Arizona, worried by a drying Lake Mead, is waiting for a Senate champion to secure its water needs.

Things aren’t quite right at Lake Mead. When full, it’s the largest reservoir in the United States, a receptacle for the Colorado River that flows from Utah to Arizona, tapping the Nevada border at Hoover Dam before heading to California. But on a toasty Sunday, the cliff faces with bronzed tops reveal a crisis: They pale and whiten toward the bottom. This so-called bathtub ring effect has scientists, policymakers and voters across the West worried. And nowhere more so than in Arizona, where there’s a key election at stake.

OZY and McClatchy are teaming up to deliver in-depth coverage of this year's most pivotal political campaigns in the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections.

Why must correctional officers carry out death sentences? Surely a few others should step up.

Frank Thompson carefully strapped the prisoner’s wrists and ankles to the gurney, ensuring they would hold tight. But the death row inmate said the straps were hurting him. As Thompson loosened the buckles, the man looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes. Thanks, boss,” minutes before his execution.

As superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, Thompson performed the state’s only two executions in the last 54 years — just eight months apart. He once favored the death penalty, but now he’s a staunch abolitionist. The heavy burden of executing two inmates changed his mind. Perhaps it's time for jurors and legislators to share the burden as executioner.

These communities are banning plastic and challenging big industry in a bid for survival.

On the streets of San Miguel Petapa, the taste of tostadas with guacamole, tamales and fried chicken sours when it rains. For years, everything in this city — from snacks on the street and food at the market to groceries at the store — has come packaged in plastic bags or served on foam plates with plastic silverware. Most of this plastic ends up in sewers and is flushed out onto the streets when it rains. Until now.

In June, Luis Reyes, the mayor of this municipality, banned all single-use plastics here. Starting in August, at the end of a two-month information campaign, any store or street vendor caught packaging or selling his merchandise in plastic or foam needs to shell out between U.S. $150 and U.S. $650, a hefty fine for a country with a per capita income of $11 a day. But Reyes is no lonely anti-plastic activist. Town after town across this Central American nation is banning or mulling regulations on plastics amid growing evidence that nonbiodegradable waste is choking and killing the country’s lakes and rivers.

OZY brings to you Developing World Lessons: Stories of path-breaking successes in education and health, technology and environmental protection, from Africa, South America and Asia that are reshaping their societies while also offering lessons to the West.