By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Somewhere in the California desert, the Mohave ground squirrel is safe from solar panels, for now. After being sued over concerns for the critter, the developer Solar Millennium withdrew plans for its 250-megawatt solar station. It’s just one of a flurry of legal protests to several large-scale solar […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inGoat
Ozone in the air
Ah, fresh desert air, scented with sage, heady with …. ozone?? This winter, rural parts of Utah and Wyoming with lots of energy development have sometimes had higher levels of unhealthy ozone than big metropolitan areas like L.A.and Salt Lake City. Back in 2008, the Bureau of Land Management released a plan to manage 1.8 […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2011: High Tension
Educate on!
I graduated from Greenville High School in 1997, and I wish the natural resources program had been offered back then (HCN, 2/7/11). We need more of this type of education in our schools — and we need it soon. The more we get kids involved in caring for and studying natural resources, the brighter the […]
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Exploring rural communities, food and environment
With this week’s release of its Atlas of Small Town and Rural America, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has given citizens a nifty tool to explore data on the lesser-populated parts of the country. The interactive atlas provides a nice mix of statistics, combining numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2011: Palin, politics, and predator control
Unpacking health hazards in fracking’s chemical cocktail
Meet the Master Well Formula — the chemical cocktail that Encana Corp. will use to hydraulically fracture every natural gas well it drills in Wyoming’s Jonah Field. Drillers mix 11,800 gallons of this solution with over a million gallons of water and a heavy dose of sand, inject it underground to release gas deposits, and […]
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Yet another tar-sands hazard
Ever hear of “DilBit”? It sounds like a new kind of snack pickle, or maybe a little cat owned by Dilbert, the geeky cartoon character. Actually, it’s something far less benign – the raw oil extracted from tar sands development in Canada. Diluted bitumen (also known as “DilBit”) … is significantly more acidic and corrosive […]
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Fish (farm) on
If you dine on salmon in the Rockies, you’re used to having fish travel by interstate to your dinner plate. But even if you live on the coast, don’t be surprised if your next succulent fillet actually comes from the other side of the planet. Unless a menu says “wild,” the seafood special probably grew […]
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The birds and the blades
Driving through rolling hills into California’s Bay Area on Interstate 580, it’s impossible to miss the thousands of windmills spinning in the incessant breeze off the Pacific. The Altamont wind farm, built during the 1970s oil crisis, was an early example of the West’s clean energy potential. But there’s a startling unintended consequence of all […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Inside Taft High
Take a trip inside the first high school in the country devoted to oil production with teacher Ted Pendergrass and his students. You can catch High Country Views approximately every other week. Available via our RSS feed, and for download now through iTunes.
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Fast Times at California’s Petroleum High
It’s fifth period, just after lunch, and the students of the Taft Oil Technology Academy are in a pickle. The Oildorado festival, a celebration held every five years in October to honor the California town’s patron industry, is already under way, and they still haven’t built their float for Saturday’s parade. And this year’s Oildorado […]
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USDA to farmers: plant genetically modified crops!
The biotech fairy must be whispering a whole lot of sweet nothings (made with genetically-modified sugar) into U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s ear. Or something. In late January, the Secretary announced the USDA’s decision to completely deregulate genetically modified alfalfa, allowing it to be planted anywhere, without restriction. Just about a week later, […]
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Conservation progress in the Wyoming Range
On January 25, Jacque Buchanan, the supervisor of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, made a somewhat unusual decision when she told the Bureau of Land Management to buy back 44,720 acres (roughly 70 square miles) worth of gas leases — called 44-7 for short — that the agency sold at auction in 2005 and 2006. Environmental […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
The latest: Biomass emissions
BackstoryThe West’s nascent biomass industry faces many challenges as power producers try to turn things like beetle-killed trees and switchgrass into energy. Regulatory uncertainty remains a problem: Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules that require industrial sources, like coal-fired power plants, to obtain air permits and limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Biomass-fueled […]
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Ethical metalsmiths
Around here, one sort of business seems to be surviving the Great Recession just fine: those “We Buy Gold!” places. Most seem to be sidelines of related outfits, such as independent jewelers and pawnshops, but I’ve also seen them cropping up in such surprising locations as tire repair shops and convenience stores. Another variant is […]
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Another round against hardrock handouts
The frontier days are long gone, but hardrock mining companies still do business like it’s the Wild West, with big government handouts and few taxes on spoils reaped from public lands. Back in the day, generous subsidies were used to boost mining in remote parts of the West. Today many of those old-fangled policies, including […]
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Sittin’ pretty in energy country
There’s a whole lot of oil coming out of North Dakota these days — so much that pipelines can’t handle it all. This August, production in the Bakken Shale was 83 percent above 2008 levels, and the boom times aren’t expected to ebb anytime soon. One oil executive recently crowed that the Bakken’s recoverable reserves […]
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A “New Era” for Indian Country?
“The Indian Nations can do the work–if the federal government will clear the way for us to exercise our liberty and thus make a new era and a more perfect union.” That was Jefferson Keel yesterday, President of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), in his State of Indian Nations Address. His point, very […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Small poultry farmers grapple with lack of slaughterhouses
Producers in Oregon and beyond can’t find places to butcher chickens
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Decades of drilling
Western states’ energy extraction compared to others
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
The latest: Wyoming Range
Update on HCN’s coverage of natural gas development