The Forest Service’s fire czar has big plans. On July 23, National Fire Plan Coordinator Lyle Laverty told the Missoulian that his agency cannot “let nature take its course.” Though the National Fire Plan was initially touted as an effort to thin overgrown forests near towns and homes, Laverty said the Forest Service needs to prevent catastrophic fires by thinning and burning the “full landscape.” Congress passed the more than $1 billion plan after last summer’s massive wildfires (HCN, 7/30/01: Tragedy re-ignites wildfire debate).
The Houston-based Battle Mountain Gold Co. has scrapped its plans to develop an open-pit gold mine on Buckhorn Mountain in north-central Washington (HCN, 8/31/98: Excavating Ecotopia). Legal battles over the controversial proposal have cost the company $84 million, and officials say a “low gold price environment” made the project impractical. Crown Resources of Denver hopes to build a smaller underground mine on the same site.
The Environmental Protection Agency is still looking for a place to put 150,000 tons of radioactive waste from the Shattuck Chemical Company site in south Denver. The agency has nixed a proposed site in western Colorado (HCN, 5/8/00: Former uranium town wants its waste back); since the site has no rail access, the waste would have been trucked down a treacherous canyon highway. The agency is considering sites in Utah, Texas and Idaho, and expects to make a choice by the end of the summer.
Activists fighting a proposed radioactive waste site in western Utah are up against a mountain of cash. The government watchdog group Public Citizen reports that private utilities have spent $37 million lobbying for a high-level nuclear waste storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation (HCN, 9/1/97: A nuclear dump proposal rouses Utah). Though tribal officials support the proposal, state politicians, environmentalists and some tribal members are vehemently opposed to it.
Local governments around Las Vegas will soon start dumping even more treated wastewater into Lake Mead (HCN, 4/9/01: The water empress of Vegas). State officials have approved a proposal to increase releases to about 224 million gallons a day, up from the existing daily limit of 176 million gallons. The treated waste enters the lake just six miles upstream from the city’s drinking water intake pipes.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Latest Bounce.
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