For the first time, the federal government concedes
that workers at 14 nuclear weapons plants, including the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation in Washington state (HCN, 9/1/97: Radioactive
waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia), were
exposed to cancer-causing radiation and
chemicals. The Department of Energy report linked
radiation exposure to the high rates of cancers among the more than
600,000 people who have worked at the sites. President Clinton
asked the department to come up with a policy on compensating
affected workers and their families.
In a recent
speech in Kalispell, Mont., Gloria Flora said that, although the
West’s shifting economy can make life difficult for some,
“survival requires change … My father made a
living selling ice from a horse-pulled cart,” she said. “If I
followed the same line, I’d be selling stainless-steel
refrigerators online.” Flora recently resigned as a national forest
supervisor in Nevada (HCN, 11/22/99: Nevadans drive out forest
supervisor), denouncing “anti-federal fervor” in the state.
The Yellowstone wolf reintroduction
program is coming of age. When wolves were imported to
the area from Canada in 1995 (HCN, 2/6/95: The wolves are back, big
time), wolf number nine was the first to give birth. She had five
litters in all, was the alpha female of her pack and was once fed
by President Clinton. Now, like almost all aging wolves, number
nine has been driven out of her pack. Biologists say they don’t
expect the 8-year-old wolf to live much longer.
A
coalition of ranchers and environmentalists has sued the
Air Force over low-level military training flights (HCN,
4/13/98: Military wants to grow its Western empire). Activists from
Nevada, Utah, Texas and southern Colorado say the flights harm
wildlife and livestock; they want the Defense Department to study
the cumulative effects of the flights on wilderness lands and rural
communities.
In Arizona’s Arrastra Wilderness, a
permit to bulldoze a road to a private inholding
remains in legal limbo. Rancher Erik Barnes says he needs the road
to improve a spring on his 40-acre Peeples Canyon property (HCN,
2/16/98: Private rights vs. public lands). Though a federal board
of appeals upheld the Bureau of Land Management’s permit in late
November, the agency is in a self-imposed holding pattern while it
takes another look.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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