Two of the managers of Colorado’s Summitville gold
mine finally got their day in court, but the company higher-ups
won’t ever step inside the courtroom to explain their role in the
nation’s costliest mine disaster – the clean-up has cost $150
million so far. Six years after Galactic Resources declared
bankruptcy, a federal court slapped two former mine managers with
five years’ probation and $20,000 fines. “It seems if you have the
right lawyers and the right connections, you don’t have to be
responsible anymore,” John Shawcroft of the Alamosa-La Jara
Conservancy District told The Denver
Post.
In a deal among the
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Church Universal and Triumphant,
and the U.S. Forest Service, an 8,000-acre wildlife corridor will
be protected from sprawling development in Montana’s Paradise
Valley (HCN, 8/17/98). Under the $13 million deal, the Elk
Foundation will buy much of the church’s Royal Teton Ranch north of
Yellowstone National Park, then turn it over to the Forest Service.
“Predominantly elk, but all sorts of critters, use this as a
migratory route in and out of the park,” says Scott Laird of the
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Money must still be appropriated
from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to buy the land
from the foundation.
In the
hills of Nevada’s Virginia Range near Reno, 33 wild horses (HCN,
3/2/98) were found shot to death last month and wild horse
advocates have ponied up a $35,000 reward for information leading
to the arrest of the culprits. The horses belong to the state of
Nevada, though they roam private lands and have likely descended
from private horse herds, says Paul Iverson of the Nevada Division
of Agriculture. Dawn Lappin, a wild horse advocate, received 300
calls in four days from horse lovers across the country after the
incident. “They’re outraged. They tell me “the icon of the West is
the wild horse. How could anybody do that?”
“
After months of
negotiations, many thought that New Mexico’s Baca Ranch was in
public hands and out of developers’ reach. But now the land
purchase is at least threatened and perhaps doomed because the
ranch’s Texas owners unexpectedly pulled out of the deal in early
January in a dispute over a confidential appraisal. The collapse in
talks frustrated those who lobbied for the land purchase.
“Everybody here has been saying, “What is the real story here?” ”
Steve Bell, of Sen. Pete Domenici’s staff, told the Albuquerque
Journal, “For something like this to fall apart on a
confidentiality agreement is just bizarre.”
– Dustin
Solberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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