Northwest (OR WA)

"Spokane is taking what’s described as another big step toward improving water quality."

"Newly licensed marijuana growers in Washington state may find themselves without a key source of water just as spring planting gets under way."

"The Oregon Department of Transportation, the state’s rail safety overseer, says it will no longer ask railroads for reports detailing where crude oil moves through the state after The Oregonian successfully sought to have them made public."

"An agreement that settles decades of conflict over water in the Upper Klamath River Basin was signed today by officials from the federal government, the states of Oregon and California, tribal authorities and water users."

"The city of Portland, Ore., is flushing 38 million gallons of drinking water down the drain because a 19-year-old man urinated in an open reservoir early Wednesday morning, city water officials said, prompting criticism from some who called the move 'wasteful.'"

"When a helicopter flies over Cedar Valley, residents tend to assume it’s searching for illegal pot operations in the nearby forest. That’s what Curry County neighbors John Burns and Kathyrn Rickard thought when they heard the blades whirring over their rural homes. They didn’t think the helicopter flying overhead would be raining toxic chemicals upon their homes, their farms and their bodies."

"The helicopter pilot at the center of an aerial herbicide-spraying controversy in Southern Oregon applied a far wider variety of toxic chemicals than what he originally reported, according to newly released documents."