They came shrouded by the early morning darkness near San Jose, Calif., equipped with night-vision goggles, AK-47s and an apparent lust to spill some transformer fluid. They cut some telephone cables and then, according to the Wall Street Journal: Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
The great electric road trip
Blanding, a remote city of 3,504 in one of Utah’s poorest counties, received the state’s first Tesla Supercharger station in January. City Manager Jeremy Redd says it’s an ideal spot to power up an $80,000 electric car: “We’re halfway between Arches and Monument Valley,” and within an hour of Hovenweep and Natural Bridges national monuments. […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
The Latest: Nevada charges renewable energy companies for eco mitigation
BackstoryLarge-scale renewable energy projects benefit the climate but can harm ecosystems. Critics fear that industrial solar arrays planned for California and Nevada will ruin viewsheds, guzzle water, and destroy the habitat of threatened desert tortoises (“Sacrificial land: Will renewable energy devour the Mojave Desert?” HCN, 4/15/13). In October 2013, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
The Hanford Whistleblowers
For decades, insiders have reported problems in the cleanup of our worst nuclear mess — but is anyone listening?
Posted inGoat
Enviros and industry agree: Keystone XL means more oil. Why does the State Department disagree?
It’s hard to know where to begin unpacking the U.S. State Department’s Final Environmental Impact Statement on the controversial Keystone XL, the transcontinental pipeline that has been proposed to transport heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. On one hand, the document admits that from “wells to […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Touring Hanford
How you can sign up to take a tour of the Hanford Site, one of the most polluted places on the planet.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
The Latest: EPA released a final assessment of Pebble Mine impacts
BackstoryThe proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region could yield $300 billion in copper, gold and molybdenum, but also harm the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs, a vibrant fishing industry and some of North America’s last salmon-based cultures (“Worst place for a major mine?” HCN, 11/25/13). In 2010, nine Native tribes asked the U.S. […]
Posted inGoat
‘Ag-gag’ law that thwarts investigations on factory farms is challenged in Utah
Last year was a good one for whistleblowers on factory farms: not one of the 11 “ag-gag” bills introduced across the U.S. in 2013 became law, and so far in 2014 two such bills, in the New Hampshire and Indiana legislatures, have been defeated by animal rights activists. What agribusiness calls farm protection laws – […]
Posted inGoat
New farm bill still favors big ag
We’ve been following the glacial progress of the latest Farm Bill for three years now. This massive bill, passed every five years, doles out nearly $1 trillion for food stamps and school lunches, farm subsidies, and conservation programs. The Farm Bill got its start during the Dust Bowl years, when it was meant as temporary […]
Posted inArticles
Community responds to a film on its own ill-fated uranium mill
Residents from Montrose County, Colorado’s West End recently gathered for a screening of “Uranium Drive-In,” a documentary that tells the story of the ill-fated Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill, and a tight-knit community desperate for jobs and some hint of a brighter economy. KVNF Radio’s Travis Bubenik was on hand for the screening at the New […]
Posted inGoat
Final EPA report is the latest in a series of blows to Alaska’s Pebble Mine
Last summer, the excavation of some of the world’s richest mineral deposits – and the degradation of some of the world’s richest salmon habitat – seemed well within the grasp of global mining interests. But with the release of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s long-awaited environmental assessment on Jan. 15, the development of Pebble Mine […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Is basic solar technology the key to an energy revolution?
Plain old photovoltaic panels and innovations in energy storage and distributed generation could remake our electricity system.
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Oakland transforms waste to renewable energy
More than 100 semi trucks enter the back gate of the Oakland, Calif., wastewater treatment plant every day, carrying tons of unusual and often disgusting freight: tons of cheese whey, chicken blood and heads, used cooking oil. And yet wastewater director Bennett Horenstein enthusiastically welcomes it. It is, after all, free fuel. Machines pulverize the […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Battling plasticulture
An Oregon company turns plastic waste into fuel.
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Social media startup cuts food waste
Last spring, following a Sunday farmers market, Nick Papadopoulos, general manager of Bloomfield Farms in Sonoma County, Calif., surveyed his unsold produce: 40 pounds of soon-to-wilt organic broccoli. Normally, it would end up in the compost pile. Instead, he snapped a picture and posted it to the farm’s Facebook page: “We’d love to get this […]
Posted inGoat
If the gas industry wants enviro cred, it should embrace methane regulation
Shift more of the nation off coal-powered electricity and onto that supplied by natural gas, and what do you get? A significant reduction in the carbon emissions driving the alarming climatic shifts we already experience in our daily lives. That’s the theory anyway, based on the fact that natural gas produces about half the carbon […]
Posted inGoat
What would lifting the crude oil export ban mean for pump prices and energy independence?
Sometimes it seems as if the energy industry wants to turn the New World back into a resource colony for the rest of the globe. First, coal companies, seeing a reduction in demand domestically, tried to sell more coal overseas. Then, thanks to the shale gas glut, the fossil fuel industry has been trying to […]
Posted inWotr
The sounds of silence, Eastern style
I once read about a lock-tender who spent his life accompanied by the sound of rushing water going over the lock’s dam. Then, the dam was taken down, ending a lifetime of constant background noise, which, although perhaps a pleasant-enough sound, was still, well, constant. His greatest surprise was finally being able to hear the birds. I […]
Posted inGoat
Navajo Nation’s purchase of a New Mexico coalmine is a mixed bag
The Navajo Nation got coal for Christmas this year – literally. On December 30, a Navajo tribal corporation finally completed its drawn-out purchase of the Navajo Mine, the sole supplier of coal to New Mexico’s Four Corners Power Plant. Depending on whom you ask, this is either a historic milestone for tribal energy independence, […]