A New Mexico-based oil company has shortchanged the government a possible $22 million a year in lost taxes and royalties. Meridian Oil Inc., the country’s largest independent oil company with 1,073 public-land leases in the San Juan Basin, has consistently under-reported production amounts since 1989, according to a Bureau of Land Management investigation. Two years […]
Ross Freeman
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
R.S. 2477 detoured again
The Department of the Interior has delayed for a third time its deadline for resolving a dispute over an outdated law known as R.S. 2477. In 1866, it granted rights-of-way to rural counties for roadbuilding across public lands in the West. When it was repealed in 1976, pre-existing claims were grandfathered in, creating a flurry […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Life among the ruins
A subdivision in southwestern Colorado encourages buyers to build homes closely around the ruins of ancient Anasazi dwellings. California developer Archie Hanson bought 1,200 acres of the archaeologically rich land after visiting the area just six miles east of Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colo. Now he’s offering 31 “Indian Camp” lots of about […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
You can’t cut them all
The Forest Service drastically overestimated the number of trees it could cut from Northwest forests, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO found that the Forest Service exaggerated allowable sale quantities for three of the most productive forests in the region – the Deschutes, Gifford Pinchot and Mount Hood. […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Grand Canyon flood postponed
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Biologists and Colorado River raft guides alike thought it was a sure thing: For one week in the spring of 1995, floodwaters from Glen Canyon Dam would roar through the Grand Canyon as they hadn’t since the high water summer […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
One project seems like the same old BuRec
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Although the Bureau of Reclamation says it is now a water-conserver, and not a dam-builder, one ghost from the past continues to linger. Southwestern Colorado’s Animas-La Plata water diversion project, first approved by Congress in 1968, is still slated for […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
No more free lunch
Sea lions that gorge on steelhead trout trying to swim around the locks in Seattle, Wash., may have to worry about getting eaten themselves. The Muckleshoot Indian tribe has asked the National Marine Fisheries Service for permission to harvest the meat, hides and teeth from sea lions if the agency targets them for execution, reports […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Logging protesters say they won’t give up
High in Idaho’s snow-clad Nez Perce National Forest, chain saws whine and logging trucks thunder down frozen roads through the night in a frantic effort to fell 8 million board-feet of timber. Downed trees – in stacks higher than ever before seen on the forest, protesters say – tower above the logging trucks. “They’re cutting […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Governor overrules voters
Voters in Arizona may have trounced a takings initiative last election but Republican Gov. Fife Symington isn’t listening. In his state-of-the-state address, Symington promised to issue an executive order ensuring compensation for any property owner whose land use becomes limited by government regulations. “Every executive agency in state government will be ordered to respect private-property […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Grass-roots strategy for salmon
Hoping to sway the outcome of a pending federal recovery plan for Snake River salmon, 45 environmental and fishing groups have come up with a plan of their own. The groups, all members of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, recently presented their 45-page recommendation, Wild Salmon Forever, to the National Marine Fisheries Service. It […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Trimming pork the green way
Hoping to force the Republican Congress to keep its word and cut the budget, environmentalists and liberal Democrats have targeted dozens of federally subsidized programs. The 40-page Green Scissors Report, written by Friends of the Earth and the National Taxpayers Union, aims to trim $33 billion in federal pork. Colorado’s long-delayed and controversial Animas-LaPlata dam […]