Employees at New Mexico’s nuclear
weapons lab may soon have new bosses. After Los Alamos
National Laboratory suffered repeated financial and security
scandals, outgoing U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Spencer
Abraham announced that the lab’s contract, held by the
University of California since 1943, was up for grabs (HCN,
11/24/03: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut).
Now, the universities and defense contractors vying for the $2
billion-per-year contract have some unusual competition: Nuclear
Watch of New Mexico, the California-based Tri-Valley Community
Against a Radioactive Environment and the Coalition to Demilitarize
the University of California have become partners in a bid to win
the lab’s contract.
Thanks to a recent court
ruling, desert tortoises may get some more breathing room. In early
January, Northern California U.S. District Court Judge Susan
Illston sided with environmental groups that had sued to keep
off-road vehicles off about 500,000 acres of the tortoise’s
habitat in Southern California (HCN, 9/27/04: For endangered
species, survival no longer enough). As part of her decision,
Illston ordered the land off-limits to ORV use
until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans for the protection
and recovery of the endangered tortoises.
Factory-farm polluters will be immune to
lawsuits, thanks to new rules from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. The new rules, posted at the end of January,
allow owners of the nation’s largest livestock operations to
avoid prosecution under air pollution laws by signing up for a
voluntary monitoring program (HCN, 7/8/02: Big stink over factory
farms).
Utah’s new governor, Jon Huntsman
Jr., is making friends with the Mountain States Legal
Foundation. In mid-January, the state filed a “friend-of-the-court
brief” in the foundation’s legal challenge over the creation
of the 1.9 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument (HCN,
9/27/04: Utah’s favorite sons battle for governor). The
property rights group has been fighting the monument since
President Clinton designated it in 1996. According to the
Salt Lake Tribune: “Utah Deputy Attorney General
Mark Ward says the state is not challenging the legitimacy of the
monument — just its boundaries.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Follow-up.
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