The Democratic National Convention starts today in Denver. NMI’s David Alire Garcia and Matt Reichbach will be reporting from Denver, along with many other local bloggers and media outlets.

In a report about two domestic violence cases, the Gallup Independent says McKinley County is experiencing a “staggering epidemic” this year, with 6,747 cases of domestic violence reported this year so far. An annual report about domestic violence in the state says that in 2006, drugs or alcohol contributed to 71 percent of DV cases, more than twice the state average of 33 percent.

According to the Los Alamos Monitor, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the New Mexico Environment Department are in a dispute about what constitutes “hard” water. The mineral content of water determines a range in which water is either “hard” or “soft,” and LANL has appealed to the state Water Quality Control Commission the NMED’s water quality standard for storm water runoff. The NMED says the issue lies with a discrepancy between NMED’s standards for how “hard” water flowing out of LANL is allowed to be, and those proposed by the Environmental Protection Administration.

John Fleck had a report in the Albuquerque Journal over the weekend about new University of Arizona research showing that human-caused climate change is already occurring in the southwest, causing the region to be drier in late winter and early spring. Fleck says the research supports a key prediction for the southwest: “that the jet stream, which brings our winter storms, will slowly shift to the north as the planet warms.

The Farmington Daily Times has a nice profile of a Democratic party state at-large delegate to the convention this week. Emet Rudolfo was elected to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. He said he ran for one of the six statewide delegate slots, three of which were pledged to Clinton. He threw his support behind Clinton because he had a better chance that way since all the “state leaders swarmed” to be elected as Obama delegates. “My goal was to go to this historic convention,” Rudolfo said. “I had better odds as a Hillary delegate. Despite being a delegate elected for Clinton, Rudolfo says Obama is more in line when it comes to what the nation wants.