert city will soon harvest some of its 12 inches of annual rainfall to help bolster its water resources."

Residents say goodbye to Picher, Oklahoma, a town undermined and polluted by mining operations.

Navajo people are fighting the return of uranium mining they say threatens to despoil their lands and health.

"The federal government plans to spend up to $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death."