In the Land of IrrigationWhere the Desert blossoms as the roseThere dwells a Knight in armorWhom everyone loves that knows.He guides the little streamletsTo the famished stems and roots,He carries life in his shovel –The man in the rubber boots From “The Man in the Rubber Boots”by Agnes Just Reid (1947) When it rains in […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Nevada’s quest to lose its reputation as a wasteland didn’t begin auspiciously in the new millennium. In fact, it looked as if the state was politically doomed to become the home for a nuclear waste repository that would remain dangerously radioactive for many millennia. At the start of 2001, with Republicans in control of the […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Rancher goes down kicking
Montana’s fight over game farms isn’t over yet
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
A bitter valley waits
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. – “Yea, though we live in the shadows of Death Valley and Yucca Mountain, we will not fear,” it said on the T-shirt of the man in front of me as I checked into the Longstreet Inn and Casino in Amargosa […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Soul food on the range
Researchers at Northern Arizona University’s Center for Sustainable Environments have some bad news about the average American diet: A typical meal’s ingredients travel 2,000 miles from farm to fork, amassing huge environmental and economic costs along the way. The costs are cultural, too, says NAU professor and noted author Gary Nabhan. While Westerners can instantly […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
‘Alternative to Madness’
Anti-nuclear activists have a new way to spread the word about the dangers of weapons testing and radioactive waste – documentary film. In 1998, with borrowed equipment, no budget and little experience, John Brooner of Susanville, Calif., and Sandi Rizzo of Reno, Nev., began filming Shundahai Network’s annual spring gathering at the Nevada Test Site. […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Transforming powers
Drought, salmon and the deregulated electricity market could end the Northwest’s love affair with public power
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
An energy boom hits Northwest towns
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. SUMAS, Wash. – Driving past the empty storefronts and abundant “For Sale” signs downtown, it’s easy to understand why Sumas City Council members initially rolled out the welcome mat for a power company that wants to build a new gas-fired power plant. Sumas, a […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Energy plan eyes the Rockies
Land managers and environmentalists wait for the details
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
An energy plan as solid as natural gas
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Surely, there was a time when the much-heralded proposals issued in these parts actually meant something. One must not romanticize the past, and in the immortal words of racing columnist Col. Stingo, “memory grows furtive.” Furtive or not, there is a memory of receiving, one chilly November afternoon in 1973, the much-heralded […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
West braces for Big Buildup II
In the boom times of the 1950s, Western city leaders embarked on the Big Buildup. It was an intensive resource-development campaign that wrote a critical part of the story of the modern West across the grand tableau of the Colorado Plateau – the Four Corners area, the high redrock desert, the canyon country, including the […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Plutonium in your potatoes?
Idaho discovers traces of radioactive pollution in the Snake River Aquifer
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Living off a leaky canal
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. MEXICALI VALLEY, Baja California, Mexico – Just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the All-American Canal courses west from the Colorado River to the farms of California’s Imperial Valley. Most of the clear, fresh water rushes toward the perfect rows of alfalfa, lettuce and carrots […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Billboards blast bomb industries
Tourists driving I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe expect to see billboards extolling ski resorts, restaurants and casinos, but may be surprised by a series of evocative ads that question the nuclear-weapons industry in New Mexico. The Los Alamos Study Group, a nonprofit, research-oriented, nuclear disarmament organization in Santa Fe, has placed five billboards with […]
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
Green power threatens the Black Rock
A proposed geothermal plant in a newly protected Nevada desert sparks a fight
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Farmworkers reap a minimum wage
IDAHO Idaho farmworkers now are entitled to the same right laborers across the nation have had for decades: a minimum wage (HCN, 12/18/00: Troubled harvest). Until recently, Idaho farmworkers were paid by the amount of apples they picked or the number of trees they pruned. But now, if that rate isn’t equal to at least […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Forest supervisor faces down oil drilling
The public lands aren’t open for business – yet
Posted inMarch 12, 2001: Divided Waters
Downwinders fight for their due
UTAH A small group of people recently gathered at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City to commemorate the 50th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in the history of the West. They also came to demand compensation for a lifetime of health problems – compensation the federal government promised to pay 11 years […]
Posted inMarch 12, 2001: Divided Waters
Washington, unplugged
WASHINGTON The Bonneville Power Administration, which supplies almost half of Washington’s electricity, recently announced that it won’t be able to meet demand over the next five years and may be forced to increase its wholesale power rates 60 percent during the same period. Washington Gov. Gary Locke has a plan that could save the day. […]
Posted inFebruary 26, 2001: Return of the natives
Farmers asked to ante up for salmon
Some irrigators say dams are the problem, not ditches