A close look at Seattle’s embattled Duwamish Waterway and the superfund cleanup that has the chance to bring it back to life, tribes get in the payday lending game, divers explore underwater national park treasures, and more.
Reflecting on groundwater from the Owens Valley Watershed
Growing up in the high desert, I learned water doesn’t just fall from the sky.
Divers explore national parks’ underwater treasures
The last frontier of the national parks lies underwater.
River of no return
Seattle’s Duwamish has been straightened, dredged and heavily polluted. Can a Superfund cleanup bring it back to life?
‘A pimp in the family’
Tribes get into the payday lending game.
Salmon go down the tubes – literally
Washington biologists test pressurized tubes to transport salmon over dams.
The man behind a New Mexico county’s fracking ban
Last year Mora became the first county in the nation to permanently ban oil and gas development.
Duwamish sludge, from source to sink
A little over three miles from the mouth of the Lower Duwamish Waterway (once known as the Duwamish River), there is a small piece of property wreathed with chain-link fence and signs that warn in various languages of various threats to life and limb. This is Terminal 117, or T-117, former home of roofing material…
Summer publishing break
In our 22-issue-per-year publishing schedule, we’ll be skipping the next issue. Look for High Country News in your mailbox again around July 21. You can keep up with Western news and views on our website, hcn.org, for fresh articles, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. June board meetingAt the tail end of May, 10…
The catbird seat
Rick Bombaci hit many nails on the head in “The Big Nasty” (HCN, 5/26/14), but he missed a few. Before my horses and I got too old and lame to hit the mountain trails, I resorted to hanging a trash bag from my saddle horn to carry out the beer cans left by snowmobilers during the…
A better way to save
High Country News has an ad stating, “Together, we can save a forest” (HCN, 4/14/14), encouraging subscribers to elect email over snail mail and suggesting this could save a forest. Ads like this perpetuate the myth that paper use is leading to the loss of forestland. This takes the spotlight off the real threats to…
A false divide
Dan Baum’s recent article would have us believe that gun violence prevention is a deeply divided, polarized issue. It is not. The fringe of the gun-rights movement, who are a small proportion of gun owners, and their deep-pocketed backers in the NRA would like us to believe this narrative, because it foments fear and helps…
A new mapping tool shows how states value wildlife
Habitat seen as a crucial resource in some states more than others.
Wannabe gonzo drivel
The false-equivalence tagline ” ‘gun nuts’ on both sides of the debate,” plus the Hunter S. Thompson wannabe photo should have been warning enough, but I went ahead and read Dan Baum’s article (“The Great Gun-Rights Divide,” HCN 5/26/14). It didn’t fail to disappoint. While not nearly as amusing as Thompson’s gonzo journalism, it was…
What hides in the waters
My mom spent part of her childhood in a tiny Illinois town along the Mississippi River. During spring, as the upper Midwest’s snowmelt collided with drenching rains, the river often jumped its banks, flooding cornfields with silty waters and thrashing catfish, and turning the town into a sort of Huck Finn-style Venice, its few houses…
A Refugee in Her Own Land
Katie Gale: A Coast Salish Woman’s Life on Oyster BayLlyn De Danaan336 pages, hardcover: $29.95.Bison Books, 2013. In Katie Gale, anthropologist Llyn De Danaan chronicles the life of a 19th century Salish woman who married a white man, gave birth to four children, became a successful oysterwoman, suffered greatly in a divorce settlement, and watched…
Which tributaries should be protected like the rivers they feed?
New rules may help regulators enforce an ambiguous law.
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America by Valerie K. Verzuh
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America Valerie K. Verzuh, 219 pages, hardcover: $34.95, Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013 Few Native American languages have a word for “art.” Basket-weaving is not considered art, in the sense of work made for display; rather, as one Apache elder says, it is the creation of “pieces…
Diversity as cynical distraction
Like many in the National Park Service, as well as retirees, I think this elevation of diversity to one of the most important issues facing the agency is a cynical distraction from more serious issues like commercialization, invasive species and climate change (“Parks for All?” HCN, 5/12/14). No one is against diversity, but how serious…
Farmstead photo
Kudos to Michael Hudson for the spectacular image of the abandoned Kansas farmstead (“These were called the High Plains,” HCN, 5/26/14). I’d be pleased to have Julene Bair refer to me as “a grass man” and would be even more pleased if I had been there when Hudson took that sad and glorious photo. Ray…
Hooligans etch on a petroglyph, a cow breaks a natural gas line and a new website helps ranchers navigate drought.
NORTH DAKOTAEveryone knows that ravens can manipulate sticks as tools, and that squawking magpies enjoy teasing dogs and cats, but who knew that cows – with their bodies alone – could make pipes spill natural gas? In Bismarck, North Dakota, one cow apparently did just that, simply by trying to satisfy an itch or maybe…
Out here meets out there
Calamity JaneBernard Schopen270 pages, softcover:$16.95.Baobab Press, 2013. After two decades of silence, former mystery writer Bernard Schopen is back with Calamity Jane, a new novel that asks serious questions about the West. His protagonist, independent filmmaker Jane Harmon, returns triumphantly from Hollywood to Blue Lake, Nevada, to showcase The Last Roundup, a documentary she’s made…
The Latest: After a long battle, agreement for the Klamath
BackstoryTo protect endangered fish during 2001’s drought, federal officials shut off irrigation water in Oregon and California’s Klamath Basin, costing agriculture millions. The next year, farmers got their water – along with a massive salmon die-off that infuriated Klamath tribes. Tribal members and farmers remained at odds until 2004, when federal rulings prompted dam-owner PacifiCorp…