BackstoryUtah’s tar sands could yield from 12 billion to 30 billion recoverable barrels of yet-untapped oil, so in 2008, Calgary-based U.S. Oil Sands proposed mining the remote Tavaputs Plateau. Though the planned 213-acre mine is small, a profitable tar sands operation could set a precedent, and environmental groups like Moab-based Living Rivers have fought it […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inArticles
In North Dakota, booms past and present
A photographer returns home to examine changes to the landscape.
Posted inGoat
The water-energy nexus could become a collision in a warming world
If you thought fracking was a water-guzzling and violent way to get the oil and gas flowing from shale, then you should check out oil shale* retorting. Earlier this month, details were made public regarding an oil shale project Chevron proposes for western Colorado. Of particular note was the amount of energy and water it […]
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Pebble Mine: Alaska sides with mining corporation, tribes back EPA
Victories in clean air and energy politics may be among the Obama Administration’s lasting legacies, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t been getting much love from rural communities lately. Here in western Colorado coal-mining country, a hand-painted sign reflects the opinion of many local miners: “Frack the EPA and the war on energy!” In […]
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New BLM plan weighs sage grouse and oil in Wyoming
Governor Mead hopes the plan will keep the bird off the endangered species list.
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The transformative power of… efficiency
As streamlined shorebirds rose and dove amid sailboats in San Diego’s Mission Bay one recent afternoon, scores of energy wonks gathered in the over-cooled ballrooms of the Hyatt Regency. They’d come to deliberate on the impending disruption to the conventional electrical industry, brought on by tightening carbon restrictions and ever more people making electricity on […]
Posted inGoat
BP energy review reveals lingering addiction to fossil fuels
The 2014 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, released this month, is a rather dry document made up of spreadsheets and a few charts filled with stats on global energy production and consumption during 2013. But look behind the numbers, and what you’ll find is anything but dull: A detailed accounting of how much energy […]
Posted inWotr
Cannabis could go Champagne in western Colorado
In the garden of my cousin, Sepp, in Germany’s Black Forest, there is a big tree that produces lots of yellow plums every year. Sepp, a retired forest worker, keeps the grass cut very short around his Mirabellenbaum, so he doesn’t miss a single fallen fruit. Every evening in the fall, he gathers the plums […]
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Sons of Wichita: understanding the enigmatic Koch brothers
The Koch brothers have become a household names in the past decade. Three out of four brothers are major players in energy development in the West and across the country. Two are powerbrokers for the conservative right and have been at the forefront of bringing libertarianism into the political mainstream. In the energy and political […]
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EPA carbon regulations will not destroy the electrical grid
Just days after the Obama administration announced it would implement rules to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., bemoaned the collateral damage the so-called war on coal would have on the electrical grid. “I am greatly concerned EPA’s rules – particularly in combination with one another – will result in […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
How mining transforms the West’s ranching communities
Photographs of people and places in flux.
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The West’s crucial 2014 U.S. Senate races
The big question of the 2014 midterm elections — other than, “Eric Cantor lost?!” — is which party will emerge with control of the U.S. Senate. A number of Western states will host Senate races this year – Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Alaska – but only three will be hotly contested, […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Suckers for gold
Suction dredging for gold is basically a recreational activity. Required equipment: gasoline-powered dredge, sluice box, wetsuit and scuba gear. With a 4-inch-diameter hose, you vacuum up what’s on the bottom of rivers – stuff like gravel, woody debris, plants, mussels, snails, insect larvae, crayfish, frogs, salamanders, fish eggs, fish fry and, occasionally, gold. I have […]
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How to cut carbon: Change the way utilities make money
State renewable energy standards, imposed on “investor-owned” utilities that supply 75 percent of the power in the United States, have long stood stalwart in the space left empty by the absence of a federal energy or climate policy. They have devalued climate-changing coal and encouraged wind and solar, particularly in the West, where the kind […]
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As black lung spreads, a fight over miner protection
The federal government and the nation’s largest coal industry association are in a legal battle over how to best protect miners from the gradual comeback of black lung. In April, the Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration issued its final rule to reduce miners’ exposure to coal dust, calling it a “historic step […]
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Massive Colorado mudslide nearly clobbered gas wells
How much should energy developers plan for natural disaster?
Posted inWotr
Suckers for gold: recreational dredgers can wreck stream beds
Suction dredging for gold is basically a recreational activity. Required equipment: gasoline-powered dredge, sluice box, wetsuit and scuba gear. With a 4-inch-diameter hose you vacuum up what’s on the bottom of rivers — stuff like gravel, woody debris, plants, mussels, snails, insect larvae, crayfish, frogs, salamanders, fish eggs, fish fry and, occasionally, gold. I have […]
Posted inGoat
In North Dakota, signs of changing attitudes towards oil and gas development
In February 2013, Scott Skokos was sitting in the North Dakota state capitol at a meeting of the Industrial Commission, the three-member body that approves every oil and gas permit in the state. Normally, says Skokos, a field organizer for the Dakota Resource Council, the commission green lights all the requests before them — public […]
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Latest agricultural census shows a small-farm revolution
They’re growing houses in the fields between the townsAnd the Starlight drive-in movie’s closing downThe road is gone to the way it was beforeAnd the spaces won’t be spaces anymore Thus sang John Gorka in his heartbreaking 1991 ballad, Houses in the Field, about families selling their farms to developers, who “paid better than the […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Best use for hayfields
We can argue about who owns the water, yet ultimately the West has a long legal history and an exact answer: We call them water rights for a reason (“What the hay?” HCN, 4/28/14). The owner of those rights – that personal property – should ultimately have the ability to sell the property to the […]