Court ruling gives land managers power to say ‘no’ to mining companies
Puanani Mench
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
A moment of truth for user fees
Critics say fees take the ‘public’ out of the public lands
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Forest protection on the honor system
After nearly a year of contentious debate about how best to reduce wildfire danger, the House and Senate passed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act on Nov. 20 (HCN, 5/26/03: Congress jousts over forest health). Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who worked to craft the bill, is hailing it as a compromise and a bipartisan success, but […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them
In recent years, we’ve watched droughts parch the West, heat waves claim lives, and tempests encroach on the nation’s capital. With the advent of plagues like West Nile and SARS, soothsayers have enough fodder to last until the apocalypse. But in Six Modern Plagues and How We are Causing Them, author Mark Jerome Walters takes […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
State picks up federal slack on perchlorate
In late September, outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis signed two bills into law to protect drinking water supplies from perchlorate, a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel and explosives (HCN, 4/28/03: Cold War toxin seeps into Western water). It could be 2008 before the federal Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum contaminant level for perchlorate, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
National monuments are here to stay
President Clinton’s national monuments have survived a legal assault by two conservative groups that sought to strip the areas of protection. On Oct. 6, the Supreme Court declined to hear arguments against six Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service-managed monuments created in 2000 and 2001. The monuments, including Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona and Giant […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
West Coast states tackle global warming
While the Bush administration takes a light-handed approach to curbing global warming, West Coast governors are determined to give the cause some regulatory punch. In September, outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis, in collaboration with Gov. Gary Locke, D-Wash., and Gov. Ted Kulongoski, D-Ore., announced a new, region-wide approach to slowing greenhouse gas emissions. The governors […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Mining companies slapped with half the bill for Superfund mess
Environmentalists, Coeur d’Alene Tribe members and government attorneys are doing victory jigs over a federal court ruling regarding a north Idaho Superfund site. Even the mining companies seem fairly pleased with the outcome this time. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the federal government have wrangled in court with two mining companies for over a decade, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Snowmaking and drought: a bad combination
Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder say that extended drought, coupled with mining pollution, could make for rocky winters at Colorado ski resorts. A recently released study published in the American Geophysical Union’s EOS Journal examines the Snake River Watershed in Summit County, Colo., where hotter weather threatens snow conditions at popular ski resorts […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Contamination uncovered at Energy office
The toxic heavy metal beryllium has mysteriously cropped up in a U.S. Department of Energy complex in North Las Vegas, and investigators believe it may have come from a 1965 nuclear reactor explosion some 85 miles away. In March of 2002, a contract worker at the complex was diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, which can […]