Author

Danielle Prokop

Danielle Prokop

Danielle Prokop is a freelance reporter based in the Borderlands. She covers climate change, local government and communities in Southern New Mexico and Far West Texas.

New Mexico Downwinders demand recognition, justice

By: - January 27, 2022

The story of the Trinity Test Site is mapped onto the bodies of thousands of New Mexicans, slipped between stories of losing family member after family member to cancer.  For Tina Cordova, bringing light to the legacy from the secretive testing of the first atomic bomb near thousands of people in the deserts of Southern […]

Cracks in a riverbed where there should be water

Lawmakers faced with dueling budgets for NM environment agencies

By: - January 18, 2022

Initial budget proposals from the executive and legislative branches offer a view of the fault line to funding climate priorities at the top of the 30-day legislative session.  Conservation advocates said they’re worried state agencies that regulate polluters and monitor the state’s air and water will be underfunded by lawmakers in the 2022 legislative session […]

EPA devotes some federal cleanup funds to two toxic sites in NM

By: - January 3, 2022

Former battery sludge lagoons in Socorro and a dry-cleaning chemical spill in Roswell were chosen by federal officials as destinations for cleanup funding, decades after the areas were contaminated.  Socorro Mayor Ravi Bhasker said the funding’s been a long time coming, as cancer-causing manufacturing chemicals were first found in city water in the late 1980s. […]

Trial starts in Rio Grande Supreme Court water lawsuit between New Mexico and Texas

By: - October 7, 2021

Attorneys laid out their arguments Monday during the first day of a virtual trial in a lawsuit over Rio Grande water with Texas and the federal government alleging that New Mexico’s use of groundwater cut into Texas’ share of river water. The appointed special master, Michael Melloy, a senior judge for the U.S. 8th District […]