Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"When Leslie Stewart moved to her home in a rural expanse of Lincoln County outside of Oklahoma City more than 20 years ago, she thought she’d found a slice of heaven. ... But several years ago, her neighbor began applying sewage sludge, which consists largely of human waste left over from municipal wastewater treatment facilities, as a fertilizer on his farmland, causing a rancid smell so powerful it nearly took her breath away."

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"As Texas stares down a water shortfall, its leaders are looking at vast volumes of brown, briney oilfield wastewater as a hopeful source of future supply. They don’t have many other options. But extracting clean water from this toxic slurry will require enormous amounts of energy, just as Texas fights to keep up with the rapidly growing power demands of a high-tech industrial buildout."

"Near the western New Mexico town of Grants, the toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining and milling has shattered lives, destroyed homes and created a contamination threat to the last clean source of groundwater for an entire region"

"U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who was a fierce champion for national parks, passed away Thursday from complications related to cancer treatments. He was 77."

"Texas widened its lead as the country’s renewable energy leader in 2024, with growth in solar and wind power, according to federal data."

"The case could establish the nation’s first independent repository for spent nuclear fuel in West Texas, despite the objections of state leaders."

"It is a ritual that takes place every winter — federal and state wildlife managers use remote cameras, scat collection, radio telemetry devices and helicopters to count Mexican gray wolves that are roaming mountain ranges in parts of New Mexico and Arizona." "This year’s count shows the recovery of Mexican wolves is inching forward."

"El Paso Water broke ground on the first U.S. facility that will treat wastewater for direct re-use in a city water supply, using a four-step process to transform wastewater into clean, potable drinking water."

"A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious — but preventable — respiratory disease since 2015."