Two reporters and a photographer from the Rocky Mountain News are the winners of the first James V. Risser Prize for Environmental Journalism, named in honor of the former Des Moines Register reporter and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes.

Reporters Todd Hartman and Jerd Smith won the $3,000 award along with photographer Ken Papaleo for their five-part series, "The Last Drop," which documents the threats that urban development pose to Colorado's Rocky Mountains.

The prize, with its emphasis on environmental issues in western Canada, Mexico, and the United States, is open to print, broadcast, and online journalists writing about environmental and natural resources issues in those regions. Cosponsors of the award are the Knight Fellowships program, which Risser directed at Stanford University from 1985 until his retirement in 2000, and the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West. Initial prize funding for the prize came from former Knight Fellows' contribution "and others associated with the program," according to a Stanford press release.

Once a Des Moines Register Washington, D.C., bureau chief, Risser had written extensively on environmental issues. He said the Rocky Mountain News series "does a magnificent job of exploring the threat of dwindling water supply in Colorado's mountain regions."

Judges for the Risser awards were Peter Bhatia, executive editor of the Portland Oregonian; Geneva Overholser, of the University of Missouri; Paul Rogers, environment writer for the San Jose Mercury News; Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for "The News Hour"; and Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson, law professor and co-director of the Stanford Institute for the Environment.

The prize winners are to be invited to Stanford later this year to take part in a symposium addressing the issues they raised in the series.