The Montana Legislature approved a bill requiring the
state’s utilities to buy 15 percent of their power
from renewable sources by 2015. The green-power
initiative was part of the campaign platform of Gov. Brian
Schweitzer, D, who took office this January (HCN, 11/22/04:
Election Day surprises in the schizophrenic West). Montana is the
19th state in the country to enact a renewable energy standard.
A geothermal power company is taking the Valles Caldera
National Preserve to federal court. GeoProducts of New Mexico
seeks to reopen several old geothermal wells in
the reserve to generate power for the Los Alamos weapons laboratory
(HCN, 12/22/03: National preserve is in hot water). On April 7, the
company, which holds one-eighth of the mineral rights under the
preserve, filed a lawsuit against the Valles Caldera Trust, which
manages the 89,000-acre New Mexico ranch, purchased by Congress in
2000.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Sen. Lamar
Alexander, R-Tenn., have introduced separate bills to
exempt hydraulic fracturing from regulation
under the Safe Drinking Water Act (HCN, 12/20/04: Conscientious
Objectors). The version of the energy bill approved by the House on
April 21 includes a similar exemption. “Frac’ing,” pioneered
by Halliburton, uses chemicals such as diesel fuel and benzene to
increase the production of oil and gas wells; critics fear it could
contaminate underground drinking water supplies. Last year, the
Environmental Protection Agency declared that hydraulic fracturing
does not pose a threat to drinking water, but the agency’s
inspector general recently opened an investigation into whether
that announcement was politically motivated.
William
Jensen Cottrell, 24, has been ordered to serve eight years in
prison and pay $3.5 million for his part in destroying or
damaging more than 100 Hummers and SUVs in Southern
California in 2003 (HCN, 9/15/03: Burning one for the road).
Cottrell is a graduate physics student at the California Institute
of Technology; two of his accomplices are believed to have fled the
country.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Follow-up.
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