Arizona

Less than two weeks after train cars filled with hazardous chemicals derailed in Ohio and caught fire, a truck carrying nitric acid crashed on a major highway outside Tucson, Arizona, killing the driver and releasing toxic chemicals into the air. The Arizona hazmat disaster shut down Interstate 10, a major cross-country highway, and forced evacuations in surrounding neighborhoods. But the highway crash didn’t draw national attention the way the train derailment did, or trigger a flood of calls for more trucking regulation like the U.S. is seeing for train regulation. Truck crashes tend to be local and less dramatic than a pile of derailed train cars on fire, even if they’re deadlier. In fact, federal data shows that rail has had far fewer incidents, deaths and damage when moving hazardous materials in the U.S. than trucks. After the train derailment and fire in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3, 2023, the U.S. EPA tested ove...

It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend. In a new study, we found a 246% increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western U.S. between the past two decades, 1999-2009 and 2010-2020. This trend is strongly influenced by major fires in 2017, 2018 and 2020, including destructive fires in Paradise and Santa Rosa, California, and in Colorado, Oregon and Washington. In fact, in nearly every Western state, more homes and buildings were destroyed by wildfire over the past decade than the decade before, revealing increasing vulnerability to wildfire disasters. What explains the increasing home and structure loss? Surprisingly, it’s not just the trend of burning more area, or simply more homes being built where fires historically burned. While those trends play a role, increasing home and structure l...

As Western states haggle over reducing water use because of declining flows in the Colorado River Basin, a more hopeful drama is playing out in Glen Canyon. Lake Powell, the second-largest U.S. reservoir, extends from northern Arizona into southern Utah. A critical water source for seven Colorado River Basin states, it has shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years. An ongoing 22-year megadrought has lowered the water level to just 22.6% of “full pool,” and that trend is expected to continue. Federal officials assert that there are no plans to drain Lake Powell, but overuse and climate change are draining it anyway. As the water drops, Glen Canyon – one of the most scenic areas in the U.S. West – is reappearing. This landscape, which includes the Colorado River’s main channel and about 100 side canyons, was flooded starting in the mid-1960s with the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. The area’s stunning beauty and unique...