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 […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inAugust 17, 1998: Living out the trailer dream
Not so hog wild in Colorado
When D&D hog farm moved its South Dakota-based operation to northeast Colorado, Sue Jarrett thought she was getting a good neighbor. What she got instead, she says, were overpowering smells and polluted water. “The odor is so sickening that at times it drives you back in your house,” says Jarrett, who was born and raised […]
Posted inAugust 3, 1998: Tribes reclaim stolen lands
Fast flux on a fast track
Washington state officials have been firing warning shots at the federal Department of Energy, threatening fines for the sluggish pace of cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (HCN, 5/11/98). “We have had a change of philosophy. We are going to hold their feet to the fire,” says Democratic Gov. Gary Locke. Yet Locke is ready […]
Posted inAugust 3, 1998: Tribes reclaim stolen lands
No fences make bad neighbors in Montana
BOZEMAN, Mont. – Warren McMillan steers his Chevy Blazer past a wooden sign that advertises residential lots for sale, many of them 20 acres in size with stunning views of the eastern face of the Bridger Mountains. He is wearing a straw cowboy hat, black cowboy boots, cowboy-cut Levis and a cowboy shirt. He passes […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Nuclear waste hits another roadblock
Just one week before the U.S. Department of Energy planned to ship radioactive trash to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., state environmental regulators gave the agency another red light. In May, the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved shipping to the site waste that would include garbage, clothing, laboratory equipment and other […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Ordering chicken for a whole town
The city of Artesia, N.M., could get more than it asked for when NUCHIK Inc. builds one of the biggest chicken processing plants in the West in the year 2000. The plant will slaughter 1.25 million chickens a week and create 900 new jobs in the town of 12,000. NUCHIK supporters hope the chicken plant […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Rancher stonewalls an agency
The condition of a grazing allotment in southern Wyoming is at the center of a dispute between the National Wildlife Federation and the Bureau of Land Management. The wildlife group’s attorney, Tom Lustig, is protesting the agency’s temporary extension of a grazing permit to rancher Wright Dickenson. Lustig says the impact of 1,000 cows on […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Activists join forces against mining law
NEAR DURANGO, Colo. – Some of us at this conference for mining activists are feeling as if we’ve just been sent to summer camp. The main building of the former silver mining camp, with its long wooden picnic tables, picture-window view of San Juan National Forest and cafeteria meals, is making people nostalgic. “Every time […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
‘Odd couple’ sues over grazing permits
Although Jon Tate of the Tucson, Ariz.-based Western Gamebird Association wants to get cows off some Arizona grazing allotments, he’s not talking about endangered species or water quality. “The reason we want to save this land is there’s a bunch of little birds there that we want to shoot for fun,” he told the Albuquerque […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
Navajos may say no to nuclear waste
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – As Congress wrangles over what to do with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, opponents in the Southwest continue to create roadblocks to keep it out. Bills that would allow the Department of Energy to ship nuclear waste to Nevada’s Yucca Mountain by 2003 have passed in both the House and […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Hot and beautiful
Clean energy can emerge from deep beneath the earth’s surface, but will it interfere with the natural beauty of the volcanoes, hot springs and geysers that make it possible? That’s a question asked in Tapping the Earth’s Natural Heat, a 63-page report produced by Wendell Duffield for the U.S. Geological Survey. Compared to other sources […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
The battle for Crozier Canyon
Arizona mirrors the paradox of the modern West – how to secure the future of tourism without butting heads with traditional, extractive industries. Discount for the moment the public lands, even Grand Canyon National Park, whose establishment may hardly be credited to Arizona. Theodore Roosevelt demanded that Grand Canyon be preserved, and he was a […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Turning a vista into a mess
CROZIER CANYON, Ariz. – To some, this short stretch of Route 66 is historically significant, the “Mother Road” of westward migration celebrated in song and television series. To others, the red hills rising up from the desert are sacred and not to be disturbed. Some of these hills belong to Fred Grigg. They’ve been in […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
No nuclear jeopardy in Wyoming
Will a nuclear waste dump be Wyoming’s economic salvation? No way, says the Wyoming Outdoor Council. Its new report, Nuclear Jeopardy: A Citizen’s Guide to Understanding High Level Radioactive Waste in Wyoming, spells out the group’s opposition to a proposed private dump site. Not only would the Owl Creek Energy Project damage the state’s tourism […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Cows get eviction notice
In what the Forest Guardians’ John Horning calls “evidence of an agency that’s finally getting it,” the Forest Service has agreed to begin removing cattle from 230 miles of Southwestern streams. The Tucson, Ariz.-based Southwest Center for Biological Diversity and the Santa Fe, N.M.-based Forest Guardians filed separate lawsuits against the Forest Service last year, […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Hanford’s full of holes
Hanford’s full of holes Whistleblowers at the Hanford nuclear reservation in central Washington now have the federal General Accounting Office on their side. Although nearly a million gallons of waste are seeping from Hanford’s underground storage tanks toward the Columbia River, the Department of Energy has long downplayed the problem, assuring critics that the soil […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
EPA to ASARCO: Time to pay
For the past two years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been investigating ASARCO Inc. for violations of federal environmental laws. Now the mining company is going to pay. On Jan. 23, the EPA announced that the company will pay $62 million in fines and cleanup costs for its projects around the nation, with the […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
All is not quiet on the Rocky Mountain Front
Last October, conservationists won a surprise victory for Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front when Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora banned new oil and gas leases for the next 10 to 15 years (HCN,10/13/97). But the story wasn’t over. On Feb. 5, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced a bill to permanently ban new oil […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
All that glitters…
A citizens’ group in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., is trying to drum up opposition to a proposed open-pit gold mine a few miles from town. Royal Gold Inc. has been conducting exploratory drilling on Forest Service land, and a full-scale operation may begin once the price of gold increases. Resident Bill McNeill, who founded the new […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
Partial measurements
Nothing is more elegant and simple than a Parshall Flume. The concrete or sheet metal devices, when properly built, measure how much water flows through a ditch. While water courts adjudicate, it is Parshall Flumes that actually measure out the water. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to do an accurate job. According to Colorado State University, only […]