Five years ago, when south-central Texas was suffering through its driest year in more than a century, public officials in the city of San Antonio turned in desperation to a new tactic to enforce water conservation: They dispatched the police. From April of 2009 and on through the rest of the year, off-duty officers and […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inGoat
Want a walkable community? Start with the main drag
At first glance, I suppose nothing appears to be amiss with the scene in this photograph. It’s Main Ave., the primary business and tourist district of Durango, Colorado. But it could be any number of mid-sized Western towns. The town has done an admirable job retaining its historic integrity and aesthetics of the architecture and […]
Posted inGoat
Railroads inch toward transparency on oil shipments
On April 18, a wildflower photographer looking for blooming balsamroot on the Oregon slopes of the Columbia River Gorge happened to glance down and see dozens of black tankers barreling along the railroad below. The identification numbers on the tankers’ warning signs revealed that they were carrying crude. Yet despite tragic derailments in the past […]
Posted inGoat
Booms have a lasting impact on towns’ architectural fabric
On a trans-Wyoming reporting trip several years ago, I pulled off the interstate to check out the little town of Rawlins in the southern part of the state. I made my way past the industrial sprawl towards whatever kind of “downtown” I could find. When I finally arrived at the historic core, I was struck […]
Posted inWotr
You can still get your kicks on Route 66
I had the ride but not the road. I was a Westerner living in Tennessee and I’d bought my dream car, a 1963 pearl-white Thunderbird complete with a 390 cubic-inch Ford V-8 engine and black leather bucket seats. But what I missed was the Mother Road, Route 66. I had the car but not the […]
Posted inGoat
The suburbs didn’t die — just short-circuited
Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we were all celebrating the death of the suburbs? Both Millennials and Boomers, and perhaps many of those in between, were headed for the walkable, vibrant urban core. We would bulldoze no more desert for McMansions; sunflowers would invade exurban golf courses; and the expressways built to […]
Posted inArticles
Massive Colorado mudslide nearly clobbered gas wells
How much should energy developers plan for natural disaster?
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Paying for risk-takers
When I was a kid in the 1950s, my dad expressed disdain for people so poor they’d build on riverbanks prone to flooding (“The stages of disaster,” HCN, 4/28/14). High ground was the motto for his dream home, perched on the stable bluffs of the Minnesota River. In 1978, I arrived in Tucson, Arizona, a […]
Posted inGoat
The biggest wildlife crossing you’ve never heard of
Nestled in the Cascade Mountains of central Washington, winding along a 15-mile stretch of interstate is the largest wildlife connectivity project you’ve never heard of. Deer, elk, mountain goats, bobcats, black bears, foxes, mink, otters, cougars and wild turkeys roam the region’s old growth forests, mountain meadows, streams and glacier-covered peaks. But all too often, […]
Posted inGoat
Google’s time machine will show changes in development and nature
I like to play the “used to be” game. While walking around my hometown with friends, I point to a storefront — one of the snazzier restaurants in town, say — and say, “That used to be this weird little store that carried everything from comic books to frogs in formaldehyde, all left over from […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Why we risk life and property
Dangerous places in the West are often the most desirable.
Posted inGoat
In an era of light pollution, the darkest skies in the West
Here are some of the region’s best stargazing spots.
Posted inGoat
Has Durango sold its river, and its soul, to recreation?
Several months ago, an old friend and sometime source contacted me with a tip on a big local story going down here in Durango, with statewide and even national implications. I had been looking around the immediate region for something into which I could dig my investigative reporting teeth. This might be it. A week […]
Posted inArticles
Why homes are lost to wildfire
This Forest Service expert says it’s as much a sociopolitical problem as it is physical.
Posted inGoat
Fracking fuels the post-Recession economy and growth
Oh how a housing bust, a nasty economic downturn and a shale oil and gas boom can change things. Seven years ago this spring, the Census Bureau released a flurry of numbers about the economy and growth, which then spawned a bunch of articles about which parts of the country were growing fastest and why. […]
Posted inWotr
Does Juneau in Southeast Alaska really need this highway?
A proposed road is destructive, dangerous and bound to be ridiculously costly.
Posted inGoat
Wildfire mitigation program helps homeowners create safer communities
With years of experience bracing for wildfire along Colorado’s Front Range, it’s no surprise that Boulder County is launching a new program – Wildfire Partners – that may mean the start of a paradigm shift in wildfire mitigation. “The old approach was firefighters were responsible for saving homes from wildfire,” said Jim Webster, Wildfire Partners’ […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
Silver (state) bullet
A proposed Mexico-to-Canada highway gets mixed reactions.
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Counterpoint: Brave New L.A.
In his essay, “Brave New L.A.,” Jon Christensen cites what he considers two pivotal and progressive moments in Los Angeles’ quest for sustainability: the July rise of former Los Angeles City Council Member Eric Garcetti to the mayor’s office and the November centenary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct (HCN, 1/20/14). Both occasions can equally be […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
One man’s sustainable city is another’s environmental scourge
Usually, the lies we tell ourselves are subconscious and hard to describe. That’s why I found two items in HCN‘s recent “urban sustainability” issue so maddening (1/20/14). In “The Vegas Paradox,” Jonathan Thompson informs us that southern Nevada’s official goals would have developers building huge numbers of new “Water Smart” homes by 2035 to achieve […]