There’s nothing new about a natural resource boom and its ugly twin, the bust. When reporting on how these economic hurricanes blow through communities, writers tend to tell similar narratives. First, there’s the sepia-toned photo of what the place used to look like, maybe a quote or two from some old-timer at the local diner […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inGoat
Protecting the Piceance
The dirt roads cutting across the Piceance Basin, a lucrative oil and gas reserve in northwestern Colorado, spread like veins, running through patches of green shrubs and tracing the tops of hard ridgelines. Some lead to active drill sites, with metal rigs thrusting skyward. Others end at patches of brown earth that show signs of […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2012: The Evolution of Wildlife Tech
Producing more power means using more water
Locked up inside the 6 million years of sediment that makes up the Green River Formation, which extends across mostly public lands in Colorado and Utah, may be the equivalent of a few trillion barrels of oil. Even if only half of it is recoverable, the oil shale of the Mountain West could one day […]
Posted inWotr
If we don’t get our energy here, where will we get it?
A few weeks ago, a Texas oilman cornered me at a brewery in the high-mountain town of Ouray, in western Colorado. Some young women from Moab had just taken the table next to my friend and myself, when the fellow wandered over to buy us a round. Eventually, he revealed that he worked for ConocoPhillips. […]
Posted inGoat
End of an era?
Last Wednesday, to rather muffled fanfare, the Department of the Interior released a new set of rules that will make it easier for tribes and Indian landowners to lease their property for economic development. Native Americans will be able to do the things that private landowners do all the time: apply for a mortgage; establish […]
Posted inWotr
A rancher must sell out after losing a court case against a gas company
It was a hot day in the summer of 2009, and Dow Rippy was out on his four-wheeler in western Colorado, checking on his cows. As he drove, tracing the southern edge of his property, Rippy followed the route of a gas pipeline that the Houston-based gas company, SG Interests, was building across the ranch. […]
Posted inGoat
Cementing demand for coal
Those who are fighting to keep coal in the ground, and the dirty byproducts of burning it out of the air, must at times feel like they’re playing whack-a-mole. Every time they score a victory, the industry finds a way around it. That’s exactly what’s happening in the southwestern corner of Colorado, where a coal […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Protecting the forests, and maybe the deserts, too
At an emotional press conference in Jackson a few weeks ago, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead expounded on his love for Wyoming, recalling how his family taught him to revere “the beauty … the open space, the clean air, the wildlife, the recreational opportunity” found in the state’s mountain forests. He reminisced about the trips that […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
Agrichemical companies power up genetically modified seeds
One sunny afternoon, Andy Nagy and Donald Shouse drove past apple trees, plum orchards and sugar beet fields to a farm north of Twin Falls, Idaho. The late August setting was one of pastoral beauty, but the two researchers concentrated on the dirt underfoot. A farmer had asked them to come investigate some problem weeds. […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Costly new geothermal technology could edge out fossil fuels
At the northern edge of the Geysers, the world’s largest geothermal complex, which sprawls over nearly 40 square miles north of Santa Rosa, Calif., Houston-based power company Calpine is conducting an experiment. On the surface, not much sets the project apart from the 18 ridge-top power plants and dozens of other drilling platforms here, most […]
Posted inGoat
For sale: The North Fork Valley
A few weeks ago, a Texas oilman cornered me at the Ouray Brewery. My friend and I were in Colorado’s “Little Switzerland” for a hike, a hot spring and a beer. When some attractive young women from Moab took the table next to ours, a camo-decked, rosy-faced older fellow who had been singing the “Green […]
Posted inGoat
Much ado about mutton
Peeking inside the freezer at Paonia, Colo.’s local meat market, you’d never know wholesale lamb prices are nearly at an all-time low. A pound of lamb chops costs $16.48; ground lamb is $10.14. But at the other end of the supply chain, ranchers are bringing in less than 90 cents a pound, far below what […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2012: Nowhere to run
Economics, not environmental regs, are battering coal power
This fall, as temperatures cooled down and politics heated up, red, white and blue signs sprouted in Delta County in western Colorado, just down from the North Fork Valley’s three huge underground coal mines. “Stop the war on coal. Fire Obama,” they say. By the time you read this, the world will know who won […]
Posted inGoat
King Coal is still King
Last week, as I was working on a story about the so-called “War on Coal” being waged by Obama (spoiler alert: It’s cheap natural gas, not the current administration, that’s the culprit), I ran into an article indicating that Peabody Energy, the biggest coal company in the world, plans to lay off about a thousand […]
Posted inRange
In the West, the rare earth rush is on
Recent news about the scarcity of rare earth minerals caught my attention just as I was reluctantly learning how to use my new Droid Razr. I am about a decade late for the smart-phone revolution, as I am with most gadgetry. You are welcome to laugh at me for this. I think I have the […]
Posted inGoat
Citizen oversight fizzles in Wyoming gas patch
The Pinedale Anticline gas field is a striking spot to visit. Even with the West-wide drilling slowdown caused by a recent bottoming out of natural gas prices, the place was hopping one hot evening last July as I explored its confusing web of roads during a reporting trip. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be […]
Posted inRange
Of coal and cows in eastern Montana
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House As the Montana Department of Environmental Quality mulls an expansion of a coal strip mine east of Billings, the public has an opportunity to give input on what environmental factors the agency should consider. Chugging away in the northern corner of the well-endowed Powder River Basin, the Rosebud mine is […]