The copper mining company Summo USA’s plans to mine in northern New Mexico and Lisbon Valley, Utah, lead a reporter to follow what happens when local communities resist – and don’t resist – a hardrock mining project.
The Wayward West
Stymied by a Republican Congress, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has borrowed from Broadway to express his opinions. On May 12, he staged a mock 125th birthday party for the 1872 Mining Law, complete with cake, and gave title to federal land containing up to $110 million worth of gold to a mining company for $620.…
Darkness un-Vailed
Night skiing on Vail Mountain is in the dark – for now. After four years of research, Vail Associates unveiled plans last month to light up Vail Mountain for evening skiers and snowboarders. But local residents – unimpressed by a high-tech Hungarian lighting system – forced the company to reconsider the proposal that had already…
Climbing ban fails
The Forest Service recently reversed its February ban on rock climbing at Cave Rock in South Lake Tahoe, despite Indian claims that the site is sacred. Agency policy now prohibits climbers from installing new hardware in the rock but allows them to scale the cliff. Washoe Indians say the continued presence of recreationists and some…
Bills target Antiquities Act
Still seething over President Clinton’s 1996 creation of the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument last fall, Utah lawmakers are trying to turn their anger into law. A bill co-sponsored by Utah Republican Senators Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett would require the president to get approval from a state’s governor and from Congress before establishing…
A recent encounter in Utah
Dear HCN, While visiting our newest national monument last weekend, we stopped at a small store in Boulder, Utah, to buy gas, dog food and a few groceries. When we asked if the store had a microwave and sold frozen burritos for a quick lunch, the pleasant saleswoman replied, “Sorry, we’re not really into fast…
New plan draws hisses, boos
What do you get when two government agencies spend three-and-a-half years and $36 million on a mega-conservation plan covering all or part of seven states? That’s the question environmentalists, Indian tribes, ranchers, loggers and others in the Northwest are pondering following the release last month of the Clinton administration’s draft plan of the Interior Columbia…
Politics here consists of hating the East
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the leaders of the world’s great powers prepared to meet in the American West last weekend, events of great import, perchance even of historic significance, were occurring in some nations’ capitals. But not in this one. Western civilization may be at a turning point, but Washington doesn’t care. Washington is sex-obsessed.…
Did ranchers fire a university president?
When New Mexico State University’s president, J. Michael Orenduff, was fired last month, the university’s Board of Regents said it was because he had pushed the school’s athletic program $1 million in the red. Now it appears his removal may have been punishment for offending the state’s traditional ranching interests. The story is rooted in…
What to do about a nasty fish
When California fisheries biologists discovered northern pike in Lake Davis, 70 miles north of Lake Tahoe, they had a fix: 26,000 gallons of poison. Killing all the fish in the Plumas County lake would prevent the voracious, non-native pike from migrating down the Feather River to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where they could destroy the…
Did agency get in bed with loggers?
Last month, when environmentalists began digging through federal documents about logging in Idaho’s Payette National Forest, they thought they’d found evidence of a Forest Service-timber industry conspiracy. Members of the Neighbors of Cuddy Mountain and the Idaho Sporting Congress discovered records of a 300-year-old grove of fir and pine trees that the Forest Service denied…
On the trail of mining’s corporate nomads
PICURIS PUEBLO, N.M. – Gerald Nailor pulls up in his huge pickup truck looking very cool. He removes his Janis Joplin shades and motions for me to climb in. It is an unseasonably warm March day and the former tribal governor of the Picuris Pueblo is taking us to the top of Copper Hill, about…
Las Vegas may shoot craps with its water
LAS VEGAS, Nev. – An opinionated scientist and a vocal group of senior citizens are trying to stop the juggernaut of growth here. So far, they haven’t had much effect. Las Vegas keeps on booming. But they’ve raised the specter that the city may be fouling its water supply. Larry Paulson is a biology professor…
A fruit-grower opposes mining – and tourism
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. TAOS, N.M. – Over the din of a Taos sports bar where tourists are watching the NBA playoffs and drinking Coronas, orchardist Estevan Arellano is trying to explain the idea of querencia. It means, loosely, a love of home, an anchor to the ground.…
Heard Around the West
If this is heresy, so be it: We’ve begun to pity bureaucrats in the West who take the brunt of the public’s contradictions and righteousness. When some of these non-elected officials stick their necks out to protect a public resource, they often get them cut off. And because they’re “public” servants, all of us get…
Blasting from the past: the 1872 Mining Law
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. 1872 Mining Law – Enacted to lure settlers westward with the promise of access to the nation’s minerals, this law grants hardrock (not coal, gravel, or oil and gas) miners free and open access to all public lands not expressly withdrawn from mining, and…
A mine turns two landowners into activists
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. LISBON VALLEY, Utah – All Kay Howe and Claudia Akers wanted was to buy some land where it was cheaper than in Moab – on Three Step Mesa in Lisbon Valley, some of San Juan County’s rare private land. As the realtor showed them…
Boise pushes on its river, and the river shoves back
The “New West” has settled along the banks of the Boise River. An urge to live and work near rushing water has transformed a braided, meandering waterway, once cloaked in nothing more than cottonwoods and rural attitudes, into an urban amenity flanked by office parks, pubs and a forest of pricey homes. Think of riverfront…
Dear Friends
Word from Gretchen Circulation manager Gretchen Nicholoff is in the business of increasing HCN’s subscription rolls, so she was horrified to learn that some subscribers thought a letter she wrote threatened to cut them off. It is the Postal Service that is threatening HCN with non-delivery unless we get subscriber addresses right. Gretchen is grateful…
Genealogy of a mining company
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Tracing Summo USA’s family tree is not easy. The company is wholly owned by Summo Minerals, a Canadian company. Summo Minerals, however, does nothing but own its American company. In fact, all of its offices, employers and operations are in Denver, Colo. Downstairs from…
Proposed ski resort does a face plant
After a 25-year battle, opponents of a proposed ski resort in Eagle County, Colo., have reason to celebrate. The brainchild of developer Fred Kummer, Adam’s Rib ski resort was slated for Forest Service land halfway between Vail and Aspen (HCN, 2/19/96). But after a two-year review, the agency frowned on Kummer’s plans for condos, restaurants…
Tribes say count us out
Efforts to restore salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake rivers just lost valuable support. Four Native American tribes have withdrawn from a collaboration with the federal government and three Western states, charging that the process favors hydropower, not fish. The tribes, members of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, had been participants in a…