Is Senate candidate Denny Rehberg of Montana really who he says he is? Also, looking into refinery safety, air pollution around gas fields, a closer examination of federal land swaps, and more.
Gathering strength from the Continental Divide
The Continental Divide of my childhood rises up the moment I spy the fractured, uplifted horizon formed by the Rocky Mountains. Ahead lies Longs Peak, and the log cabin my family has rented for the summer. Ahead lie weeks full of freedom and possibility. Left behind, so close to Missouri it barely qualifies as Kansas:…
Watching land swaps in Idaho and the West
For Western Pacific Timber and its then-President and CEO Tim Blixseth, the spring of 2006 promised big business. The company had recently purchased 39,371 acres in the Clearwater National Forest in the Upper Lochsa, on the Idaho-Montana border. The Lewis and Clark trail winds through here, and the rivers and woods are home to threatened…
Cracking the ozone code in Utah’s gas fields
Updated 9/4/2012 On a bright February morning, a curiously adorned cargo van crept down a dirt road in northeastern Utah’s Uintah Basin. A steel pole with a jumble of funnels strapped to its tip rose from the roof’s rear, and the vehicle moved so slowly that its speed didn’t even register — a good thing,…
In rural California, a Liberian family finds an agricultural refuge
On a historic 50-acre ranch in Northern California, Cynnomih Tarlesson and her nine children drop watermelon seeds into the ground. Behind them, her father, Roosevelt, uses a tractor to churn up the dirt for tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant — along with some lesser-known crops, like the Tarlesson-named ‘Billy Goat Pepper,’ from the family’s native West…
The Bay Area Chevron explosion shows gaps in refinery safety
When a crude-processing unit at Chevron’s Richmond, Calif., refinery burst into flame in early August, sirens wailed through local neighborhoods as pillars of smoke blackened the sky over the city and surrounding hillsides. The plant’s emergency management system issued 18,000 calls to nearby residents, urging them to “shelter in place” — closing windows, sealing cracks…
Madrona Murphy responds
Unfortunately, camas cultivation in the San Juan archipelago effectively ended more than 150 years ago. All the same, this study was extensively informed by interviews with living Coast Salish families with ancestry in the islands or ties to the islands, as well as unpublished field notes of interviews conducted 25 to 65 years ago with…
Misleading omissions
‘The Secret Gardens‘ is offensive and misleading in that it makes it seem as if the Coast Salish lived only in the past (HCN, 8/6/12). It makes no mention of the modern Coast Salish tribes who no doubt know a lot about these camas patches. Has botanist Madrona Murphy contacted any of the Duwamish, Jamestown,…
Money trumps prudence
The picture here is one of common sense and ethical behavior being given up and replaced with an attitude of do whatever it takes to make money (HCN, 8/6/12, ‘The Bakken’s shadow boom‘). Where do they think billions of gallons of polluted water are going to go when reinjected into the very same rock formations…
Mother nature’s hot heyday
I really think that proper defensible space during the High Park fire was a crapshoot (HCN, 8/6/12, ‘Lessons burned?’). The fire moved so fast, with the intense wind gusts, through such dry and dead vegetation, that even if you had 30 feet of defensible space, your house could have easily caught fire. I live in…
A way out of California’s water morass?
This well-written piece accurately portrays the problems and solutions facing California’s beleaguered Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (HCN, 8/20/12, ‘Tunneling under California’s water wars‘). Current operations in the Delta have failed to provide water to family farmers and 25 million Californians, and failed to protect the region’s ecosystem. Doing nothing to improve this situation means more of…
Adopt a biologist
One way outdoor-gear companies could help improve their image and be more effective would be to put some of the millions spent on advertising and sponsorships into conservation organizations (HCN, 7/23/12, ‘The Hardest Climb‘). Sponsor field biologists, conservation groups and field stations rather than athletes. Biologists use these companies’ equipment just as much, and often…
Who is Denny Rehberg, really?
The three candidates look too formal for Montana, dressed in suits and neckties for the first debate in the state’s most important race this election season. But the setting is classic Montana: A pine-paneled room in a lodge on the edge of the Big Sky ski resort, beside a trout-filled river surrounded by mid-June wildflowers.…
Rehberg and Tester: Policy differences
Jon Tester, a conservative Democrat: Sen. Tester sponsored the controversial measure that took Northern Rockies wolves off the endangered species list in 2011 — a move praised by ranchers and elk hunters. It triggered disagreements among environmentalists. (Some liked it and some condemned it.) He also: • Sponsored a bill that guaranteed 678,000 acres of…
(Don’t) Let it burn
This summer, Forest Service firefighters are stomping out wildfires they might have let burn in other years. A ‘temporary’ policy change requires local foresters to get permission from their regional supervisors for anything but full suppression, owing to fears that the current hot, dry conditions could cause remote fires to rage out of control. And…
High Country News hires an associate designer
Andy Cullen, HCN’s new associate designer, drove more than 2,000 miles to get to our office in Paonia, Colo., for his first day on the job. Andy, who earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism, with a concentration in photojournalism, in 2005 at Boston University, spent four years in the Peace Corps in Bangladesh and Mongolia…
Return to innocence: A review of Queen of America
Queen of AmericaLuis Alberto Urrea492 pages, softcover:$14.99.Little, Brown and Company, 2011. It’s hard to be a saint, but being a saint’s father, husband or friend can’t be easy, either. ‘Not all crosses are made of wood,’ as Luis Alberto Urrea observes in his novel Queen of America. It’s a sequel to his 2005 book,…
A parent lost and found: A review of Descanso for My Father: Fragments of a Life
Descanso for My Father: Fragments of a LifeBy Harrison Candelaria Fletcher147 pages, softcover: $14.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2012. When Colorado writer Harrison Candelaria Fletcher was almost 2 years old, his father, a pharmacist, died, leaving behind a wife and five children. His mother, who was 29 years younger than her husband, grew up in a…
Book note: Valley of Shadows and Dreams
Valley of Shadows and Dreams Ken Light and Melanie Light, Foreword by Thomas Steinbeck 176 pages, hardcover: $40. Heyday Books, 2012. ‘Except for the perimeter, every single living thing had been placed where someone had planned it to be and placed it just so,’ writes Melanie Light, describing her first experience flying over California’s Central…
Beyond ozone
Wintertime ozone is just one surprising air-quality problem that has appeared as gas fields balloon in size and creep closer to communities. “It’s possible that emissions have been there all along,” since the industry isn’t new, says Ramón Alvarez, an Environmental Defense Fund air-quality expert. But with drilling under increasing scrutiny, he says, “People are…
For Western politicians, roots matter
It’s election season, and our rural Colorado valley bears the signs of it — many signs, actually, plastered on hills, planted in farmer’s fields, or stuck in front yards like seasonal lawn ornaments. Some have generic messages like “Vote Republican.” Others are more specific, like the signs supporting longtime rancher Mark Roeber, a Republican running…
