Updated 11/7/2011 By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Greens got what seemed like a rare bit of good news when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) last week released their Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Northern Arizona Proposed Withdrawal. The report looks at the potential impacts of removing federal lands near the Grand Canyon […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
BLM experiments with camouflage to hide renewable power structures
On a late summer day, Bureau of Land Management visual resource specialist Sherry Roche lugged a 50-pound plywood panel from a white pickup onto the bare hillside of Hubbard Mesa near Rifle, Colo. Others lashed it to the ground with climbing rope, then stepped back to see if its specially engineered pattern of pixels faded […]
Posted inGoat
Coal consolidation
A just-announced federal plan to merge the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement into the much-larger Bureau of Land Management is drawing mixed reactions. Some environmental groups wonder if changing the agency’s bureaucratic home will end its long-running coziness with industry. Yet critics of the proposal view it as one more attempt from the […]
Posted inGoat
Boulder’s energy future on the ballot
Glossy propaganda has been piling up in my mailbox for months in the lead up to Election Day in Boulder, Colo. Next to a frowney-faced electrical outlet, an ad warns of rate hikes and other terrors: “Municipalization means serious risks to rates and our community’s energy goals.” The slick, full-color fliers come from the Boulder Smart Energy Coalition, […]
Posted inGoat
Solar energy on public lands: The 80,000 have spoken
If the bumpy mountains that rise up between the California desert city of Twentynine Palms and the western flood plain of the Colorado River don’t look like anything else on this earth, it’s because they aren’t: The living things that flourish here can’t get a toehold anywhere else; once they’re gone from here, they’re gone […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: Uranium — To mine or not to mine?
Though not as movie villain-worthy as its cousin plutonium, uranium, the naturally occurring element used to make nuclear weapons and fuel nuke plants, is just as contentious, as illustrated in this week’s headlines. On Wednesday, the Obama administration released a plan for a 20-year ban on uranium mining within a million acres of public land […]
Posted inWotr
How can “woofers” stay on the farm?
This summer, my eyes were opened to a new movement. My teachers were a bunch of young adults who worked for free in exchange for learning and a place to stay — interns, but interns of an unusual kind. My partner and I co-direct a sustainability education program in a small town in western Colorado, […]
Posted inRange
Drilling in state parks is more pavement on the road to hell
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House My first year in college I had kitchen cleanup duty with a friend who enthusiastically splashed bleach and ammonia into a bucket while she was mopping the floors. Almost immediately, the toxic vapor had our heads swimming and our eyes burning. As the entire dorm was being evacuated I […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Remediating a Superfund sacrifice zone on Montana’s Clark Fork river
I spent last summer and fall floating down the country’s largest Superfund site in a canoe. I was living in a borrowed cabin near Georgetown Lake, about 20 miles from the headwaters of Montana’s Clark Fork River. I wanted a closer look at a disaster before it was undone. Speak the words “Montana river,” and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Redwoods or red wine?
CALIFORNIA It’s almost too audacious to be true: Two wineries in Northern California’s Sonoma County want to clear 2,000 acres of redwoods to make room for new grape farms, reports the Los Angeles Times. Premier Pacific Vineyards, which owns the 20,000-acre ironically named “Preservation Ranch,” and Artesa Vineyards want to cash in on the boom […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Survival and opportunism in Butte: A review of The Richest Hill on Earth
The Richest Hill on EarthRichard S. Wheeler320 pages, hardcover: $29.99.Forge, December. In the run-up to an election year, what can the past reveal about public figures and the role they play in shaping business policies? Montana author Richard S. Wheeler’s historical novel The Richest Hill on Earth dramatizes the rivalry between the 19th century “Copper […]
Posted inGoat
Pity the Green Pioneer
Back in the early part of this decade, when I spent the last week of every August at Burning Man camping in a village called the Alternative Energy Zone, I got a valuable lesson in the intricacies of renewable energy development. I had been trying for some time to coax a couple of electric scooters […]
Posted inBlog
Cadmium’s presence in inexpensive jewelry can be dangerous
Those of us here in the West have become sadly accustomed to news about contamination associated with copper and uranium mining, especially in recent years as these industries have experienced resurgence. However, a new variant of this disturbing topic has arisen the last few months that has a strong potential to affect urban dwellers and others who […]
Posted inWotr
Save the land by saving the rancher
The behavior of Congress might seem unusually erratic, but one thing can be confidently predicted: The Interior Appropriations bill for 2012 will contain the largest cuts in conservation funding in 40 years. Look for lots of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth in environmental circles. For many reasons, though, I see this as a godsend for […]
Posted inGoat
Speculating on solar
When the Bureau of Land Management’s Southern Nevada office sent out a letter last week rejecting Goldman Sachs’ applications to develop renewable energy on public land, you had to wonder: What was an investment bank doing in the Nevada desert? And you wouldn’t be the only one asking. The Associated Press reporter who broke the […]
Posted inGoat
Methyl iodide’s toxic saga continues
California’s approval of a dangerous and controversial agricultural chemical, methyl iodide, came further into question last week when new documents showed the fumigant’s registration process was flawed. The documents, which were made public as part of a lawsuit challenging the state’s approval of the chemical, show the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation cut and pasted […]
Posted inGoat
Wilderness for ANWR?
After decades of wrangling over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a draft federal plan for the first time includes a “preliminary recommendation” to protect the disputed Arctic coastal plain as a designated wilderness area. Home to expansive caribou herds, musk ox, polar bears and grizzlies, the coastal plain holds an estimated 4 […]
Posted inRange
In megaloads battle, has David slain Goliath again?
By Nick Gier, NewWest.net Is there not a cause? Let no man’s heart fail him. —David facing Goliath (Samuel 1:17) Right in the midst of their battle against ExxonMobil, residents along Idaho’s Highway 12 received an email from an unlikely but eminently appropriate source. An Israeli activist fighting gas exploration in the Elah Valley found […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
A plunderer is a plunderer
Kudos to Jonathan Thompson for bringing attention to the growing plunder of Western resources by multinational corporations (HCN, 7/25/11). Not only are rare minerals being extracted at a record rate, more importantly, irreplaceable wilderness areas are being devastated in the process. And what about those American corporations that shamelessly violate and destroy our precious public […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2011: Looking for Balance in Navajoland
Cleaner, shmeaner
First, I commend HCN on the excellent article, “The Global West,” which skillfully presents how energy markets are affecting resource extraction in the West (HCN, 7/25/11). I’m going to get as many of my friends and family members to read it as I can. That said, it drove me nuts to read this in one […]