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Last Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held an informational meeting in northeastern Arizona on the first area on the Navajo Nation to be added to the Superfund National Priorities List. The EPA has proposed adding the Lukachukai Mountain Mining District to the national list, which is made up of sites in the United States that are highly contaminated and require long-term remediation. And Colorado is one step closer to ensuring all kids can access healthy food at school regardless of their ability to pay after Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 221 into law last month.

On the Navajo Nation and surrounding areas, health professionals from National Jewish Health are working with local hospitals and clinics to test retired coal miners for black lung disease. Cecile Rose, a pulmonologist and environmental medicine physician at National Jewish Health, says that black lung, otherwise known as coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, is present among retired miners living in towns like Page, Arizona, and Montrose, Colorado. And three bills expanding and protecting access to reproductive healthcare got final approval from the state Senate Wednesday. One would shield out-of-state patients seeking abortions or gender-affirming care in Colorado.

A breakdown of the work yet to do for the 2023 Farm Bill, and some potential stumbling blocks that may be in store for the U.S. agricultural economy.

A new report by a nonprofit that researches Native American boarding schools in the United States has found an additional 115 schools to add to its list, including dozens located in Four Corners tribal communities. The findings by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, or NABS, have identified more boarding schools used for the cultural erasure of Native American children, like those located on the Navajo Nation. Many of these schools weren’t fully supported at the federal level but were instead operated by religious institutions like the Catholic and Mormon churches. The NABS report builds off of a list initially compiled by a federal agency in 2022. Carl Slater is a Navajo Nation council delegate who represents five chapter houses in the Chinle Agency.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Labor held an outreach event in Shiprock, New Mexico on the benefits available to some coal and uranium miners on the Navajo Nation. Current and former uranium miners attended the meeting to get more information about accessing benefits through the Energy Workers Program. Coal miners went to the meeting to learn more about their eligibility for federal black lung benefits. Justin Tsosie, a former coal miner and union representative who worked at the Kayenta surface Mine in Arizona, says he frequently encountered dust when he worked as a serviceman at the mine. And the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said on Tuesday that a resident of Montezuma County has tested positive for the plague.

On Friday, a home health care company held an informational meeting in Tuba City, Arizona, on the federal benefits available to some Navajo coal miners who have black lung disease. The meeting, hosted by Positive Nature Homecare, was the latest on the subject of black lung among coal miners on the Navajo Nation. Willa Mae Jones is a member of the Navajo Nation and a health outreach worker at Canyonlands Healthcare in Chilchinbeto. She attended Friday’s meeting to meet with coal miners who largely worked at the Kayenta and Black Mesa mines in northeastern Arizona. Jones says her husband was a dragline operator at the Kayenta coal mine. When her son was growing up, she says she advised him not to follow in his father’s footsteps. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture is offering grants for people that experienced discrimination in the agency’s farm loan programs.

Later this month, Montezuma and Dolores counties will be transitioning to a new emergency alert system called Everbridge. Both counties and the Cortez Police Department will make the change from using the Nixle alert system to Everbridge. The switch comes after recent shootings in Cortez and flooding in Dolores this past spring exposed weaknesses in the old system. Vicki Shaffer, the public information coordinator for Montezuma County, says that the upgrade will mean officials will be able to target specific neighborhoods during an emergency when sending out alerts. And Colorado House District 32 has a new Representative at the statehouse.

Arizona governor Katie Hobbs terminates state groundwater leases for a Saudi Arabian-owned farm, cow-calf producers in Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Texas will have the opportunity to sign up for a new insurance option, and cattle producers are seeing a tremendous uptrend in prices so far in 2023.

On Saturday, a community organization held a walk in protest of the White Mesa uranium mill on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation. It’s the only one of its kind still operating in the U.S. About 40 people attended the walk, which began in White Mesa, in southeast Utah, and ended at the driveway of the uranium mill. Manuel Heart, Chairman of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, led the protest and spoke to supporters about the need for more regulations from the state of Utah on how the mill uses its wells. Heart says that the Tribe ultimately hopes the state regulatory agency won’t renew the uranium mill’s application for a groundwater discharge permit later this winter. In 1999, samples were collected that indicated a plume of chloroform was present in the groundwater table underneath the mill facility on their property.

This weekend, Colorado’s Department of Transportation says it expects towns and public lands in southwest Colorado to be inundated with visitors coming to see the solar eclipse. The eclipse will be visible in the U.S. early on Saturday along a path starting in Oregon and eventually passing over Mesa Verde National Park, and the Four Corners region. Lisa Schwantes, a regional communications manager for C-DOT, says that hotels in the area have been booked for months, and that Mesa Verde itself expects to see tens of thousands of visitors for this celestial event. Schwantes says it’s also important that people driving on highways this Saturday don’t pull over to the side of the road to view the eclipse, and instead find a designated area. And a grassroots organization in Arizona is pushing to remove the state's right-to-work statute in an attempt to strengthen unionization.