It’s time to move irrigation pipe. It’s one of those things you have to do when you have a certain amount of land and enough water to irrigate it. My knees hurt as I walk each piece of pipe over to the next dry spot. Here in central Oregon, it’s always a race with evaporation. […]
Mike Benefield
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Stirring up the dangerous fringe
I would like to thank High Country News for “Defuse the West” (10/27/14). I retired after serving for 30 years with both the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and can attest to the ugliness that has crept into the public discourse regarding public lands and forests. I have been on the […]
Posted inMay 8, 2000: After the fall
Politics and the bottom line
Dear HCN, Senator Laird Noh’s article “The Old West is small potatoes in the new economy” (HCN, 4/10/00: The Old West is small potatoes in the new economy) provided a clear view of the shifting power structure out West. Sen. Noh’s story is a lesson in political power, and the moral of the story is […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Welcome to the “Freedom Zone’
Dear HCN, Maxine Keesling lamented land-use restrictions in King County, Wash., in a letter (HCN, 1/19/98), but on a recent trip to the area I was hard pressed to see any lack of construction or land development. In fact, sprawl and congestion in the Seattle area strongly resemble that of Southern California. If we are […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Pigs can’t fly
Dear HCN, In your article in the June 9 Western Roundup section, Randal O’Toole stated that he “would have each national forest operate autonomously, allowing each to sell its trees at fair-market value. Forests would not be subsidized by tax dollars but funded by their own profits. Ideally, Congress would have little to do with […]