Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

"After four years of negotiations, Utah and Nevada officials have created a draft agreement for management of the controversial Snake Valley aquifer straddling both states."

"As it races to replenish phosphate supplies for its weed-killing cash machine Roundup, Monsanto Co. insists its history of polluting southeastern Idaho’s high country shouldn’t prevent it from digging fresh open pits here."

"Part of the Nevada Test Site that hosted nuclear blasts in the past has been closed to avoid a costly cleanup of contaminated soils."

"The Obama administration is proposing to allow up to 318 snowmobiles per day into Yellowstone National Park for the next two winters, cutting by more than half the 720 allowed last winter by the Bush administration."

"Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, is not known for being a friend of fossil fuels. ...So it was a bit of a surprise this month when Ritter told oil and gas executives that natural gas should not be seen as simply a bridge fuel."

"Rainbow trout are rebounding in the Madison River, the world-class fishing stream where Montana's first known outbreak of whirling disease occurred about 15 years ago, devastating the rainbow fishery."

"Should the federal government store 17,000 tons of mercury at the Idaho National Laboratory? 'The answer is no,' said Gov. Butch Otter."

It took a lawsuit by residents of Sunburst, Montana, to start cleanup of an underground spill of gasoline that took place 50 years earlier.

"The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday declared its first-ever 'public health emergency,' saying the federal government will funnel $6 million to provide medical care for people sickened by asbestos from a mine in northwest Montana."