The unexpected power shift in the U.S. Senate raises environmentalists’ hopes that the high-level nuclear waste dump proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which once seemed unstoppable, may not be a “done deal” after all.
Not all tribes like golf
Dear HCN, It isn’t often I see a story so well-written and, at the same time, so accurate as “Tribal Links” (HCN, 6/4/01: Tribal Links). Mr. Selcraig is to be complimented for managing the nearly impossible, colorful, sometimes flip characterizations and turns of phrase that are right on the money! I enjoyed reading that article…
Rocks that look like chimneys
Dear HCN, Couldn’t help but notice the page 7 photo, “Power Site: Chimney Rock, New Mexico (Dale Schicketanz photo),” in the recent issue I received (HCN, 5/21/01). The Chimney Rock in the photo framed by those “National Scenic Powerlines,” is six miles north of New Mexico in Colorado (on the Ute Mountain Reservation lands, along…
Sovereignty: never having to say ‘may I’
Dear HCN, I want to comment on Bruce Selcraig’s article, “Tribal Links” (HCN, 6/4/01: Tribal Links). Someone – Charlie Rose, I think – asked Sherman Alexie about the morality, the vibes of Indian casinos. Like, is it a “good” thing to do? Alexie said he was more concerned with the morality of having enough to…
The Latest Bounce
On June 21, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the $18.9 billion Interior Department appropriations bill. The legislation bans drilling in national monuments (HCN, 4/23/01: Monuments caught in the crosshairs), and prevents the Bush administration from reversing the 3809 hard-rock mining reform rule (HCN, 2/12/01: New mining regs slip into rulebooks). The Senate is currently…
Missing: One truckload of fuel
COLORADO After a six-month search, more than 7,000 gallons of diesel fuel are still missing from a Summit County ski resort. In January, when the fuel was delivered to Copper Mountain, the driver reportedly pumped it into a water-quality monitoring well instead of an underground storage tank. Although officials were able to recover 150 gallons…
Greens are still a minority
Dear HCN, High Country News publisher Ed Marston reacted to Sacramento Bee reporter Tom Knudson’s unflattering “Environment, Inc.” series on the fancy finances of the professional Green movement (HCN, 6/4/01: Environmentalism meets a fierce friend) by declaring “environmentalists must be led by relatively well-paid leaders backed by professional staffs,” just like their corporate PR enemies.…
Ed Marston’s revisionism
Dear HCN, Ed Marston wrote: “Environmentalism in the West is no longer a puny movement struggling to get the attention of the American public. For eight years, we sat at the right hand of power in the Clinton administration, working a revolution. “We had that power because the American people have bought into environmentalism and…
Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Nevada’s quest to lose its reputation as a wasteland didn’t begin auspiciously in the new millennium. In fact, it looked as if the state was politically doomed to become the home for a nuclear waste repository that would remain dangerously radioactive for many millennia. At the start of 2001, with Republicans in control of the…
Dear Friends
Summer break Don’t search your mailbox for a July 16 issue of the paper – it won’t be there. Each summer HCNskips an issue to give our readers and staffers a small break. We’ll be back on July 30. The changing of the guard For the first time in 17 years, High Country News has…
An activist to the end
As a writer in San Francisco in the 1970s, Tary Mocabee was one of the first to explain the inner workings of automatic teller machines, a technological advancement that she jokingly equated with psychoanalysis: Both involve pressing crucial buttons. Ironically, Mocabee pushed a lot of political buttons over the past 20 years as a Montana…
Luxury homes torched in Tucson
The fires follow a string of similar arsons in Phoenix
Rancher goes down kicking
Montana’s fight over game farms isn’t over yet
Varmint hunters sidelined in Wyoming
The Forest Service takes a stand for prairie dogs
Tribes fight to clear the roads for salmon
Washington fears lawsuit could give tribes sweeping control of salmon habitat
A maverick mayor takes on sprawl
Salt Lake’s Rocky Anderson fights the ‘highways first’ establishment
A bitter valley waits
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. – “Yea, though we live in the shadows of Death Valley and Yucca Mountain, we will not fear,” it said on the T-shirt of the man in front of me as I checked into the Longstreet Inn and Casino in Amargosa…
The greening of the Nevada Test Site
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Deep inside the Nevada Test Site, in a moonscape of craters and radioactive ruin left by nearly 1,000 nuclear bombs, Stephen Zitzer lies face down, his hands plunged into a creosote bush. Stark, white upright pipes encircle him like soldiers. Each pipe silently puffs…
Heard around the West
With fast-growing lawns in the West sucking down immense amounts of water, Andrew McKean of Helena, Mont., passes on two apropos comments. The first is from University of Utah political scientist Daniel McCool: “Utah doesn’t have a water problem; Utah has a Kentucky bluegrass problem.” The second comes from the side of a bus spotted…