SEATTLE, Wash. – The Clinton administration and major universities are apologizing for Cold War radiation experiments on humans, but the man behind the largest such experiment in Washington state maintains he did nothing wrong. Dr. C. Alvin Paulsen used X-rays on the testicles of 64 prisoners at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla during […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Chevron drops leases
Chevron USA surrendered all of its oil and gas leases in the Bridger-Teton National Forest near Jackson Hole, Wyo., last month. The surprise release of both its new 1993 leases and older ones dating back to the early 1980s may spare the 60,000-acre Willow Creek roadless area from drilling. Chevron says it backed off the […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Sun Day
When making plans for Earth Day this spring, don’t forget about Sun Day, April 24, a national celebration of renewable energy and energy conservation. Organizers hope to educate people about the potential of renewable energy and showcase renewable-energy programs and technologies. Over 50 national environmental, business, utility, student and government groups are sponsoring Sun Day, […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Grazing plan springs a leak
The Department of Interior’s revised grazing reform regulations are not due out until the end of March, but leaked copies are already making headlines. According to the Washington Post, the big changes from last year’s reform proposal will be a grazing fee increase scaled back from $4.28 per animal unit month to $3.96; new incentives […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Back to the sun
When oil became scarce in the 1970s, New Mexico’s solar industry quickly boomed and then busted. State tax subsidies had helped sell complicated new systems that sometimes didn’t work, and by the mid-80s many people ditched their solar designs. In an effort to rebuild its solar industry, the New Mexico Natural Resources Department has published […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Workers need protection
The health and safety of workers cleaning up the nation’s nuclear weapons complex have been badly neglected, according to a study by the Office of Technology Assessment, a research arm of the U.S. Congress. Because of the historic autonomy and secrecy of its atomic mission, the Department of Energy is the only federal agency exempt […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Fast food at fault
That humble staple of the fast-food industry – the french fry – is more dangerous than it looks. A recent study by the non-profit Columbia Basin Institute found that fry-makers in the Columbia River Basin waste cheap water and poison residential wells. The 100-page report, Value Added and Subtracted, says fry-makers use only half of […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
STOP-M in Oregon
Since 1989, miners have staked over 40,000 claims to mine microscopic gold dust in eastern Oregon. The prospectors foresee massive open-pit cyanide mines to retrieve the gold, but so far no such mines exist in the state. Newmont Grassy Mountain Corp. ow wants to develop a claim 25 miles south of Vale, a small town […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Miners hope to become subdividers
The bankrupt owners of a coal mine in central Colorado want the state to drop a lawsuit against them in exchange for cash and equipment. But there’s a catch. Mine owners want to subdivide 6,000 acres to generate some of the money for the mine’s reclamation. Mid-Continent Resources’ latest plan to pay off its debts […]
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
A struggle for the last grass
SILVER CITY, N.M. – Black Canyon is a place that only a hard-core stream addict should be able to love, so barren are its edges, so sparse its grasses. Superficially, the canyon offers a park-like atmosphere in America’s first wilderness. The stream runs freely over its shallow bed, and a few 75- to 100-foot-tall cottonwoods […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Back at the ranch
Amid all the hoopla about grazing reform, the Bureau of Land Management raised its monthly grazing fees by 12 cents, up to $1.98 per cow-calf pair. Each year the agency adjusts the price from a 1966 base price to reflect lease rates on private land, cattle prices and livestock production costs. Last year the agency […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Yucca Mountain’s fault
Geologists working for the U.S. Geological Survey and the state of Nevada have discovered a new earthquake fault cutting directly through Yucca Mountain, the site slated for the nation’s first high-level nuclear waste repository. Geologists believe the new sheer zone, combined with the already known Ghost Dance Fault, could reduce the underground space available for […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Chevron gets a go-ahead
The Forest Service is going to let Chevron USA drill an exploratory well two miles north of the boundary of the High Uintas Wilderness in northern Utah. Wasatch-Cache Forest Supervisor Susan Giannettino’s decision allows Chevron to construct a bridge, 2.8 miles of new road and improve 2.1 miles of an existing road, as well as […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Agency reins in Wyoming rancher
After catching a Wyoming rancher illegally subleasing federal grazing permits, Forest Service officials cancelled half his grazing privileges and suspended the remainder for three years. The rancher, George Salisbury, who is also a longtime county commissioner and state legislator, insists he is innocent. “I owned the cattle, I just didn’t have the paperwork to justify […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Public foots DOE bill
The Department of Energy spent millions of dollars over a 32-month period defending its contractors from the public. A DOE internal document says that the agency paid $47 million to private attorneys from Oct. 1, 1990, through May 31, 1993, to defend its private contractors from class action lawsuits. The suits charged firms such as […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
State land lease in Idaho goes to the low bidder
In an abrupt turnaround, the Idaho Land Board took away a lease for state grazing land won by an environmentalist, then gave it back to the rancher who has used it for 20 years. At a Jan. 28 auction, Jon Marvel, founder of Idaho Watersheds Project, outbid Challis ranchers Will and Vangie Ingram for rights […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Agency ends cattle grazing at Idaho refuges
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Can she save ecosystems? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently revoked grazing privileges at two national wildlife refuges in eastern Idaho and is poised to do the same at two others in the state. Annual permits to run cattle in the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Grazing talks split both sides
Most environmentalists hate the idea that Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt would let a group of moderate ranchers and environmentalists from Colorado try to create a consensus plan on grazing reform. It’s like watering down a diluted version of a weak plan that was off to begin with, says Peter Angst, public-lands specialist with the […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Grazing: the shape of the future
Most combatants in the public-lands grazing battle are still in their bunkers, happily sending shells into opposing camps. Nevertheless, there hangs over this familiar and comfortable scene a small but dark cloud: the willingness among some former enemies to talk to each other. The possibility of negotiations is as unsettling in the West as it […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 1994: Can she save ecosystems?
Babbitt has a bad day in New Mexico
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – For two hours, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt preached the joys of consensus to New Mexico ranchers and environmentalists. And for two hours, the ranchers and environmentalists snapped at each other with the same gusto that has marked their exchanges for the past decade. The Jan. 20 meeting at the University of New […]