Tension over logging the Taylor Ranch in southern
Colorado continues. Costilla County sheriff’s deputies and the
Colorado Bureau of Investigation haven’t found who sabotaged seven
electrical power poles on the property last month. Ranch manager
Vic White says someone with a saw severed three poles and cut the
others three-quarters through. White calls the action “harassment
to get back at the ranch for logging,” which is still going on. A
state commission recently withdrew from negotiations to buy the
53,000-acre ranch when owner Zachary Taylor rejected the state’s
$12 million offer and asked for more money (HCN,
11/24/97).
In southern Arizona, tiny Tortolita’s
brief life as a mostly empty town on the edge of Tucson is under
threat. The state Court of Appeals has ruled that a 1997 law that
allowed Pima County to approve Tortolita’s incorporation violates
the state constitution. Tortolita residents created their town last
summer to stave off suburbanization (HCN, 9/29/97). Lan Lester,
Tortolita’s mayor, says the town has appealed to the state Supreme
Court.
A federal judge has given the Clinton
administration until Feb. 15 to produce a final version of its
informal “no surprises’ policy, which lets landowners set up
wildlife protections in lieu of following the Endangered Species
Act (HCN, 8/4/97). Officials have suspended the policy in the
meantime. Environmental groups sued in 1996, calling the
three-year-old policy illegal because it was announced with no
formal review.
Oprah Winfrey and other multi-home
owners don’t have to live in the Mountain Village resort near
Telluride, Colo., to vote in municipal elections (HCN, 2/19/96).
Last month, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a
district court ruling against local residents who sued the town to
block the right of non-residential property owners to vote. But
John Steel, attorney for the plaintiffs, won’t give up. He’s asked
for a rehearing before the 10th Circuit. Says Steel, “We think the
decision is completely at odds with popular democratic principles.”
It might become harder to marry in Utah, if
you’re a teenager. Carl Saunders, a Republican state
representative, is sponsoring legislation to raise Utah’s legal
marriage age from 14 to 16. Current law allows teenagers as young
as 14 to marry as long as their parents and a juvenile court judge
approve. Raising the marriage age, says Saunders, lets young people
“know that if they are promiscuous, they can’t get married.”
* Peter
Chilson
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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