Skip Newman, who runs a family ranch about 50 miles west of Great Falls, Mont., recently fenced off the banks of Muddy Creek, drilled a well and set up water troughs away from the stream for his cows. “There is an erosion and water quality problem, and I just wanted to do my part,” Newman […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
South Dakota tells a mine to stay put
DEADWOOD, S.D. – South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow, R, has a reputation for getting tough with Canadian companies. The popular four-term governor made news last fall when he stopped Canadian farm exports at his state’s borders, but environmentalists say his attempt to salvage a bad mining situation is wrongheaded and could only make things worse. […]
Posted inNovember 23, 1998: A patchwork peace unravels
Amax’s return delayed
The return of a molybdenum mine proposed for Red Lady Bowl near Crested Butte, Colo., has been stalled – temporarily, at least (HCN, 12/8/97). In September, a water court judge postponed a trial to determine whether mining conglomerate Cyprus-Amax can create a reservoir, after the company changed its plans. Cyprus-Amax decided to downsize the mine […]
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Trading up to salmon power
The Emerald People’s Utility District near Eugene, Ore., says it will provide “green power” to its customers. The district has agreed to pay 75 percent more to a new partnership between the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and a trio of environmental groups formed to encourage energy production that doesn’t harm air quality or salmon. The […]
Posted inOctober 26, 1998: The Oregon way
Mines must clean up their mess
In the forested highlands of central Arizona, copper mining has been a mainstay of the local economy for nearly a century. But the area’s paychecks come with a hidden price: The groundwater and soil are now contaminated with acidic metals, and a plume of toxics threatens the Phoenix water supply. Last year, the state of […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Avoiding the shaft
-Few citizens, however well intentioned, can cope with the array of industry experts and lawyers that they will face when opposing a mine,” says Sue McIntosh of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. That’s why McIntosh has written a handbook for mining activists called Avoiding the Shaft: The New Mexico Citizen’s Mining Manual. […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Solar power is booming
After lagging for decades, solar power is booming; its growth rate of 16 percent per year from 1990-1997 ranks it as the world’s second fastest-growing energy source after wind power. Worldwatch Institute attributes the boom to declining manufacturing costs and subsidies. Japan, Europe and the United States, for example, have instituted programs to encourage use […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
The Rocky Mountain Front faces new oil-and-gas threat
BABB, Mont. – Chief Mountain, a 9,000-foot outlying peak west of here, stands like a boundary marker on the Rocky Mountain Front, where glacier-carved peaks meet rolling plains. It also marks the political intersection of Glacier National Park’s eastern boundary with the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. A recent plan by the Blackfeet tribal business council to […]
Posted inOctober 12, 1998: A river becomes a raw nerve
Proposed mine threatens ecosystem
CAVE JUNCTION, Ore. – In the red rock that rises above southwest Oregon’s Rough and Ready Creek, a unique ecosystem flourishes. “(The soil) has a composition that’s totally off-kilter with what’s in the earth’s crust,” says retired Stanford University geologist Robert Coleman. “Most plants don’t like that,” but, he adds, an odd variety flourishes there. […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Tour the underground
It’s probably not the first place you might think of for a family vacation, but coal mines and electricity-generating plants in North Dakota have packaged a tour of their facilities as the “Energy Trail.” Hitting the trail offers more than authentic coal soot. If you time it right, Thursday at the Freedom Mine in Mercer […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Mining: There’s a reform-blocking rider
It’s not easy fighting mines. Under the 1872 General Mining Law, mining is the “highest and best use” of federal public lands, and every anti-mine effort is an uphill battle. But buried in the Bureau of Land Management code of regulations is a glimmer of good news for activists: a directive to the secretary of […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Irrigators speak a volume
After a federal water commission published Water in the West: The Challenge for the Next Century (HCN, 6/22/98), a 250-member industry group known as the Family Farm Alliance went to work on a report of its own. Irrigated agriculture has gotten the blame for the West’s water woes, members say, and they want to clear […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Voters to decide mining’s future
MISSOULA, Mont. – Two years ago, a broad coalition of environmentalists, ranchers and politicians put an initiative on Montana’s ballot to force mining companies to clean up their wastewater before dumping it into rivers. The initiative failed after the mining industry spent $2 million convincing voters that tighter water standards would affect anyone who washed […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Between an oil lease and a hard place
The Bureau of Land Management has a dilemma of its own making in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness of northwest New Mexico. First, the agency is writing a draft environmental impact statement for drilling 13 oil wells and building 5.5 miles of road in a federally protected wilderness. Second, nobody really wants to drill there. The problem […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Citizens tackle a mining company
Ann and Mike Tatum won one for the little guy when they convinced a Colorado judge that a coal mining company damaged their second home in Weston, Colo. Last December, Las Animas County District Court ordered Basin Resources to pay the Tatums $160,000 for cracks that appeared in their walls after the company tunneled nearby. […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 1998: We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight
Worn shoes, cattle and a spring
ENNIS, Mont. – It was late one afternoon some years back, when I drove from the Forest Service’s ranger station to the little grocery store at the end of Main Street. Among those milling about the aisles making last-minute purchases, I recognized the young wife and two school-aged children of the rancher with whom I’d […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
There goes the neighborhood
-We’re basically Middle America, except we’re off the grid,” says Diane Mitsch-Bush, a longtime resident of Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her neighborhood, only a few miles from the center of town, has powered itself with solar and propane energy since the early 1980s. But Mitsch-Bush and other residents say their low-key and environmentally conscious lifestyle is […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Excavating Ecotopia
Note: two sidebar articles accompany this feature story under these headlines: “A run at sustainable development” and “Tribes strike back at mining.” OROVILLE, Wash. – The first gold in the state was discovered over that ridge,” says 84-year-old Web Hallauer, pointing across shimmering Lake Osoyoos and this small lakeside town and its orchards, to the […]
Posted inAugust 31, 1998: Excavating Ecotopia
Tribes strike back at mining
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. COLVILLE INDIAN RESERVATION, Wash. – When the Battle Mountain Gold company came to this 1.4 million-acre reservation in 1994, tribal elder Georgia Iukes says, “Boy, that got my dander up.” At the meeting, she spoke forcefully against the exploration contract the company wanted the […]
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Big mines leave a big mess
South Dakota has told a gold- and silver-mining company that it can’t just walk away from its operation in the Black Hills, leaving the environmental damage behind. In May, the state obtained an emergency restraining order preventing the company, Brohm Mining, from abandoning treatment of collection ponds containing sulphuric acid and cyanide. Owners of the […]