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 […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Life near Rocky Flats
A new major study looks at the public-health effects of Rocky Flats, 16 miles from downtown Denver, where triggers for nuclear bombs were built for more than 35 years. Funded by the federal Department of Energy and administered by the Colorado Department of Public Health, Historical Public Exposure Studies says public risks were low. John […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Mining may need some brakes
Outdated federal mining regulations cause environmental disasters, says the Mineral Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Its 32-page report, Six Mines, Six Mishaps: Six Case Studies of What’s Wrong With Federal and State Hardrock Mining Regulations and Recommendations for Reform, describes a wide range of mining sites that have “slipped through the loopholes of regulations,” says […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
Floyd brings on a hurricane of hog waste
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article,”Can a hog farm bring home the bacon?“ Hurricane Floyd vividly demonstrated the downside to factory farming. Televised images of bloated hog and poultry carcasses and vivid accounts of a floating soup of agricultural, human and industrial contamination […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Keeping ’em down on the High Plains
It’s a largely Old West fantasy that if Wyoming just had more access to federal lands, fewer environmental regulations and minimal taxation for industry, the state would thrive. Right now it isn’t. Wyoming has missed out on the boom (HCN, 7/7/97). While most state coffers bulge, Wyoming expects a $183 million revenue shortfall for the […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
An ancient ditch hits a glitch
For about a year, pollutants from a defunct gold mine have been leaking into the Rito Seco Creek near San Luis, a small farming community in southern Colorado. The creek feeds the San Luis People’s Ditch, the oldest irrigation ditch in the state, and many farmers fear their water supply is being destroyed. The Texas-based […]
Posted inOctober 11, 1999: A home-grown Water War
A fresh breeze hits Western utilities
You can count on the wind in Wyomin’, beer when it’s foamin’, the road when it’s roamin’ … – Song by Rob McLaren and Spencer Bohren of the Gone Johnson Band MEDICINE BOW, Wyo. – Just south of this tiny hamlet stands the world’s largest windmill. Reaching almost 400 feet in the air when its […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
Downwinders speak up and pay up
More than 500 residents of Jackson Hole, Wyo., packed a meeting hall in late August to fight a nuclear-waste incinerator planned for eastern Idaho. The crowd rallied to the evangelical fervor of Gerry Spence, the flamboyant lawyer who has built a national career on high-profile cases. By the end of the evening, everyone from movie […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
Is help from a federal agency a “charade’?
Is the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) a pawn of the mining industry? The Denver-based Citizens Coal Council says “yes’ and points to documents it obtained by filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The Citizens Coal Council, a federation of 48 citizens’ groups in 21 states, sued the OSM to release its files. […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
Blurring the landscape
In southern Idaho’s irrigated landscape, the boundaries between what’s natural and what’s not appear to be definitive: Canals and huge water sprayers on central pivots draw stark lines between fields of green produce and sagebrush desert. But historian Mark Fiege says in Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West, that […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 1999: The Millworker and the Forest
The Cowboy State’s next boom
GILLETTE, Wyo. – Will Wyoming’s arid Powder River Basin be home to cranberry bogs and alligator farms? Most people aren’t taking such suggestions too seriously yet. But thanks to a boom in coal-bed methane development, the basin will soon have more water than anyone knows what to do with. “The fact is, we’re going to […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 1999: Troubled Oasis
Pillar of Sand
Yes, we are in the post-industrial age, and the production of autos, houses, airliners and other “goods’ can be taken for granted. But Sandra Postel in Pillar of Sand warns that there is no such thing as a “post-agricultural age.” Because irrigated agriculture provides 40 percent of the globe’s food today, and because in the […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
A disaster puts spotlight on pipeline safety
When a pipeline carrying gasoline exploded near a city park in Bellingham, Wash., earlier this summer, it fanned the flames of a battle over a new pipeline proposed for the state. Two 10-year-old boys and an 18-year-old fisherman died when the explosion ripped along Whatcom Creek, scorching 1.5 miles of riverbank and setting one home […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Weighing artifacts against gold
The Bureau of Land Management has decided that a cyanide heap-leach gold mine in California near Yuma, Ariz., can’t get under way for at least two years. The moratorium was hailed as a victory by opponents of Glamis Imperial Corp., who say the mine would ravage the habitat of threatened desert tortoises and infringe on […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Life in the dead zone
BUTTE, Mont. – For years, engineers have assumed that the water inside the Berkeley Pit, an abandoned copper mine on the edge of this hillside town, could not support life; the water has the pH of battery acid. Then a few years ago, a curious analytic chemist, William Chatham, noticed a small clump floating on […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Note: this feature story includes four sidebar articles: Jon Marvel, rancher Brad Little, Land and Water Fund lawyer Laird Lucas, and Air Force pilot and environmentalist Herb Meyr give their perspectives in their own words. SILVER CITY, Idaho – Imagine a silver-haired 52-year-old fellow walking into a saloon in this remote mountain town in the […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Court puts gas in private hands
A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in June has answered a long-standing question over who owns vast deposits of methane gas found in coal beds in several states across the West. In a case brought by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe of southwest Colorado, the court sided 7-1 with Amoco Production Co. The ruling […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Mining on the run
Since Montana voters passed an initiative last November blocking certain kinds of mining, the industry has taken its hits. In the wake of a ban on new and expanded open-pit cyanide heap-leach mining, both the Montana Mining Association and the company behind the controversial McDonald gold mine have laid off employees. The mining association is […]
Posted inJune 21, 1999: The disappearing farm
Big Oil down the tubes?
A Northwest oil consortium’s plan to build a 237 mile-long pipeline across Washington has fueled a fiery debate between environmentalists. Will the pipeline eliminate the risk of oil spills in the ocean or will it create a recipe for disaster right in the heart of the Cascade Range? “It makes more sense to get petroleum […]
Posted inJune 21, 1999: The disappearing farm
The disappearing farm
Can cooperatives keep rural people rooted in the plains?