COLORADO A bill designed to protect citizen activists from the cost and intimidation of frivolous lawsuits is lying wounded in Colorado’s State Senate. House Bill 1150, the so-called anti-SLAPP suit bill, was defeated on final reading in the state House last month after receiving an inadequate 32-32 tie vote. Still, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bill […]
Jennifer Chergo
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Seeing parks with 20/20 vision
Some fast-moving congressional legislation is aiming to change how the National Park Service does business. The bill would make visitors continue to “pay to play” and also would require Hollywood to cough up some cash before filming scenic park vistas. But critics say private park concessionaires would continue to take the Park Service for a […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Avoiding the shaft
-Few citizens, however well intentioned, can cope with the array of industry experts and lawyers that they will face when opposing a mine,” says Sue McIntosh of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. That’s why McIntosh has written a handbook for mining activists called Avoiding the Shaft: The New Mexico Citizen’s Mining Manual. […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Let’s talk about salmon
Wana Chinook Tymoo means “salmon stories’ in Sahaptin, a language shared by the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama tribes. It is also the name of a free magazine published quarterly since 1991 by the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The group brings together members of the four tribes to help fight for the […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Is park station a boondoggle?
When user fees went into effect two years ago in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming’s Teton County residents thought the money would go toward improving existing facilities. Then the Park Service proposed to spend that money to build a $1.4 million welcome center along a remote dirt road in the park’s southwest corner. Local opposition, […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Doing dirty work for free
Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado is looking for people to do their dirty work – shoveling, that is, and hoeing, digging, planting and hammering. Since 1984, Outdoor Colorado has been enlisting individuals, families, children and adults to plant gardens and mend trails on Colorado’s public lands. The group hosts 10 to 12 projects throughout the year, […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Citizens tackle a mining company
Ann and Mike Tatum won one for the little guy when they convinced a Colorado judge that a coal mining company damaged their second home in Weston, Colo. Last December, Las Animas County District Court ordered Basin Resources to pay the Tatums $160,000 for cracks that appeared in their walls after the company tunneled nearby. […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
New Mexico Greens here to stay
When New Mexico held a special election to replace the late Republican Rep. Steve Schiff this June, people compared the race to a mud-wrestling match, only less dignified. The Republican was Rhodes Scholar Heather Wilson; the Democrat, millionaire Phil Maloof. He mailed videotapes in black boxes questioning Wilson’s ethics, and she countered with a flier […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Big mines leave a big mess
South Dakota has told a gold- and silver-mining company that it can’t just walk away from its operation in the Black Hills, leaving the environmental damage behind. In May, the state obtained an emergency restraining order preventing the company, Brohm Mining, from abandoning treatment of collection ponds containing sulphuric acid and cyanide. Owners of the […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Not so hog wild in Colorado
When D&D hog farm moved its South Dakota-based operation to northeast Colorado, Sue Jarrett thought she was getting a good neighbor. What she got instead, she says, were overpowering smells and polluted water. “The odor is so sickening that at times it drives you back in your house,” says Jarrett, who was born and raised […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Grand planning at the canyon
Some major environmental groups are taking the Forest Service to task for not thinking bigger and greener when it comes to planning a new town just outside Grand Canyon. In July, the Kaibab National Forest in Arizona released a supplement to its 1997 draft Tusayan Growth Environmental Impact Statement with a preferred alternative: 900 lodging […]
Posted inAugust 3, 1998: Tribes reclaim stolen lands
We can take it
As the country struggled through the Great Depression, nearly 3 million young men came together in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) with the motto, “We can take it.” Between 1933 and 1942, the CCC built 125,000 miles of roads, strung 89,000 miles of telephone lines and revegetated almost a million acres of rangeland. This year, […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Victory for the tortoise
Though notoriously slow to the finish line, the desert tortoise came out ahead this April in the first endangered-species act case to be prosecuted in Idaho in 15 years. Russell G. Jones of Star, Idaho, pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a protected species under federal law and was fined $1,000 and ordered to serve […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
In the footsteps of Muir
Would John Muir recognize the Yosemite of today? What would he think of his beloved “hospitable, Godful wilderness,” where he roamed freely, built campfires anywhere he pleased and traveled with his unleashed dog, Carlo? To explore questions like that, writer Geraldine Vale and geographer Thomas Vale retraced the route that Muir described over a century […]