For years, irrigators who benefit from the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River in southern Oregon have resisted removal of the salmon-blocking structure. In the past, when the district’s board members agreed to removal, local voters removed those members. Now, irrigators have won another reprieve from federal and state pressure, thanks to a court […]
Water
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
In the Sonoran Desert, a lesson already learned
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Twenty years ago, cattle roamed the open range near here, and the only sound during the night, besides coyotes, was a car bumping over a cattleguard on north Scottsdale Road. The metal strips hummed like a stroked guitar in the stillness of a desert night. Now the cattleguard is gone, and the […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Water in rivers is OK
Water can remain in New Mexican rivers and still be “beneficial,” says state Attorney General Tom Udall. Up until his decision last month, water rights could be lost unless water was diverted from a stream, and thereby put to beneficial use. Udall’s ruling opens the door to marketing water rights for environmental protection, which also […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Nobody gives a damn about this dam
The Army has abandoned a small reservoir in Red Butte Canyon east of Salt Lake City, Utah, leaving federal, state and county agencies playing a game of political hot potato. Red Butte Reservoir is one of several refuges established in northern Utah to protect the June sucker – a fish native to Utah Lake, south […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Montana’s deregulation dilemma
Helena, Mont. – A fly fisherman crouches in the streamside alders, watching intently as large trout rhythmically rise to sip tiny flies from the smooth surface of the river. Just upstream, the concrete hulk of a Montana Power Co. dam dominates the horizon. The vibration of powerful generators courses through the river’s bed. All seems […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
California Water Map
It’s not quite Cadillac Desert, but the updated California Water Map goes a long way toward explaining the state’s complex network of water projects. The large color map, published by the Water Education Foundation, shows the location of dams, reservoirs, aqueducts and wild and scenic rivers around the state. The nonprofit educational foundation also publishes […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
The birth, life, and coming death of a Wyoming dam
WAPITI, Wyo. – After the thunderstorm had passed, the sheer face of the mountain reappeared, looking strange in the evening light. I got out the field glasses and saw streams of muddy water, some of them nearly a hundred feet high, cascading down the ranks of cliffs north of us. Soon we heard a roaring […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
River heritage plan sent downstream
PAONIA, Colo. – When water engineer Jeff Crane learned about a new program called the American Heritage Rivers Initiative, he thought he’d found something his community could rally behind. Over the past three years, Crane has been working to build consensus among landowners, fruit farmers and gravel miners along western Colorado’s North Fork of the […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
The power politics of dam removal
PORT ANGELES, Wash. – Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., startled critics and supporters alike last fall when he announced he favors removing one of two hydroelectric dams on Olympic National Park’s Elwha River. At that time, Gorton, the Senate’s most outspoken opponent of dam removal, pledged his support in the form of a trade: He wanted […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Water for people and fish
Photographs of Aspen Village mobile homes and Snowmass Creek are not likely to oust images of the Maroon Bells Wilderness from Aspen, Colo., postcards and calendars. But the 150-unit trailer park and a small but valuable water right from Snowmass Creek have jumped into the conservation limelight. Their fame comes from an effort by citizens, […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
Intel Corp. denied desert water rights
Money can’t always buy water, even in cash-poor New Mexico. Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer, has lost a $1.5 million bid to buy water rights from southern New Mexican farmers near rural Socorro. The company’s 1994 water-use permit requires that it buy water rights, then retire them to offset 4 million gallons […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Storm Over Mono: The Mono Lake Battle and the California Water Future
If you think preserving natural resources is all about scientific data and arcane legal maneuvers, read Storm Over Mono. In his richly documented account of the battle to save Mono Lake, John Hart focuses on the people who mounted the successful campaign against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Most were ordinary mortals: […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Looking at dams in a new way
We float rivers for fun. For adventure. For discovery. We do it for the magic around the bend. The smooth hiss of water and stone. A canyon wren concerto. The slap of a beaver’s tail. The solitary stare of a bighorn sheep. Last spring, I stumbled across something unusual on the Colorado River in the […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
A river comes apart
Nov. 30, 1995, was the day that the Clearwater Country in northern Idaho came apart. In today’s society, the words “come apart” are usually reserved for nations in apocalyptic collapse. Here it meant something much less hyperbolic, but no less real. Dirt slid into a creek – a lot of dirt. The Clearwater Country is […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
A tiny tribe wins big on clean water
ISLETA, N.M. – A recent Supreme Court decision reaffirms a 2,500-member tribe’s right to tell the city of Albuquerque what it can and cannot dump into the Rio Grande River. The Isleta Pueblo sits six miles downstream from where Albuquerque dumps 55 million gallons of wastewater each day. Sewage from the city’s 450,000 residents makes […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
A road to nowhere?
For more than two decades, the Utah Department of Transportation has planned to widen the two-lane road that winds through narrow Provo Canyon. Best known as the site of Sundance, a resort founded by actor Robert Redford, the canyon is one of the most spectacular in the Wasatch Mountains. One-third of the “road-improvement” project is […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
One dam falls, another rises
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – A dam proposed for the Diamond Fork River near Provo, Utah, all but died this October. The Central Utah Water Conservancy District backed off in the face of financial concerns and rising public opposition, pulling the dam from the “preferred alternative” in an environmental impact statement. One of the last […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Note: an essay by Charles Wilkinson about Mono Lake accompanies this feature story. LEE VINING, Calif. – Mono Valley hovers at the western edge of the Great Basin on the Sierra Nevada range, a majestic place of stark horizons and haunting skies. In autumn, Lombardy poplars and cottonwoods blaze golden along the highway and seem […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
A court deems a lake worthy of water
Note: This essay accompanies this issue’s feature story. The water developers of Los Angeles and their lawyers knew from the first paragraph that they were in trouble. Court opinions about Western water invariably carried a pragmatic, detached, utilitarian tone. This case was supposed to be about the needs of a thriving but thirsty metropolis – […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
A visit with the River People of Hanford Reach
“In time to come the white men will build dams which will close the Columbia River to the salmon. At Priest Rapids, there is nothing the white people want in our little life, and there we may live unmolested.” – Prophecy of Smowhala, founder of the Dreamer Religion of the Wanapum people in the mid-1800s, […]