Items by Peter Friederici
The Sunbelt city is one of the nation's most sweltering urban heat islands. But simple solutions to help cool it are at hand.
An audacious development proposal near Grand Canyon National Park divides a tribe and its neighbors.
Public officials – and even homeowners – are beginning to accept the inevitability of wildfires in the Golden State.
Rainwater harvesting is against the law in many Western states, but folks in Utah, Colorado and Washington want to change that.
How will Westerners pay for – and market –
their recycled drinking water?
Some communities are trying to keep discarded
pharmaceuticals out of the water supply by organizing
“take-back programs” for leftover drugs
As population growth and climate change stress the
region’s water supplies, Westerners think hard about
recycling their effluent, although some worry about the possibly
harmful endocrine disrupters found in cleaned-up
effluent.
Mark Sardella’s nonprofit group Local Energy is
determined to heat local communities with biomass energy, created
by burning logging slash and millwaste from New Mexican
forests
In northern New Mexico, the Collaborative Forest
Restoration Program brings Hispanic loggers and Anglo
environmentalists together to work on creating healthy, sustainable
forests and rural economies
Chef John Sharpe has created a gourmet restaurant in the
desert town of Winslow, Ariz., far from his birthplace in the misty
green landscape of England
Woodworker Gordon West turns small and irregular pine logs
into useful building materials in his shop near Silver City,
N.M.
The Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition's struggle to keep the
stars visible has led to the city's designation as the first
"International Dark-Sky City."
The University of Arizona's Desert Laboratory, a unique
desert biological field station, faces the pressure of the city of
Tucson's growth and the uncertain future of the land.
The National Park Service weighs the benefits of four
management plans limiting numbers within Grand Canyon National
Park.
