Four more national monuments could be coming our way
(HCN, 11/22/99). On Dec. 13, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt asked
President Clinton to create two monuments in Arizona, including the
Arizona Strip north of the Grand Canyon, and two others in
California, totaling more than 1 million
acres.
Nevada’s Paiute Tribe
made history this month. In an attempt to save the endangered
cui-ui and Lahontan cutthroat trout in Pyramid Lake, the federal
government says the tribe can control water releases from Truckee
River reservoirs. This made headlines because the water resources
are off the reservation. “It is a big deal,” tribal chairman Norm
Harry told AP. “It will enable us to meet the needs of the 21st
century while restoring this historic but fragile environment.”
The U.S. Department of Energy
didn’t play by the rules, says the New Mexico Environment
Department, citing documents that prove the Rocky Flats bomb plant
in Colorado illegally mixed radioactive waste with hazardous metals
or chemicals before trucking it to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
near Carlsbad, N.M. last March (HCN, 4/26/99). The DOE insists the
shipment was hazardous-material-free and therefore broke no
laws.
The North Fork of
Idaho’s Payette River will continue to flow free. The Gem
Irrigation District has withdrawn its application to divert water,
ending an eight-year battle over hydropower development (HCN,
2/11/91). Kayakers and conservationists call this the most
significant protection event in Idaho’s history. “This has been a
long-fought campaign with a happy ending,” says Liz Paul of Idaho
Rivers United.
Park rangers
want help. Since 1989, 700 law-enforcement employees in national
parks have been let go, while 16 million more people are visiting
parks annually. “Everyone has been led to believe that law
enforcement has been increased, and parks are better protected. It
isn’t so, and it smacks of hypocrisy,” says Randall Kendrick, head
of the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of
Police.
* Rebecca Clarren
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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