Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

A proposal to build Utah's first nuclear plant along the Green River is running into a host of skeptical questions -- among them: where it will find cooling water in the middle of a desert.

"Rep. Dean Heller says he is worried about an Interior Department memo that calls for carving two national monuments out of parts of central and Northern Nevada to protect American Indian cultural sites and habitat for sensitive wildlife."

"Out of pride and a reluctance to point a finger at neighbors, ranchers in the vast Great Basin outback where Oregon, Idaho and Nevada come together have been slow to admit that someone in their midst, perhaps even someone they know from barbecues and brandings, has been stealing cattle. Just who is doing it, and how they have gotten away with it for at least three years, remains a mystery."

"An agreement to protect a Utah canyon decorated by ancient American Indian art is expected to allow energy development in the area to move forward."

"The Obama administration said Wednesday it is going forward with a contentious plan to round up about 2,500 wild horses in Nevada."

"Montana's top elected officials backed a plan Monday to put vast tracts of coal up for lease, bucking pressure from environmentalists who say digging up and burning the fuel will be an "abomination" that endangers the planet."

"A Canadian mining company's discovery last week of high-grade gold deposits north of Glacier National Park has raised alarm among environmentalists that development of the deposits could imperil Montana's Flathead River Valley and fragment North America's most prized grizzly habitat."

"In 2005 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management offered up thousands of acres of federal land in Colorado to drilling. Because the land was in the heart of an area that supplies drinking water to 55,000 people in the western part of the state, the plan drew stong opposition from local communities."

New testing by EPA has strengthened the case that World War II-era copper mining may have caused uranium and arsenic contamination of some Nevada wells.