Calling all party animals The year’s first meeting of the board of the nonprofit High Country Foundation, which governs High Country News, will be held in Phoenix, Ariz., Feb. 2-4. As is the custom with board meetings, we’ll be hosting a potluck dinner for readers from the Phoenix area. These events, held around the West […]
Ed Marston
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Bush administration faces a reborn Interior
Now that the former attorney general of Colorado, Gale Norton, has been nominated as secretary of Interior (see story page 3), the cast of main characters is complete, and the four-year run of what is certain to be an interesting play can begin. The details of the script will be written on the fly, but […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Dear Friends
A skipped issue This is both the last issue of the year and the last issue for a month. In July and in early January, High Country News lets readers catch up on their reading and the staff catch up on their breathing. The next issue will be dated Jan. 15. A new printer and […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Water pressure
A valiant veto defeated Two Forks Dam; will Denver’s sprawl bring it back?
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
‘The world would be different if not for the veto’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Hamlet “Chips” Barry has been head of the Denver Water Department since 1991. Despite his name, he has acted forcefully to change the behavior of the once-autocratic Denver Water Department. Chips Barry: “One of the problems with the approach the Two Forks proponents took […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
‘Where is the metro area going to get its water?’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Dick Lamm, governor of Colorado from 1974 to 1986, became well-known nationally for his gloomy forecasts of the future. Dick Lamm: “Ultimately, the metro area is an integral whole when it comes to water. Where is the metro area going to get its water […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
‘The suburbs have some bad choices’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Eric Kuhn is head of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, in charge of protecting western Colorado’s water interests in the Colorado River Basin. Eric Kuhn: “I think Reilly did Denver a favor. They can focus on their needs. They have a well-thought-out approach […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
A tricky tale of the past and the future
Salt Dreams, text by William deBuys and photographs by Joan Myers, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1999. Hardcover: $35. 307 pages. There is only one Western story. It is the story of a mad rush to “settle” and exploit. This single story consisted always of the destruction and displacement of native people, followed by […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Clean fuel, dirty neighbors
We should be a little grateful this time around. The West’s last energy boom threatened the region with mountains of spent oil shale, huge pits from which the rock had been taken, air pollution from coal gasification plants, and large ditches carrying Columbia River water into the Colorado River Basin. This latest energy boom is […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Truth-telling needs a home in the West
Brothers is a store and a highway rest stop 43 miles east of the New West boomtown of Bend in central Oregon. It is also home to some of the most shocking roadside markers we saw in 3,600 miles of Western travel this summer. After days of reading highway signs that painted the surrounding area […]
Posted inSeptember 25, 2000: Backyard boom
Dear Friends
Our Boise get-together The latest meeting of the High Country Foundation board was in Boise Sept. 8-10, and although all of the subscribers who attend the paper’s roving potlucks are good cooks and convivial company, Idaho subscribers have ratcheted that high standard up a notch. The food was wonderful and plentiful, and the turnout was […]
Posted inAugust 28, 2000: The mine that turned the Red River blue
Floyd Dominy: An encounter with the West’s undaunted dam-builder
The name Floyd Dominy still rings loud in the West. As the head of the Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to1971, he built Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River and many more of the West’s dams, persuading Congress that the region needed to control the flow of rivers to generate electricity, control flooding and […]
Posted inAugust 28, 2000: The mine that turned the Red River blue
Squishy-soft processes – hard results
In Nye, Mont., and in Paonia, Colo., two difficult disputes were recently resolved by people sitting together at a table. In Montana, the fight was about hardrock mining and 1,000 jobs. In Colorado, it was about coal mining and several hundred jobs. Each dispute involved tens of millions of dollars in investment capital, public land […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Dear Friends
It’s sprung Apricot, peach and apple trees are blooming – perhaps unwisely – in western Colorado. Recently, we received a welcome to spring from Greg Hobbs, a reader of High Country News and a Colorado Supreme Court Justice. He calls his poem “Right Equipment,” and it punctuates the longed-for change in season: The urban West […]
Posted inAugust 14, 2000: Meth invasion
Farewell, Marc Reisner
In 1995, when we first asked Marc Reisner to write an article for High Country News, we didn’t know what to expect (HCN, 3/20/95: The fight for reclamation). Would the man who had changed how America thought about dams and reservoirs accept suggestions from an editor of a small paper in a small town in […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Rural Green: A new shade of activism
Ed Marston interviews Steve Hinchman, former HCN staffer and director of the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council, about the different kind of environmental activism and consensus-building needed in rural Western communities.
Posted inJuly 3, 2000: A river resurrected
Dear Friends
Summer break To give everyone a chance to catch up on their reading, hit the trail, ride a bike, paddle a river or – you get the general idea – High Country News will skip the next issue. We’ll return July 31, 2000. New to the board Last issue’s Dear Friends column on the Albuquerque […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
Dear Friends
Welcome, Beth Not wanting to admit that her hometown, Staten Island, N.Y., is known best for its garbage, new intern Beth Wohlberg would rather refer to the most recent city she has lived in – Missoula, Mont. But Staten Island, home to the largest landfill in the world, Fresh Kills, gave her an urge for […]
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Dear Friends
Eyewitnesses visit Abe Jacobson and Carol Griffiths Jacobson were driving an unusual rig when they dropped by in May. Two kayaks and a canoe rode atop their van, which was stuffed with paddles, snowshoes, skis and just about every other outdoor toy you can imagine. This was no ordinary vacation, they explained; they were refugees. […]
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
Yelling fire in a crowded West
I was in Jackson, Wyo., in fall 1988, right after Yellowstone National Park burned to the ground. School children were contributing nickels and dimes to build it back up, and there was a lynch-mob attitude in the town toward the National Park Service and other federal agencies (HCN, 9/26/88). Today, the Yellowstone fires are celebrated […]