Not everybody is happy, but the Obama administration is making slow but steady progress in dealing with the West’s environmental issues.
Plenty of wood in the pile
Recently, as I was starting home on foot, a neighbor who lives up the road from me stopped at the row of mailboxes along the highway. He knows that if I want a ride, I’ll ask. So instead, he says, “How’s your wood pile?” “Getting low. Yours?” He has a big truck, a big chainsaw,…
Rural California schoolkids learn from fire-damaged forest
Sidney Deschenes is still haunted by the Moonlight Fire of 2007: The clouds of choking smoke that blew down from flaming mountains onto the valley that’s been her home since kindergarten. The rain of embers that ignited spot fires near homes at the edge of the forest and forced her family to evacuate three times.…
Inside Taft High
Take a trip inside the first high school in the country devoted to oil production with teacher Ted Pendergrass and his students. You can catch High Country Views approximately every other week. Available via our RSS feed, and for download now through iTunes.
Fast Times at California’s Petroleum High
It’s fifth period, just after lunch, and the students of the Taft Oil Technology Academy are in a pickle. The Oildorado festival, a celebration held every five years in October to honor the California town’s patron industry, is already under way, and they still haven’t built their float for Saturday’s parade. And this year’s Oildorado…
Western court scraps intervention restrictions for enviro lawsuits
In mid-January, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals published a 13-page opinion with a simple message: mea culpa. A panel of judges tossed the little-known but long-standing “federal defendant rule,” which had limited or prevented private groups, local and state governments from joining environmental lawsuits. The 9th Circuit, which oversees hundreds of millions of acres…
A Nez Perce elder spreads love for lamprey
Elmer Crow waits patiently while a crowd of fifth-graders settles on the lawn outside the Morrison Knudson Nature Center in Boise, Idaho. One by one, the students stop squirming as they realize that the Nez Perce elder is watching them, hands folded behind his back. Crow’s face is solemn but his eyes are playful. The…
Judith Lewis Mernit on Obama’s enviro record
HCN contributing editor Judith Lewis Mernit talks with Cally Carswell about how the Obama administration’s environmental policies are impacting the West. You can catch High Country Views approximately every other week. Available via our RSS feed, and for download now through iTunes.
Presidential style
Our first president, George Washington, was cautious and reserved. He emphasized honesty and dedication, as well as punctuality. Abraham Lincoln was emotional and reflective, deeply empathetic and driven by his conscience. Teddy Roosevelt had an up-front, in-your-face style and liked to say, “I always believe in going hard at everything.” The personalities of these presidents…
Reasons to persevere
Blind Your PoniesStanley Gordon West400 pages, softcover: $14.95.Algonquin Books, 2011. Willow Creek, the Montana town at the heart of Stanley Gordon West’s new novel, Blind Your Ponies, is home to the Broncos, a high school basketball team on a losing streak. It’s also a way station for adults escaping their pasts, and the basketball team’s…
Religious leaders shouldn’t duck their responsibility
On a Sunday morning last fall, leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faiths led the third annual “blessing of the waves” in Huntington Beach, Calif. The event celebrated the ocean’s spiritual value and also protested marine pollution, including the rapid acidification of the world’s oceans associated with climate change. Over 3,000 people participated, and…
The latest: Biomass emissions
BackstoryThe West’s nascent biomass industry faces many challenges as power producers try to turn things like beetle-killed trees and switchgrass into energy. Regulatory uncertainty remains a problem: Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules that require industrial sources, like coal-fired power plants, to obtain air permits and limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Biomass-fueled…
The latest: NPS’ Teresa Chambers
BackstorySeven years ago, U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers told the press that the Park Police budget would come up $12 million short in 2004, possibly endangering public safety (HCN, 8/16/04, “Park police chief canned for candidness”). Within days she was put on administrative leave, and six months later she was fired. Chambers immediately appealed…
Arrogant irrigators
“California Dreamin’ ” provided a good overview of the water issues in the San Francisco Bay-Delta region of California (HCN, 12/20/10). However, additional information on the Westlands Water District would have made the article even better. Westlands is comprised mostly of large family or corporate-owned farms. They are one of the primary beneficiaries of the…
County kickbacks
Though Westerners tend to idealize frontier independence, rural county governments often rely on Uncle Sam. Federal payment programs meant to compensate counties for lost cash from tax-exempt public lands distributed about $900 million nationwide in 2009. One of these programs — the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (SRS) — was barely renewed in…
Welcome, new interns
Two more interns have joined us for six months of “journalism boot camp.” We’re also delighted to announce that Emilene Ostlind, intern extraordinaire from the Summer/Fall 2010 session, is staying on as an Editorial Fellow. When Sierra Crane-Murdoch was tagging birds in Vermont in 2007 to monitor their migration, she found herself more interested in…
Glimpses of the high desert
Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert HomeEllen Waterston144 pages, softcover: $18.95.Oregon State University Press, 2010. In 1973, Ellen Waterston, a New England transplant, and her husband drove into the high desert of eastern Oregon. “In our rundown pickup with Montana plates and a cab-over camper we looked more like evacuees from the Dust…
Not-so-small losses
The Delta issue is a complicated topic, and one with far-ranging impacts (HCN, 12/20/10). But the writer missed the following key point: Though the hundreds of millions of dollars that farmers lost last year because of water cutbacks are a tiny fraction of California’s $1.74 trillion economy, they hit hard locally. California’s loss in productivity…
Obama’s record on Western environmental issues
In the late fall of 2008, the staff of the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility gathered at the Airlie Retreat Center in Virginia’s horse country to plot strategies for a new day dawning: Barack Obama had just been elected president, promising fresh progress on issues that had frustrated environmentalists throughout the eight years of…
A closer look at Obama’s judges, federal agencies, and his approach to science and secrecy
Federal judges Background Judges strive to be objective, but they’re only human. Studies show that federal judges appointed by Democratic presidents show a slight tendency to rule in favor of environmentalists’ positions, while Republican judges tend toward the opposite. When Obama took office, nearly 60 percent of the active federal judges were Republican. Since a…
Nice work, but …
Matt Jenkins did a great job describing the intricacies of the California water wars in the Delta (HCN, 12/20/10). But a few corrections: Jenkins said that two-thirds of the water used in the state is drafted from the Delta. Actually, only about 12 percent of the water used in California is taken from the Delta.…
The world according to Disney
In recent reporting about the 2010 census, the government and media deliberately deceived the public about the U.S. population explosion. Sadly, “California Dreamin’ ” studiously ignored the same population elephant in the room (HCN, 12/20/10). Growth in the U.S. is at its slowest in decades, the government asserted with a straight face. While the nation’s…