Located on a dusty mesa above the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, Alice Benally’s home on the Navajo Reservation sits less than a mile away from the massive smokestacks of the Four Corners power plant. For four decades, the electrons generated by the plant’s steam-propelled turbines zipped past her lantern-lit home on their […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
‘There was just some hard hittin’ going on’
LIND, Washington — In New Mexico, people tend to sort themselves by red and green, based on the kind of chile they prefer to eat. On the wheat farms of eastern Washington, folks divide into red and green camps, too. But here, they do it according to the kinds of combines — the giant machines […]
Posted inWotr
Booming anger
I find myself waving vigorously at faces I recognize these days. I wave hard at people I know like we’re close friends who’ve found ourselves in a big, unfriendly crowd. I’m happy to see them, and often they wave back just as vigorously. I live five miles out of Pinedale, Wyo., this town booming with […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
The merry — and meditative — farmer
In Blithe Tomato, California farmer Mike Madison writes about whatever strikes his fancy: neighborhood dogs, old tractors, and what it’s like to tangle with the local gophers for control of his tulips and olive trees. (He admits to losing 25 percent of his net income to the pests.) Madison’s collection of short essays makes it […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Saints speak out against nuclear waste
Although Mormons call Utah their promised land, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has rarely taken a stand in defense of its environment. Recently, however, the highest echelon of the church threw a protective arm around the state by opposing a nuclear waste storage site near Salt Lake City. In a three-sentence statement […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Energy workers, union members protest drilling
In Wyoming, the outcry against oil and gas drilling is getting louder — and now it’s coming from some unlikely quarters. Since 2005, the Bureau of Land Management has been auctioning off parcels in the Wyoming Range of the Bridger-Teton National Forest for oil and gas development. The most recent lease sale on June 6 […]
Posted inWotr
A mining town gets a second chance
Historically, the mining industry has not given its towns a second chance. When ore runs out or metal prices head south, as both always do, the industry waves good-bye and leaves mining towns to confront their fates alone. They can either join the West’s long list of ghost towns, or figure out some way to […]
Posted inWotr
Slow down, you go too fast
These are difficult times for people like me. I love to drive. Nothing soothes me more than a long, empty stretch of road and a full tank of gas and no known destination. I love the rumble of the road, spotting a café in a town, stopping for pie and coffee and listening to locals […]
Posted inWotr
Health is a casualty on the fast track to gas drilling
The 20 miles of interstate highway between the small towns of Silt and Parachute in western Colorado slice through a landscape of sagebrush and mesas. There are few exits through this section of Garfield County, where the local population of deer and elk rivals the number of ranchers, retirees and others who live here. Susan […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Solar companies roll the dice
Gambling that the economics of energy are changing, two new companies have proposed building the largest solar power plant in the world. New Solar Ventures and Solar Torx, both based in Phoenix, Ariz., plan to construct a solar power plant and a factory to manufacture the necessary photovoltaic cells. The 300-megawatt plant near Deming, N.M., […]
Posted inWotr
Rhubarb is the season’s gift to us
Are you enjoying rhubarb season? When the robin nests in the cherry tree and thunderclouds tease us by gathering every afternoon, rhubarb is ready. I’m weeding among leaves of rhubarb the size of TV trays when a woman stops jogging by and asks, “What’s that plant?” “Rhubarb,” I tell her; our grandmothers called it “pie […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Good Samaritan bill could clean up old mines
The Clean Water Act inadvertently hampers efforts to clean up thousands of orphaned hardrock mines across the West. Legislation introduced in April by Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., may help solve the problem. Under the act, anyone who attempts to clean up acid drainage from a mine becomes liable for continuing or future pollution from the […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Magic Valley Uprising
How an Idaho citizens’ coalition gunned down a dirty power plant — and what it means for the West
Posted inWotr
Corn ethanol isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
This was supposed to be a cakewalk, a no-brainer, a slam-dunk. Ethanol from corn lessened our dependence on foreign oil, they told us. It helped our struggling Midwestern farmers. It was much better for the environment. Who could not support this? As it turns out, quite a few of us. Ethanol plants are sprouting like […]
Posted inWotr
Wacky California is pragmatic leader of the West
The Interior West has long regarded California as a sort of rich eccentric uncle whose behavior is an embarrassment to the rest of the family. I have some firsthand knowledge of this attitude, because I am a fourth-generation Californian, who moved to rural western Colorado in 1992. The sidelong glances I received from a few […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Corporations ask feds to set emissions limits
Last month, executives from six of the country’s largest energy companies made a startling request to federal lawmakers: Set mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. At an April 4 climate conference held by New Mexico Sens. Pete Domenici, R, and Jeff Bingaman, D, the leaders of Shell, General Electric and others said they would prefer […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Guest farmworkers get a new deal
Foreign workers in the West’s fields and orchards have a new bodyguard: the United Farm Workers of America. Last month, the union signed a contract with Global Horizons, a California-based company that’s one of the country’s largest suppliers of foreign agricultural labor. At peak harvest, the company employs more than 4,000 workers in 28 states, […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Hobby miners flock to public streams
Growing pastime raises concerns about an outdated law
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Stargazer aims his scopes at gas industry
Name Perry Walker Vocation Astronomer, engineer Age 61 Home Base 10-acre hilltop near Daniel, Wyoming Known for Keeping an eye on the air pollution caused by natural gas drillers He says “I can talk to these (natural gas) operators about their technology. I can understand just about anything they throw at me. And I find […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
The push is on for ‘clean coal’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Magic Valley Uprising.” Westwide, the power-plant industry has proposed building several dozen new coal-fired plants — the biggest such buildup since the 1980s. But at the same time, the industry is moving toward a new “clean coal” era, nudged by citizen uprisings like the […]