"In a victory for Big Bend ranchers and conservationists, a Presidio county special commission has awarded six landowners about $2.8 million in compensation for the use of their property to construct the Trans-Pecos pipeline and the resulting loss in property value."

"The wind that blows through Bokoshe, Okla. is an ominous one. A small, low-income town near the Arkansas border, Bokoshe sits in the shadow of a coal power plant. Its toxic byproduct, coal ash, is trucked daily to a nearby dump, and when the wind blows through town, that ash rains down on its residents. They believe it is to blame for the asthma and cancer that runs rampant there."

"The Bureau of Land Management announced Monday that several parcels of land intended for oil and gas drilling in northwestern New Mexico will no longer be put up for bid at a leasing auction in October."

"PERRIN, Texas -- On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Cody Murray's water well exploded in flames. Natural gas unexpectedly flowed up with the water and ignited when a switch flipped in the pump house where he stood. It turned the air to fire."

"Record flooding along the swollen Brazos River in Texas on Tuesday prompted mandatory evacuations after at least six people died in the worst floods in more than 100 years."

"AUSTIN, Texas — The state has removed aerial-surveillance photos taken during severe floods from a public website. The decision comes after the El Paso Times earlier this month published a story with dozens of such photos showing apparent oil spills in different river systems over the past few years."

"Texas would rely more on treated toilet water and pumping rainwater into aquifers to serve its booming population over the next half-century under the state's 2017 water plan approved Thursday."

"With clay soil and tabletop-flat terrain, Houston has endured flooding for generations. Its 1,700 miles of man-made channels struggle to dispatch storm runoff to the Gulf of Mexico. Now the nation's fourth-largest city is being overwhelmed with more frequent and more destructive floods."

"Just outside Pearland, theater patrons come and go within 200 feet of a warehouse that stockpiles a pesticide so toxic it seeped into a family’s house in Utah and killed two little girls."

"West Nile. Dengue. Chikungunya. In recent years, this trio of potentially deadly mosquito-borne viruses carved out a definite niche in the growing catalogue of American anxieties."