By Eric De Place, Sightline.org Much to their credit, the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO want more sunlight on oil company practices. The unions believe that a string of accidents — including the deadly 2010 fire at Anacortes, Washington where Steelworkers are employed — is evidence that more safety information should be made public. WSJ’s MarketWatchreports: […]
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Mopping up at Los Alamos
Last week, Los Alamos National Labs finally reached a settlement with community groups over their 2008 lawsuit claiming that polluted runoff from the facility violated its federal clean-water permit. But worries over toxic stormwater discharges at the lab go back decades (PDF report) and came to a head 11 years ago this month, when the […]
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CAFO air pollution crackdown?
I’m traveling in New Mexico this week, learning about its dairy industry, and thinking a fair bit about how we raise animals — for milk and meat — in the United States. Many of the people I’ve met so far on this trip live very near large dairies. Some of the people I hope to […]
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Wolverines in the Wallowas
After almost two decades of silence, the North American wolverine (Gulo gulo) is confirmed to be back on the prowl in the mountains of Oregon. Two of the feisty carnivores, dubbed “Iceman” and “Stormy,” were caught on remote camera feasting on hunks of bait meat in the Wallowa Mountains — the first verified wolverine sightings […]
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Swapping politics for science
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House It’s not often a government agency asks Congress to limit the amount of money it spends to do its job. But that’s what the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) did last month when it told Congress that it wants a cap put on how much it can […]
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Fracking fluid spill raises concerns over regulation
On April 19, a mechanical problem at a Pennsylvania natural gas well caused thousands of gallons of briny water and fracking fluid of unknown composition to spew out of the well, overwhelm containment facilities and flow across a field and into a pond. The local emergency management agency told seven families to evacuate their homes. […]
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EJ activist Ed Abbey?
Spring semester is winding down, and the students in my course Rhetoric of the Environmental Movement are reading Edward Abbey’s 1968 memoir, Desert Solitaire. After having duly investigated news reports, scientific studies, websites, and environmental impact statements, they appreciate Abbey’s lively and eccentric voice and his vivid descriptions of the landscape of Arches National Park. […]
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The Visual West
I like how our local cemetery, nestled in the shoulder of a small hill above town, is shaped by both natural and human forces. Among the varied stones and markers of the dead and a scattering of native juniper trees and planted arborvitae, I will usually spot a small herd of mule deer and loose […]
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Moving Washington beyond coal
By Jennifer Langston, Sightline.org A deal to wean Washington off coal power is a hair’s breadth away from becoming law. Both houses of the Legislature have approved a bill to close the state’s largest single source of greenhouse gas, mercury, and nitrogen oxide pollution over the next decade and a half. And with the addition […]
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Clearing the way for renewables
On public lands, mining claims are staked for more than just the riches hidden underground. Some are made simply to wrest cash from competing users — namely possibly renewable energy developers, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Speculators can could grab up mining claims in areas considered for wind and solar energy development […]
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Sucking up gold
Gold has hit $1500 an ounce — and that’s got would-be miners casting a covetous eye at Western streams and rivers. The Gold Rush may have ended more than a century ago, but there’s still gold to be gleaned, if you’ve got a pickup, a wetsuit or waders, and a suction dredge (see our 2006 […]
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More desert tortoises found at Mojave solar project
On Friday, April 15, the Bureau of Land Management issued a notice ordering the “immediate temporary suspension of activities” for part of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station construction site in the Mojave Desert (see HCN story “High Noon,” May 9, 2009). The reason: More desert tortoises, a federally threatened species, have been found in […]
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American Indians suffer from high gas prices
A few weeks ago Bloomberg News reported that Saudia Arabia is investing $100 billion in renewable energy sources. In other words the country with the largest known reserves of oil is spending its profits building power plants fueled by nuclear energy, wind, geothermal and solar power. What does Saudia Arabia know that the rest of […]
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A new day dawning?
At times, it seemed that peace would never break out in southern Utah. At least not when it came to wilderness. As Jim Stiles, a long-time chronicler of Utah wilderness battles, wrote in an HCN opinion piece last year, “Bullheadedness is what defines both environmentalists and those locals who’d rather see coal mining or oil […]
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It’s Raining Rain Gardens
By Lisa Stiffler, Sightline.org Researchers have pointed the finger at stormwater runoff as the top source of pollution that’s getting into Puget Sound and other Northwest waterways. And because runoff comes from just about everywhere — roofs, roadways, parking lots, farms, and lawns — the solution has to be just as widespread. Enter 12,000 Rain […]
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Western pine beetles munch eastward
Now that the mountain pine beetle has chewed through some 70,000 square miles of forest in the western States and Canada, it seems the voracious pest is expanding its palate. Beetles in Canada were recently discovered attacking jack pines (Pinus banksiana) for the first time, a break from their usual diet of lodgepole (Pinus contorta), […]
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Water Sharing in the Over-shared West
If you were to trace the dips and rises in water sales across the American West onto a graph, the line would fall in synch with basic economics. In a recession, when dollars are scarce, water transactions are few and far between. But when a region booms, freeing up cash for all kinds of development, […]
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Colorado may extend bear season
Colorado’s official state mammal is the bighorn sheep, but if you go by which wild critter gets the most attention from state government lately, it would be the black bear. In 1992, state voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative which eliminated the spring bear-hunting season by outlawing bear hunting between March 1 and Sept. 1. The […]
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Sustainable ag education loses funding
The U.S. government has long been in the business of supporting education for farmers. In 1914, Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act, which formalized a system of agriculture education that is still ongoing. Known as cooperative extension, it was a partnership between the U.S Department of Agriculture and the land grant colleges. The partnership allowed the […]
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Time is running out for the Grand Canyon
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House On July 21, a moratorium on staking new uranium and other hardrock mining claims on over one million acres of public land near the Grand Canyon National Park, will end. Unless the Department of the Interior makes a decision on the land withdrawal prior to that–which seems unlikely, […]