Note: this front-page essay introduces this issue’s feature story. Pity Montana. Everyone wants a piece of it. Most desire its trout streams, the solace of its open spaces, its stunning mountains. Mining companies want the metals buried beneath this incomparable landscape. Hardrock mining is already big business in Montana. But it could soon get bigger. […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Amax returns with a vengeance
Twenty years ago it was a classic David vs. Goliath battle. Helped by a drop in the worldwide molybdenum market, residents of the ski-resort town of Crested Butte, Colo., chased the world’s largest mining conglomerate out of their valley. But now, Amax is back, locals are crying “blackmail!” and the town council is building a […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
LAKEVIEW, Ore. – David Dobkin crouches in an expanse of low sagebrush and admires clumps of grasses and forbs. It is morning on this sweep of high desert that stretches east from the rising fault-block mountain that gives Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge its name. Umbrella-shaped canopies of mountain mahogany grow from the mountain’s outcrops […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Cows get marching orders
Tucson environmentalists beat stream-loving bovines
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Borrowing courage from the past
Borrowing courage from the past Where did Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora get the courage to say no to the oil and gas industry? “Mostly from other people,” she said, at the end of a long day after her decision. “I look at certain people within the agency that I’ve known, who have made an impact. […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Forest Service acts to preserve ‘the Front’
AUGUSTA, Mont. – Locals call it “the Front,” a name that conjures up a battleline between armies. But for now, the fight is over between environmentalists who want to protect the wildlife that flourishes here, and oil and gas executives who want to drill for up to 3.6 trillion cubic-feet of natural gas that may […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Chemicals aren’t the only answer
Your french fries were probably soaked in chemicals, warns the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, since potatoes are some of the most treated crops in the Northwest. But there are ways to reduce chemical use, such as rotating crops, and that’s just one of the messages the coalition hopes to convey Oct. 11 in […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Just charge it
Only 50 or so electric cars are on Arizona’s roads, but the Tucson Electric Power Company has opened eight free charge-up stations in the city. General Motors says it chose Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles as test markets because the cars perform better on flat terrain and in a warm climate. The EV-1, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The drilling proceeds
The Bureau of Land Management has given Conoco Inc. the go-ahead to drill for oil in southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Agency officials say finding oil is a long shot, and Conoco will probably abandon the area. Environmentalists retort that the BLM is playing dangerous games with a national jewel. Earlier this month, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Farmland wins a round
The Oregon Supreme Court has given state agriculture interests reason to celebrate. Last month the court upheld the state’s right to enforce strict rules against nonagricultural uses of farmland. That means a lot to farmers in western Oregon’s Willamette Valley, home to 70 percent of the state’s population as well as to its richest soil. […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
A cleanup project can’t get going
In 1969, when the last container of radioactive waste from the Rocky Flats bomb factory in Colorado was buried at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, no one really knew what was stored underground in the one-acre landfill. Federal officials knew generally what filled the unlined pit, created by excavating 20 feet down to a solid […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Heavy metals move
Heavy metals accumulated from 100 years of mining in Idaho’s Silver Valley (HCN, 11/25/96) are spreading into Washington state, and environmentalists and state officials there want a say in how to stop it. “Just having Idaho control the cleanup doesn’t hold any promise,” said Michele Nanni of the Inland Empire Public Lands Council. Last year, […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
RICHLAND, Wash. – Casey Ruud and John Brodeur have always stood out in Hanford’s take-no-risks nuclear culture. The safety auditor and the geophysicist made powerful enemies when they uncovered major safety problems a decade ago at the nation’s largest plutonium bomb factory, located deep in rural southeastern Washington. Then in 1994, at the prodding of […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Greens and cowboys gang up on a mine
TUCSON, Ariz. – Looking south, the Santa Rita Mountains rise dreamlike from the desert floor, a hazy string of stony monoliths peppered with stands of oak and pine. Only a 30-minute drive from Tucson city limits, the range is typically thick with hikers, birders and hunters seeking refuge from traffic, noise and heat. But from […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
A nuclear dump proposal rouses Utah
Over the past two decades, Steve Erickson has spent many days in his aged truck visiting the scattered ranches and dry valleys of Utah’s West Desert. “People have an image of this area as a dried-up lake bed,” says the peace activist, but to him, “it’s a beautiful place.” Erickson has fought dozens of schemes […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
A cover-up over fallout?
A cover-up over fallout? The federally funded National Cancer Institute has been sitting on some disturbing news: 10,000 to 72,000 people may develop thyroid cancer from exposure to clouds of radioactive fallout that traveled across the United States between 1951 and 1958. An institute study shows that children living thousands of miles from nuclear bomb […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Bombs tested in Nevada
The Department of Energy is worried that its nuclear bombs won’t blow up. So on July 2, it performed the first in a series of underground detonations at its Nevada Test Site, a 1,350 square-mile area in Nye County, northwest of Las Vegas. The Department of Energy insists the tests are safe and necessary, but […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Working ranches
The Sonoran Institute, a Tucson, Ariz.-based nonprofit, wants to help ranchers save agricultural lands. Its new illustrated handbook, Preserving Working Ranches in the West, says every four minutes, an acre of working land in Colorado is lost to development. Sonoran Institute spokesman Jon Shepard says ranchers in Arizona’s San Rafael Valley are finding economically viable […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Co-existence criticized
If five environmental groups have their way in Wyoming, grizzly bears won’t have their territory invaded by oil and gas exploration teams on 2,000 acres of Shoshone National Forest. The groups fear that the exploration will lead to road building and drilling. The leases sought are in the Brent Creek and Lava Mountain/Sheridan Pass areas, […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
A cheatgrass antidote – maybe
The federal Bureau of Land Management wants to send the message that cheaters never win, and that goes for cheatgrass, too. The agency’s weapon of choice is Oust, a controversial DuPont herbicide. Last fall, BLM range specialists with the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in Idaho found that in early tests, Oust […]