Thanks to increased border security, and competition from other industries offering better pay and working conditions, Southwestern farmers are facing a severe shortage of workers this winter. It’s so bad that some political leaders — including President George W. Bush — are beginning to talk beyond party lines and look at immigration reform. The Western […]
Tim Westby
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
The Great Divide
It is 7:30 in the morning on July 24, 2004 — the day of Utah’s biggest holiday. Salt Lake City’s usually reserved downtown is bustling. Parade floats are parked haphazardly along side streets. Spectators spill out of the city’s light-rail system, lugging lawn chairs and water jugs as they scope out prime sidewalk real estate […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
The road to nowhere
Utah’s backcountry road takeover comes apart at the seams
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Defending the West Desert: Utah activist Jason Groenewold
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH — Utah’s West Desert is a tough place to love. The barren landscape, which stretches across tens of thousands of square miles along Utah’s border with Nevada, lacks the redrock spires and canyons that draw recreationists and sightseers to southern Utah. The occasional mountain range and salt flat are the only […]
Posted inWotr
Pink Floyd and the Great Salt Lake
The first time I stood on the shores of Great Salt Lake, I spotted something pink in the midst of what seemed like a bazillion different species of bobbing waterfowl. “Are there supposed to be pink flamingos in Utah?” I asked my biologist wife while looking through a pair of binoculars. “It’s plastic,” she said, […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
King coal is back
With natural gas supplies stretched thin, and the Bush administration loosening environmental regulations, energy companies are turning their attention back to coal
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Utahns beat back radioactive waste
With the help of some ugly political wrangling by the Utah congressional delegation, a hazardous waste disposal company nearly succeeded in its bid to bring 12,900 cubic yards of highly contaminated radioactive waste to the state. But on Nov. 18, after vociferous opposition at home, Envirocare of Utah pulled its federal application to dump the […]
Posted inMay 12, 2003: Planting time
Backcountry road deal runs over wilderness
A nearly three-decade-long fight over who controls backcountry roads crossing federal land in Utah may soon come to an end — and the resolution casts a huge cloud over the future of wilderness protection. In 2000, the state threatened to sue the federal government, claiming ownership of the roads under a Civil War-era law known […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2003: The Wild Card
Off-roaders torpedo a wilderness alternative
When it comes to protecting land, Utah knows only deadlock
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Utahns could kill radioactive dump
Note: this is one of several feature stories in this issue about the 2002 election. Writer Chip Ward once called Tooele County, Utah, “the most extensive environmental sacrifice zone in the nation.” Covering a swath of the surreal West Desert nearly the size of Massachusetts, the county is home to a bombing range, chemical-weapons incinerator, […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
State’s big nuke waste fight takes a hit
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Utahns could kill radioactive dump.” Like Nevada in its fight to stop the nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain (HCN, 8/5/02), Utah has adopted a by-any-means-necessary approach to block storage of high-level nuclear waste within […]
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Hansen pops a wheelie
UTAH If Utah Rep. Jim Hansen has his way, northern Utah forests may become a Mecca for ATV riders. In April, the 11-term Republican and chairman of the House Resources Committee introduced a bill that would create the Shoshone National Recreation Trail along hundreds of miles of backcountry roads mostly in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. […]
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Researchers scramble to understand one of the West’s most neglected ecosystems
Posted inApril 29, 2002: The Great Salt Lake Mystery
Lake stops sprawl in its tracks … for now
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. As Salt Lake City and its suburbs have sprawled across the Wasatch Front, little sleep has been lost over Great Salt Lake. So it was hardly a surprise to anyone last August when bulldozers started rolling through lakeside marshes, laying the foundation for what […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2002: Finding the words
Wheeling and dealing
UTAH Roads are again at the center of the long debate over Utah wilderness. Two environmental groups say they fear the Bureau of Land Management and the governor’s office have a secret deal in the works that would settle a dispute over Utah counties’ claims to thousands of dirt roads and trails on federal lands. […]
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
Nuclear storage site splinters Goshutes
Pressure from inside and outside could derail waste plan
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
A maverick mayor takes on sprawl
Salt Lake’s Rocky Anderson fights the ‘highways first’ establishment
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Demonstrating for the delta
UTAH With the simple rallying cry “1 percent for the delta,” environmentalists hope to overcome the complexities of Colorado River politics and send some water to the river’s dying delta in Mexico (HCN, 7/3/00: A river resurrected: The Colorado River Delta gets a second chance). On March 5, 120 groups led by the Glen Canyon […]
Posted inMarch 12, 2001: Divided Waters
Downwinders fight for their due
UTAH A small group of people recently gathered at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City to commemorate the 50th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in the history of the West. They also came to demand compensation for a lifetime of health problems – compensation the federal government promised to pay 11 years […]
Posted inFebruary 12, 2001: Mr. Babbitt's wild ride
Legal woes for Legacy Parkway
UTAH After the federal government signed off on the construction of a 14-mile highway along Utah’s Wasatch Front in early January, a coalition of environmentalists and smart-growth advocates, including Salt Lake City’s controversial Democratic mayor, filed two separate lawsuits. Utahns for Better Transportation contends that the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of […]