On New Year’s Day, the city of Boulder, Colo., started down a road toward energy independence by decoupling with their electrical utility, Xcel Energy. After three years of negotiations for more green power failed, Boulder let its 20-year franchise agreement with Xcel expire at the end of 2010. When voters in the environmentally-minded city approved […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inJanuary 24, 2011: Serendipity in the Desert
Toxic soil, East to West
I read with interest Rebecca Clarren’s article about lead arsenate and other chemicals contaminating old orchard sites in the West (HCN, 12/6/10). Alas, as we Eastern morel foragers have discovered, one does not have to go West to encounter this problem. In a recent paper, Elinoar Shavit, a fellow member of the New York Mycological […]
Posted inArticles
Pinon Ridge uranium mill clears state hurdle
Long-dormant industry could rise again in Colorado
Posted inGoat
Bad Omens for Arch Coal
State officials in Montana and Washington are cracking down on projects that could expand coal production and trade in several Western states. Arch Coal Inc., a St. Louis-based company with a major stake in the expansion, doesn’t seem the least bit daunted–though maybe they should be. On January 12, the company paid $25 million for […]
Posted inRange
New hope for old mines
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House For all their knowledge of the land, miners, whose legacy lives long in Colorado, had little thought of the long-term environmental consequences of their work. For over 150 years, coal, gold, silver, uranium, gypsum and limestone, among other resources, have been drilled, blasted and hauled from their hiding […]
Posted inGoat
Proposed Colorado uranium mill gets key state go-ahead
Web only: Watch an audio slideshow about the proposed Piñon Ridge uranium mill. Colorado took one step closer to kickstarting a new Western uranium boom this Wednesday, when state regulators approved a license for the Piñon Ridge uranium mill. The western Colorado mill — which could be the first in the nation in over HCN […]
Posted inBlog
Extracting the West
As another year begins, extractive industries continue to mine the West for opportunity, even when the economic activity they promise has little to do with the American West. Now it’s increasingly clear that battles that seem localized to the West have far-reaching impacts. The West has long been treated as a transitional zone, as if […]
Posted inBlog
Not in my backyard?
The New York Times reporter Kirk Johnson gave the NIMBY question some thought in a story and blog post this week profiling the political tug of war between anti-uranium milling NIMBYs in Telluride, Colo., and those who live in Naturita, Nucla and nearby towns around Colorado’s Paradox Valley. Many residents in those towns see the […]
Posted inArticles
High Country Views, Big solar marches on
This fall, the federal government began putting serious muscle behind solar energy development on public land in the Southwest. In the past few months alone, the Interior Department has given the nod to nine large-scale solar farms in California and Nevada. The feds have had good intentions to kick-start renewable energy development on public land […]
Posted inGoat
In the zones
You’ve got to hand it to Ken Salazar: Never before has an Interior Secretary been so methodically driven to make U.S. public lands safe for renewable energy development. Unlike the men and women who have held his position in previous administrations, especially the last one, Salazar has put solar, wind and their attendant transmission needs […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
Oil and Water Don’t Mix with California Agriculture
KERN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA From the “Petroleum Highway” — a rutted, dusty stretch of California State Route 33 — you can see the jostling armies of two giant industries. To the east, relentless rows of almonds and pistachios march to the horizon. To the west, an armada of oil wells sweeps to the foothills of the […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
Reclamation reality check
The artist’s rendering of the post-reclamation Rosemont Copper Mine shows a striking difference in landforms between the graded mine-waste pile and the surrounding undisturbed terrain (HCN, 11/22/10). Particularly noticeable is the difference in what geomorphologists call drainage density, or the total length of drainage channels per acre. The unvarying slopes and rock rundowns in the […]
Posted inGoat
Compromise in the Wyoming Range
Three days after my recent story about a proposed energy development in the Wyoming Range’s Noble Basin rolled off the presses, the Forest Service released their much-anticipated draft environmental impact statement for the project. The Forest Service’s “preferred alternative” would let Plains Exploration and Production (or PXP) develop the necessary roads and infrastructure to drill […]
Posted inBlog
Hope for a cleaner energy future
In my work with the tough coal and environmental justice issues in the Southwest and the tougher, diverse communities I am honored to work with here, I see at key moments a hope for the future that can’t be snuffed out. In the past few months, there have been historical and landmark events that continue […]
Posted inGoat
Solar setbacks
On Thursday morning, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), finally sunk a shovel into the ground for the transmission project every enviro loves to hate: The 100-mile, $1.9 billion, 500-kilovolt Sunrise Powerlink, slated to skim across desert-and-forest wilderness as it carries power to the hamlet sprawl along California’s southernmost coast. Arnold Schwarzenegger, ever more flamboyantly […]
Posted inGoat
Would you like some DDT with that organic cucumber?
Consumers might assume that buying organic means the produce they purchase lacks chemical residues and the farmers and farm workers growing organic crops aren’t exposed to toxic chemicals. This may not always be the case. Organic farmers across the nation must contend with the possibility that the land they farm has some of the very […]
Posted inArticles
High Country Views: Anticline deer decline
The 300-square-mile Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming has been called America’s Serengeti. It’s crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn antelope, and is a sage grouse stronghold. But it’s got riches below ground too – the third largest natural gas reserve in the United States. Development of the gas reserve has been underway for […]
Posted inBlog
Small Nevada tribe sues BLM over coal ash landfill
At a Southern Nevada Health District public hearing this October, farmer Norm Tom said that he and his tribe had “seen a lot of death” in the last 35 years, and he placed the blame squarely on the neighboring Reid Gardner coal-fueled power plant, run by Nevada’s primary power company, NV Energy. “Every time we […]
Posted inDecember 6, 2010: Toxic Past, Toxic Present
The supposedly protected Wyoming Range faces new energy development
Legacy energy leases remain in prime hunting lands