Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In President Clinton’s 1997 State of the Union Message, he introduced the Heritage Rivers Initiative as a means to address the management issues of 10 notable American waterways, and as a vehicle to provide federal assistance and funding to complement state and regional efforts […]
Water
Posted inMarch 27, 2000: The last wild river
A river divided
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Upper Yellowstone River currently is in the political hot seat, but that section of the river represents less than one quarter of the river’s 670-mile length. Any approach to management has to address the complete watershed. Yellowstone Park contains much of the headwaters […]
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
A dam good speech
OREGON In a rousing speech before the Oregon Chapter of the American Fisheries Society in February, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber became the first major political figure in the Pacific Northwest to back the breaching of four federal dams to recover dwindling salmon and steelhead runs in the Columbia River basin (HCN, 12/20/99: Unleashing the Snake). […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
Drain it now, says organization
Glen Canyon Action Network, an advocacy group that wants to drain Lake Powell, will hold its Restoration Celebration and Rendezvous at Glen Canyon Dam on March 14. The event, which coincides with the International Day of Action Against Dams and the anniversary of author Edward Abbey’s death, “will be a celebration, not a protest,” says […]
Posted inFebruary 28, 2000: Acre by acre
To breach or not to breach
Salmon advocates stand up for tearing down dams
Posted inJanuary 31, 2000: Searching for pasture
A pilot’s-eye view of the West
Most people remember Charles Lindbergh for his flight across the Atlantic. They are less likely to recall that he also wrote The Spirit of St. Louis, winner of the Pulitizer Prize for autobiography in 1954. Most people know Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for his children’s classic, The Little Prince. They are less likely to remember that […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
‘Something has got to give’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Steve Horvitz is the superintendent of the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. Steve Horvitz: “A lot of people may argue and say, “Why is the sea so important?” Because it supports the millions of birds that use it. They ask, “Isn’t there another resource […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
‘It’s no horror story to me’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Norm Niver has lived in Salton City with his wife, Connie, for nearly 30 years. A retired professional musician and TV repairman, he now publishes The Pelican Post, a newsletter about the Salton Sea. He’s been known to test the purity of the sea’s […]
Posted inJune 19, 2000: Accidental refuge: Should we save the Salton Sea?
‘They wasted a lot of money’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Mary Belardo is chairwoman of the Torres-Martinez Band of Desert Cahuilla Indians. The Torres-Martinez still own land under the sea, but a bill now in Congress would allow the band to purchase 11,800 high-and-dry acres closer to the towns of Indio and Palm Springs. […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
A dredging dilemma
Dredging the Columbia River would allow bigger ships to sail between the Columbia River Estuary and into Portland, says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Its $196 million plan would deepen a 103-mile stretch of river by three feet by dredging every day for two years. According to the Corps’ final environmental impact statement, dredging […]
Posted inJanuary 17, 2000: STOP
More drains for pothole country?
In South Dakota, soil conservation officials and environmental groups are facing off over how to define a wetland. Under the 1985 “Swampbusters’ Farm Bill, farmers who drain wetlands can’t qualify for federal farm subsidies. But states do the certifying of farmers for Swampbusters compliance, and last May, the South Dakota office of the Natural Resource […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Unleashing the Snake
As salmon runs dwindle, the Pacific Northwest ponders a once-unthinkable option: dismantle the dams
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
‘The science pushed me’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Jim Baker lives in the rolling wheat country outside Pullman, Wash. For the past seven years, he has been the Sierra Club’s point man on Columbia River salmon. “I was one of those conservationists who had to be dragged kicking and to be dragged […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
‘Dams made the modern Northwest’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Keith Petersen is a historian and the author of River of Life, Channel of Death: Fish and Dams on the Lower Snake. He is currently Idaho’s statewide coordinator for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. “I grew up in western Washington. My dad worked on […]
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
‘People are important’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Frank Carroll works for the Potlatch Corporation in Lewiston, Idaho, which uses the Snake River waterway to barge some of its paper and wood products to Portland and beyond. Before working for Potlatch, he worked on Idaho’s Boise National Forest. “I don’t like simple […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Fossil Creek will flow again
What was planned as an angry protest turned into a jubilant celebration on Nov. 18, after Arizona Public Service agreed to restore Fossil Creek, nearly dry for more than 80 years (HCN, 11/22/99). “It’s huge,” says Lisa Force of the Center for Biological Diversity, which had planned to picket APS headquarters before the decision was […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
A trickle of hope
A thirsty system of dams, growing desert cities and irrigators may never allow the Colorado River delta to be the mecca of animal and plant diversity it once was. But Mexican and U.S. researchers working with the Environmental Defense Fund say the brackish and often polluted flow that does reach the delta could help revive […]
Posted inDecember 6, 1999: Peggy Godfrey's long, strange trip
Rivers among us
Even in the arid West, water wars aren’t inevitable, according to a new study by Reason Public Policy Institute in Los Angeles. Collaborative local planning efforts are an effective method of balancing water needs while protecting the environment, according to the 35-page study Rivers Among Us: Local Watershed Preservation and Resource Management in the Western […]
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
One proposal nearly runs aground
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Last spring, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt got to have some fun. He took a raft trip on Montana’s Missouri River Breaks accompanied by author and filmmaker Dayton Duncan and historian Stephen Ambrose, author of Undaunted Courage, a recent and highly popular telling of the […]
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
A tired stream gains new steam
STRAWBERRY, Ariz. – Below Arizona’s Mogollon Rim, Fossil Springs bubbles from the ground to water a dry land. From the springs, Fossil Creek used to flow almost 15 miles through scrubby mesquite and pinon trees before it emptied into the Verde River. But for almost a century, a dam built a quarter-mile from the springs […]