Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"With clay soil and tabletop-flat terrain, Houston has endured flooding for generations. Its 1,700 miles of man-made channels struggle to dispatch storm runoff to the Gulf of Mexico. Now the nation's fourth-largest city is being overwhelmed with more frequent and more destructive floods."

"Just outside Pearland, theater patrons come and go within 200 feet of a warehouse that stockpiles a pesticide so toxic it seeped into a family’s house in Utah and killed two little girls."

"West Nile. Dengue. Chikungunya. In recent years, this trio of potentially deadly mosquito-borne viruses carved out a definite niche in the growing catalogue of American anxieties."

"Seven Native American tribes in Oklahoma will provide habitat and food on their lands for monarch butterflies, whose numbers have plummeted in recent years due to troubles along their lengthy migration route."

"A large and violent tornado hit an area south of Oklahoma City on Monday, causing at least two deaths and reducing at least three homes to splinters, authorities said."

"A grandmother and four of her grandchildren were killed and another person also died in floods in Texas caused by storms that unleashed tornadoes, damaging hail and torrential rains on several central U.S. states, officials said on Saturday."

"Hundreds of industrial facilities across Texas are illegally spewing millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into the air each year when they break down or perform maintenance, and state environmental regulators are not adequately policing the rogue emissions, according to a new report."

"Texas is one of the states leading the fight against the Clean Power Plan. If you ask almost any statewide office holder they'll tell you the plan is bad for the economy. ... It may come as a surprise then, that energy companies here are not as unanimous in their opposition. That's because Texas' energy sector is transforming rapidly."

"Once again the assault came under the cover of night, loud and impressive, and by the time daybreak arrived, Houston and its neighboring communities were literally awash in familiar scenes of misery."