Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"A Texas baby born with Zika-related birth defects has died, officials said Tuesday, the first death related to the virus in the state."

"The Ogallala aquifer turned the region into America's breadbasket. Now it, and a way of life, are being drained away."

"A tiny South Texas town is continuing to fight plans for an oil and gas waste site half its size, even after state regulators gave developers the go-ahead to build it."

"In Texas, there were more than 2,700 spills at oil and gas sites last year. But the state tracked only about half of those."

"The EPA has already spent $100 million to remediate decades of mining."

"The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved expanding a wastewater permit for a South Texas coal mine over vocal opposition from locals Wednesday."

"The number of earthquakes in Oklahoma has fallen 25% in 2016 compared with a year earlier, a decline attributed in part to actions by state regulators to police the oil and gas industry’s practice of pumping wastewater from its operations deep underground."

"BOKOSHE, Oklahoma — Here in the land of wind-whipped, rolling plains, the gray dust, which sparkles in just the right light, seems inescapable. Residents of this town near the Arkansas line say they have spotted it on their grass, trees, ponds, barns, furniture and cars."

"New Mexico has filed a lawsuit against Colorado in the nation’s highest court alleging the state should be held responsible for the Gold King Mine spill and its handling of the contaminants that have leached from surrounding mines for decades."

"Firefighters across Arizona and New Mexico battled 31 wildfires on Wednesday, their efforts complicated by a relentless heat wave and bone-dry conditions. And in the Angeles National Forest, on the northern edge of Los Angeles, two fires kept more than 300 families from their homes as the fires threatened to merge into one."