Contamination incidents, work outages and declining infrastructure have plagued the site, but the lab remains the linchpin in an effort to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons.
Pollution
Posted inOctober 2025: Limits to Growth
In a changing Arctic, how much noise is too much?
Alaska’s bowhead whales can hear the climate changing. Scientists are listening in, too.
Posted inArticles
New Mexico’s billion-dollar orphaned oilfield problem
After oil companies go bust, the state is left paying to clean up abandoned wells, tanks, machinery and sludge pits.
Posted inArticles
An Oregon law tries to tackle garbage gases
Surveys of U.S. landfills showed emission rates were, on average, 40% higher than reported.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
The West’s data centers suck (water and power)
From simple searches to chatGPT, the big digital buildup threatens the grid and water supplies.
Posted inArticles
Meet LA’s detective for dead marine mammals
A day in the life of a scientist studying the aftermath of the city’s deadly algal blooms.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
First came the record-setting fire. Then came the record-setting floods.
‘I don’t trust the water:’ How post-fire flooding has destabilized a rural community’s drinking water.
Posted inArticles
Can fracking wastewater be reused?
New Mexico’s legislators are eager to repurpose “produced water,” but environmental organizations say that there is no safe way to do that.
Posted inArticles
Supreme Court puts Utah’s oil train back on the rails
The 8-0 decision overturned the U.S. Court of Appeals decision that the project’s environmental impact statement was insufficient.
Posted inJune 2025: The Promised Land
Where the garbage goes
Amid massive rollbacks of federal environmental protections, a community battling the expansion of a local landfill seeks to safeguard its own backyard – and everyone else’s.
Posted inArticles
A proposed Utah uranium mine gets the Trump treatment
Feds approve contested facility in just 11 days.
Posted inArticles
Working in the Permian Basin comes at a high cost
Oil workers in New Mexico are subjected to harrowing conditions that lead to death, injury, disease and terrible tolls on mental health and family life.
Posted inArticles
Massive pipeline spill seeps toward Colorado’s Animas River
23,000 gallons of gasoline leaked on the Southern Ute reservation in December.
Posted inArticles
Can Trump bring back ‘clean, beautiful coal’?
The fossil fuel-fetish once again trumps economics and common-sense.
Posted inArticles
A return to the fight against Alaska’s Ambler Road
Alaska Native tribes and activists will use previous momentum to try and keep a road from being built through caribou migratory paths, subsistence harvest areas and remote Indigenous land.
Posted inArticles
Trump halts historic orphaned well-plugging program
Western states were using funds from the Infrastructure Act to clean up pollution left behind by industry.
Posted inArticles
Contamination threatens the last source of clean groundwater in west New Mexico
The toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining and milling has shattered lives, destroyed homes and created a pollution problem for an entire region.
Posted inArticles
Turkey vultures in California are testing positive for rat poison
Despite statewide restrictions on the deadly poisons, new research shows they’re still infiltrating the food web.
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
As the Great Salt Lake recedes, industry rises
Utah’s Inland Port Authority works with local officials to boost development, but residents feel ignored.
