For decades, mine dust has been killing people in Libby, Montana. Why didn’t anyone do anything about it?
Energy & Industry
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
Who knew what, and when?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. W.R. Grace maintains it has always been frank about the dangers of asbestos. Former workers and union leaders disagree. They say Grace didn’t come clean with its workers until 1979, 16 years after it bought the mine. Earl Lovick, who managed the Libby mine […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
‘It’s like sacking feather’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Former Grace worker Lester Skramstad is slowly dying from asbestos-related diseases. His wife and two children, now in their 40s, have also contracted asbestosis. The following is taken from his testimony in court. Lester Skramstad: “We built a screen, jig sort of a situation, […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
‘Grace is going to have to own up’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Don Judge is executive secretary of the Montana State AFL-CIO in Helena. Don Judge: “For many years, neither the union nor the workers knew that the dust had asbestos in it, but we asked the company to clean it up. In 1964, the union […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
A barbed tragedy is lodged in Libby
Note: This essay is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story,”Libby’s dark secret.” You remember asbestos: It used to be the hottest little insulator around. For years we crammed it into buildings and warships, wrapped it around water pipes and brake pads, wove it into fireproof clothing and flame-resistant drapes. Then we found out how […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
What to do about “Frankenfoods’?
NATION The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may say bioengineered foods are safe, but two natural-food chains say they don’t trust the agency’s word. Boulder, Colo.-based Wild Oats Markets and Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market are banning genetically engineered foods from their private product lines. “There are significant unanswered health and environmental concerns,” says a […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Book says cows don’t belong on most BLM lands
Debra Donahue, a law professor at the University of Wyoming with an M.S. degree in wildlife biology, has gathered biology, economics and history in her The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. Her proposal to evict livestock from arid rangelands receiving less than 12 inches of precipitation annually is […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Bovine boondoggle
Cows eat up more than just grass in the West, says a special investigative report by the San Jose Mercury News. According to “Cash Cows: The Giveaway of the West,” federal-lands grazing consumes tax dollars without giving much back. Published in November and now available in eight-page color reprints, the report was compiled by 10 […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
The West ‘ain’t no cow country’
Whatever might be said of the arid West, it “ain’t no cow country.” That’s what Henry Fonda, playing Wyatt Earp, said of Arizona in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946). That’s also the bottom line of a book I wrote, The Western Range Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity. In it, […]
Posted inFebruary 14, 2000: Land of the fee
Report card
The National Commission on Small Farms released a report card grading the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s effort to help family farmers. The agency received a “D” for failing to help independent farmers compete against large agribusiness. It earned its best grade, “B’,” for providing marketing assistance. For a copy of the Time to Act report […]
Posted inFebruary 14, 2000: Land of the fee
Canaries in the Utah desert
Twenty-seven years ago, Chip Ward and his wife, Linda, left the East Coast to explore the West. Impressed with the desert’s stark beauty, the Wards decided to settle permanently in rural Utah. Little did they know that Grantsville, the sleepy town they chose to call home, sits right in the middle of one of the […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Montana burns game farm elk
On a cold and windy morning last Dec. 7, livestock officials began killing the elk on the Kesler Game Farm near Philipsburg, Mont. The herd had been under quarantine for chronic wasting disease for over a year when an elk that had just died on the ranch was found to be infected. Local game wardens […]
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
Mountain of mine waste may move after all
MOAB, Utah – A decade-long battle over a 10.5 million-ton uranium mill tailings site near the Colorado River (HCN, 4/13/98) may finally be coming to an end. Here, on Jan. 14, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced his support for a plan to transfer control of the abandoned Atlas Corp. mill site to […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
Nuns get a windfall
The wind didn’t exactly blow dollar bills through the door of the Sacred Heart Monastery in Richardton, N.D. But two years after the monastery’s Catholic sisters installed two windmills 100 feet high, their electric bill was cut almost in half for a savings of $18,000 in two years. “We’ve been here for over 30 years, […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Free, four-hour tour of his ranch
New Mexico rancher Jim Winder will lead a free, four-hour tour of his ranch Jan. 15, talking about cattle rotation, biodiversity, economics “and other cool stuff.” The tour is a project of the Quivira Coalition, which believes that “healthy ecosystems and healthy rural economies are not mutually exclusive.” The coalition’s mission is to find common […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Peggy Godfrey’s long, strange trip
MOFFAT, Colo. – Peggy Godfrey is driving her 1988 Oldsmobile across the San Luis Valley. She is staring straight ahead. I am sitting in the passenger seat, watching the speedometer needle sweep past 60, past 70 and hover just shy of 75. On a dirt road. At night. It’s good this valley is as flat […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Pumice mine is a test case
The U.S. Forest Service is suing an Arizona mining company for taking pumice from the San Francisco Peaks. If Tufflite Inc. loses, it could owe the government up to $300,000 for illegally mining on the Coconino National Forest northeast of Flagstaff. The mining company insists it owes nothing because pumice is considered unique and therefore […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Uranium haunts the Colorado Plateau
CROWNPOINT, N.M. – As a trademark New Mexico sunset paints pastels over this high desert town, it’s hard to imagine that the poisonous legacy of uranium mining could be repeated here. During the 1950s and ’60s, this town of about 2,000 near the Navajo Reservation was hit by a uranium mining boom. It left Navajos […]
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
Figuring out FERC
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “A tired stream gains new steam.” Relicensing of a hydroelectric project begins at least two years before the old license expires. After an application is filed, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gives public notice, and any member […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Court enforces a healthy environment
A provision in Montana’s constitution guaranteeing residents a “clean and healthful environment” has as much bite as bark, thanks to a recent Montana Supreme Court ruling. In October, the court unanimously agreed that that the constitution protects the state’s resources from actual, proven damage, and from potential harm as well. “Our constitution does not require […]