Environmental groups asked a 10th Circuit panel to order an environmental impact statement for the plan to give Utah 52,000 acre-feet of water from a reservoir annually, arguing the plan was approved without taking into account how drastically drought would deplete the river. Read more»

Arizona will face a drastic cut in the amount of Colorado River water delivered from Lake Mead after federal officials announced Tuesday that the state will lose 21% of its annual allotment next year. Read more»

Utah’s water policy is largely controlled by a group of water districts and allied special interest organizations and politicians who prioritize building new water projects over conservation - a problem in the country’s fastest-growing and second-driest state. Read more»

Tucson is offering to give up part of its Colorado River allotment to try to maintain water levels in Lake Mead, an important reservoir for Arizona and other Southwestern states that has been imperiled by drought. Read more»

Gov. Doug Ducey, apparently needing to keep his fortunes alive in what is increasingly a rage-a-holic Republican Party, signed two bills that basically tell transgender kids "you are freaks and we don't like you." Read more»

In the 25 years since President Bill Clinton took Ronald Reagan's notions to their apotheosis in his 1996 welfare reform law - which Clinton said would “end welfare as we know it” - federal welfare funding, frozen by law at 1996 levels, has been decimated. Read more»

Utah has been counting millions in LDS Church welfare work every year as part of the state’s welfare budget, as a way of meeting the minimum level of effort the state is required to put into addressing poverty so it can collect on federal dollars and increasing church membership. Read more»

President Biden restored Bears Ears National Monument to its previous 1.36 million-acres footprint Friday, reversing a Trump-era decision to cut as much as 85% of the Utah site valued for its environmental, archeological and tribal treasures. Read more»

The Biden administration will restore environmental protections to three national monuments, including two in Utah and the only marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean, that were diminished dramatically by his predecessor Donald Trump. Read more»

Federal education officials have launched civil rights investigations in five Republican-led states that have prohibited school districts from mandating mask-wearing. Read more»

Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas are among leaders touting experimental antibody treatments known as monoclonal antibody therapy, as they downplay vaccination and other measures that health officials say can prevent illness in the first place. Read more»

Zoel Zohnnie, a welder who was a laid off during the pandemic, is delivering water across the Navajo Nation reservation through the Water Warriors United project but hopes that the pandemic and the recovery effort are the start of a new policy to better serve the reservation's residents. Read more»

Leaders from Reclamation, the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project, which delivers much of the state’s share of the river to more than half its residents, offered a glimpse Thursday of where Arizona stands with the shortage looming. Read more»

The nation’s pandemic hotspots have shifted to rural communities, overwhelming small hospitals that are running out of beds or lack the intensive care units for more than one or two seriously ill patients. Read more»

Toxicologists in New Mexico and Arizona caught wind of a disturbing trend in May. Adults had been hospitalized after drinking hand sanitizer made with methanol. Read more»