Miners have many ways of turning rock into metal – brute force, corrosive chemicals, high heat and extreme pressure. Likewise, environmentalists are discovering there is more than one way to transform the West’s most refractory industry. Mining has fiercely resisted change since it was first given free license to pillage the mineral riches of a […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
A tale of two ranches
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. For Tony and Jerrie Tipton, a couple in their 40s who live in a trailer and run cattle on public land in the Toiyabe Mountains of central Nevada, it is the best of times. For their neighbor Paul Inchauspe, […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Feds flex their muscles
Federal attorneys fired a warning shot March 8 at county governments in the West trying to assert control of public lands. Justice Department lawyers sued rural Nye County, Nev., where local officials have harassed federal land managers. In one instance, Nye County commissioners threatened Bureau of Land Management staff trying to enforce grazing regulations. In […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Our hot legacy
OUR HOT LEGACY “Where and how will we treat and dispose of the backlog of wastes from nuclear weapons production? How clean is clean? Should we exhume large volumes of contaminated soil in order to allow for unlimited use of the land in the future? To foster a sustained and informed public debate on these […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Soft energy may shred Wyoming raptors
CARBON COUNTY, Wyo.- Bruce Morley stands on Foote Creek Rim, the high ridge he hopes to cover with a forest of wind turbines, and eyes the brown haze from a power plant 150 miles away. “Every month this project would generate as much power as a coal train a mile long,” says Morley, raising his […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
You say you want to cut government spending? Kick off cows
Dear Congress: Since you say you want to stop wasteful federal spending, I am writing to alert you to what’s going on at the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, where, in 1990, they spent $52 million more managing livestock than they collected in fees. Part of the problem is that the current […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
How Montana fouled a family’s water
If they were not so tired, so sad, so damn disgusted, Jan and David Zimmerman might summon enough spite to say, “We told you so.” The Zimmermans, residents of tiny Pony, Mont., learned late last year that cyanide had contaminated their well water. There was no doubt about the poison’s source: A cyanide-process gold mill, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Bare land at Bear Lake
People who live near drought-plagued Bear Lake, along the Idaho-Utah border, don’t want to see water levels drop another four feet. Yet dredging by Utah Power & Light, which aims to dig a 2,000-foot channel to a pumping station at the north end of the lake, would do just that. The company needs the water […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Grazing fees drop
Only a few months ago, ranchers who graze their animals on federal lands were bracing themselves for significant fee increases proposed by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. But intense pressure from the livestock industry forced Babbitt to jettison the attempt (HCN, 1/23/95). Now, under the federal formula, fees will decline this year by 19 percent, from […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Holy water
Most people know that the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Less known is that it may guarantee freedom to irrigate. Bill Nelson, a part-time farmer in drought-stricken northeast Oregon, says his new Church of the Holy Water has one central tenet: Its 25 members must have unlimited water use. He hopes […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Was cleanup a “taking’?
It’s a case with bizarre implications: A Boulder, Colo., company that owns land on which the disastrous Summitville Mine was built is suing the state for allowing the disaster to happen and the federal government for spending millions to clean it up. Filed in Rio Grande County District Court, the landowners’ suit claims the state […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Ranchers backed
Ranchers are struggling land stewards in the eyes of New Mexicans, a new poll has found. A University of New Mexico telephone poll found that only 33 percent of the respondents thought cows damage the environment, although 49 percent said environmental preservation should be the top priority of public-land management. Eighty percent contended that maintaining […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
New governor accepts nuclear waste
BOISE, Idaho – New Idaho Gov. Philip E. Batt broke with tradition Jan. 12 and agreed to accept a total of 11 railroad-borne casks of nuclear waste from the U.S. Navy during the next six weeks. In return, the Navy has promised to find a geologic repository outside Idaho “as quickly as practical” and transfer […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Ranchers forced into numbers game
Imagine the Western range as a half-billion acre game board. It’s not hard; section lines, pasture lines, power lines, irrigation lines, and roads straight as lines subdivide it into as many playing squares as there are players. But it is not chess or checkers. It’s a deadly serious game, where the stakes are the health […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Babbitt cedes grazing reform to Congress
Every time Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt stood at a podium in the West during the last two years to talk about grazing reform, it seemed he faced a sea of cowboy hats. Now, with his Rangeland Reform “94 program failing in a Republican Congress, the West’s 28,000 public-lands ranchers are riding taller in the political […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Peace gets no chance
Elected officials in Los Alamos, N.M., where government scientists built the first atomic bomb, recently squelched a plan hatched by Albuquerque children to commemorate peace. County council members said the proposed park might become a gathering place for peaceniks, and that a plaque on a statue there might express anti-war sentiments. The council’s rejection stunned […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Crude awakening
The Exxon tanker spill was a drop in the bucket compared to what the U.S. oil industry routinely wastes. In Crude Awakening, The Oil Mess in America: Wasting Energy, Jobs and the Environment, Friends of the Earth says we lose the equivalent of 1,000 Exxon spills each year through leaks, evaporation and inefficient use. Author […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Pests and pesticides
If you don’t like chemical pesticides but don’t like pests either, then Pesticides in our Communities: Choices for Change may be for you. It tells how to substitute boric-acid powder, powdered sugar, corn syrup and stale beer for dichlorvos (Vapona), chlorpyrifos (Raid Roach, Hot Shot Roach), and carbaryl (Sevin). Published by Concern Inc., a Washington, […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Drilling in Wyoming
After a two-year moratorium, drill rigs may soon rumble into action in the Thunder Basin National Grassland. The Forest Service has rejected an appeal by the Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Bow to reduce oil and gas leasing within the nearly 2 million-acre grassland in northeastern Wyoming. The decision “just […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Reprieve for the Uintas
More than 218,000 acres in the Uinta Mountains near Salt Lake City have been spared the drill. Although the Forest Service approved an oil and gas exploration permit that Chevron applied for in 1989, the company announced this summer that it would withdraw. Chevron had only one hurdle left before drilling: the signature of Salt […]