The predictable re-emergence of mad cow disease on American shores brings to mind the Mandarin Chinese word for crisis — a combination of the ideograms for danger as well as opportunity. The danger is obvious and growing, as mathematical probability tells us there must be more than two mad cows among the 112 million or […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inAugust 22, 2005: A Military Town Fights for its Life
Feds oppose state’s effort to empower landowners
Wyoming’s new “split-estate” law was meant to give property owners more control over energy development on land where the underlying minerals are owned by someone else, usually the federal government. Now, the law has hit a huge obstacle — the Bush administration. Years of lobbying by ranchers and environmentalists persuaded the Legislature to pass the […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Industry walks a fuzzy line between preservation and extortion
Gas company offers millions for permission to maximize drilling
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Birds get a break from blades
This winter, the whirling blades of half of the more than 5,000 windmills perched atop Altamont Pass will grind to a halt for two months. That plan will allow migrating birds to fly safely through the area. Under new county permitting rules, the windmill companies, which supply power for 120,000 homes, will halt their turbines […]
Posted inWotr
County Fair: ‘I hope he is good eating’
In the rural West, July and August are months of heat broken up by haying, a wedding or anniversary celebration and the county fair. It’s the time when 4-H projects ripen and months of work culminate in a coveted ribbon. I was raised on a northern Montana cattle ranch and participated in 4-H despite my […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
The American Dream, sans gasoline
I’ve had it with gasoline. Not only is it helping melt the glaciers in Glacier National Park, thaw the Alaskan permafrost, and drown low-lying Pacific islands, but it’s also emptying my wallet. So when my husband, Jack, and I decided to buy a new car recently, we both wanted it to use as little gas […]
Posted inWotr
Nuclear energy isn’t clean or a solution
Uravan, in southern Colorado, was once a bustling uranium mill town in the remote West End of my home county. There, employees transformed uranium ore into green sludge, not knowing that it would be used in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, Uravan is a deserted cleanup site, too hazardous for anyone […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Mining waste dumped in streams — and now lakes
The Bush administration tweaked Clean Water Act regulations to reclassify mining waste as “fill.” Now, that revised definition has been applied to metals mining for the first time — allowing a gold mine to put its tailings directly into an Alaskan lake. The 1972 Clean Water Act prohibited dumping waste into streams and lakes. But […]
Posted inWotr
The American Dream, sans gasoline
I’ve had it with gasoline. Not only is it helping melt the glaciers in Glacier National Park, thaw the Alaskan permafrost, and drown low-lying Pacific islands, but it’s also emptying my wallet. So when my husband and I decided to buy a new car recently, we both wanted it to use as little gas as […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Follow-up
Interior Secretary Gale Norton recently took a swipe at environmentalists while hanging out with hunters in Washington, D.C. Speaking to the American Wildlife Conservation Partners — a coalition of 35 hunting groups ranging from the Boone and Crockett Club to the National Rifle Association — Norton accused environmental groups of using lawsuits over endangered species […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Rural residents split over coalbed methane
In Powder River County on the plains southeast of Billings, a new grassroots group has formed to work on coalbed methane issues. Unlike many other groups around the West, though, the members of the Citizens for Resource Development say, “Bring on the drilling.” “This is coming from our hearts,” says rancher Rick Rice, the group’s […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Uranium miners go back underground
With prices high and support from the president, the yellowcake rush is on
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Navajos put more than 17 million acres off-limits
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Uranium miners go back underground.” From 1947 until 1970, thousands of Navajos worked underground on and off the reservation, mining uranium for use in nuclear weapons and power plants. As a result, hundreds have been diagnosed with […]
Posted inWotr
An organic label for milk is getting watered down
The happy cow on the label of Horizon organic milk is like a stop sign for consumers: Your quest for healthy milk ends here. The back of the carton assures us that Horizon milk is from certified organic farms, where clean-living cows “make milk the natural way, with access to plenty of fresh air, clean […]
Posted inWotr
Energy Bill rewards the fattest cats
As you may have noticed, gasoline costs more than of yore. Some basic economics: Gasoline is a manufactured good. Its price depends in part on the price of its basic commodity, in this case crude oil. It costs more than of yore, as does natural gas. More basic economics: The price of crude oil and […]
Posted inWotr
In our rush to protect America, we secretly put Americans at risk
Growing up in Richland, Wash., in the shadow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the Department of Energy produced plutonium for bombs, Trisha Pritikin never imagined that the milk she drank or the air she breathed was poisonous. Her father, a safety engineer at the plant, was supremely patriotic, and the entire family felt proud […]
Posted inWotr
Love the gas, not the drill
I have a confession to make: I like natural gas. Every morning at five minutes before 6:00, I wake up to the gentle whumph of the gas stove kicking on in the family room. I then get out of bed, tap on my son’s door and call, “Time to get up,” and plant myself in […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Gold mining proposed in historic South Passarea
Four historic routes — the Oregon, California, Pony Express and Mormon Pioneer trails — converge southeast of the Wind River Range in Wyoming, at an area called South Pass. In the 1800s, large wagon trains crossed the Continental Divide here. Now preserved as the South Pass National Historic Landmark, the landscape still looks much as […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
More than numbers: The dead of Idaho’s Sunshine Mine
The statistics of Idaho’s worst mining disaster are still startling, even more than three decades after that fateful day in 1972, when an underground fire broke out in the Silver Valley’s Sunshine Mine: Ninety-one men dead, 77 women widowed and 200 children left fatherless. The oldest victim was 61, the youngest 19. More than half […]
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Congress touts ‘green energy,’ but bill is black and blue
Lawmakers are even more industry-friendly than the administration