For 15 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has removed mine tailings, covered contaminated lawns and monitored people’s blood for lead and other dangerous heavy metals found within the 21-mile-long Bunker Hill Superfund Site in northern Idaho. Now, with the work nearly done, the federal agency has set its sights on something much bigger – the […]
Pollution
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
League of Women Voters
Colorado phones will ring soon, and the Colorado League of Women Voters will begin to survey the public about their knowledge of the causes of water pollution. The League has received a $150,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to educate people about how to prevent household-generated contaminants such as motor oil and lawn chemicals […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Heavy metals move
Heavy metals accumulated from 100 years of mining in Idaho’s Silver Valley (HCN, 11/25/96) are spreading into Washington state, and environmentalists and state officials there want a say in how to stop it. “Just having Idaho control the cleanup doesn’t hold any promise,” said Michele Nanni of the Inland Empire Public Lands Council. Last year, […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Judge tells EPA to hurry up in Idaho
Conservationists won a major court ruling this fall in their two-decade-long battle with the state of Idaho and the Environmental Protection Agency to implement and enforce the Clean Water Act. In a sharply worded opinion, federal district judge William Dwyer, of northern spotted owl fame, chided the EPA and the state for failing to develop […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Pollution in paradise
A robust service economy can’t bury mining’s toxic waste
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
River cleanup is slow, expensive and maybe hopeless
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. CANYON CREEK, Idaho – Thick mud gushes beneath Marti Calabretta’s high rubber boots as she walks from her office, a much-used house trailer, to the dirty pickup truck. The raw landscape looks like a construction site before the pouring of a foundation, but Calabretta […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Logging, floods push metals downstream
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Heavy metals don’t recognize state boundaries. That’s why some people in Spokane, Wash., 30 miles downstream from Lake Coeur d’Alene, are worried. “The metals are coming this way, and we hope to slow them down so they don’t also poison the Columbia River Basin,” […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Polluted waters divide Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. – One side has a punchy message: that cows and clean streams don’t mix. The other side warns that fencing cows off from hundreds of miles of streams will be a worse failure than the Great Wall of China. At stake is the Oregon Clean Streams Initiative, one of the toughest sets of […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
An ‘unfair, inflexible’ bid to clean Montana’s water
Francis Bardanouve is not the man you might expect to see leading one of the year’s most contested environmental initiatives. A rancher from Harlem, Mont., he spent nearly 30 years in the state Legislature, where he was known as a conservative Democrat. But along with a businessman, a retired rancher and a Republican legislator, Bardanouve […]
Posted inOctober 14, 1996: Greens prune their message to win the West's voters
Who you gonna call?
Are you distressed about a nearby mine polluting streams, groundwater or soils? The Mineral Policy Center in Washington, D.C., might be able to help. It recently published the Green Mining Guide: Mining Experts You Can Call, which lists 101 consultants, government employees and mining specialists from across the country. The experts range from hydrologists and […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Feds go after Summitville boss
Taxpayers got mixed news in late August about the cleanup of southern Colorado’s notorious Summitville gold mine. The good news came from the Justice Department, which announced that it had convinced a Canadian bank to freeze $152 million in stocks owned by the mining executive who oversaw Summitville. That mine’s toxic wastes killed 17 miles […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Getting the lead out
The nonprofit Inland Empire Public Lands Council, based in Washington state, broke new ground in public outreach when it dropped 10,000 video cassettes on Spokane Valley doorsteps in May. It produced the 10-minute video, “Get the LEAD out!” to alert residents to the legacy of toxins from mining in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene watershed. “We want […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Fish kill doesn’t sway the EPA
For years, the EPA has agreed with mining officials that toxic sediments stuck behind the Milltown Dam on the Clark Fork River near Missoula, Mont., were best left alone. But when polluted waters escaped from the dam in February, they killed fish and energized activists, who renewed their call for the agency to remove the […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Montanans take to the ballot
In Montana, where author Norman Maclean was haunted by moving waters, a new coalition of sportsmen, ranchers and environmentalists hopes voters will approve a fall ballot initiative toughening the state’s water quality laws. If passed, the initiative could create significant new challenges for two large-scale mining projects, one proposed for a site near Yellowstone National […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
1995: Did toxic stew cook the goose?
BUTTE, Mont. – For 342 migrating snow geese, the infamous Berkeley Pit became their final stop. The birds were first discovered Nov. 14, their carcasses floating in the toxic waters of the shut down, open-pit copper mine. The initial body count at this federal Superfund site was 149; the total rose when officials realized the […]
Posted inOctober 2, 1995: Did Idaho libel the feds?
Congress fights to restore a filthy past
What follows sounds like a nightmare. But it’s not. It’s true. If you have a weak stomach, don’t read it. I grew up in an area of Kansas City, Kan., called Armourdale, which was bordered on the east by two meat-packing companies, on the west by two soap factories, on the north by the Santa […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Restoring a watershed
RESTORING A WATERSHED As part of a cooperative effort to restore Idaho and Washington’s polluted Spokane-Coeur d’Alene watershed, the Sierra Club has created a colorful map of the drainage. The region needs help: mining has left pollution and aquifer contamination; logging and farming have eroded soil. The group’s advice includes cleaning up mine wastes, preventing […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Citizen action gets results
Spurred by a Sierra Club lawsuit, Texaco has agreed to prevent further contamination of the North Platte River by its defunct oil refinery near Casper, Wyo. If the EPA and Justice Department approve the consent decree next month, Texaco must clean up the river, report monthly to the Sierra Club, and step up efforts to […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Horses must back off
Horses can’t poop in a source of drinking water for 25 homes in Lama, N.M. The Taos County court recently found Dr. John Wilson and his wife Barbara guilty of allowing their horses to pollute the El Rito de Lama Acequia, reports The Taos News. For more than 200 years, the acequias – irrigation ditches […]
Posted inAugust 8, 1994: Glitz and growth take a major hit in Santa Fe
The list no Idaho stream wants to be on
Prodded by court order, the EPA has increased its official list of polluted streams and lakes in Idaho from 36 to 800. The agency had been relying on information compiled by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, but the Idaho Conservation League and Idaho Sportsmen’s Coalition sued, claiming that hundreds of polluted waterways had been […]