SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – The first time Phil Pennington saw Glen Canyon was in June of 1961, from the window of a search plane. A graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Pennington and a handful of university hiking club members had come to southern Utah to backpack in the canyonlands. A few […]
Water
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Deconstructing the age of dams
In the early fall of 1991, I got a call from a cheery young man named Bob Herkert, who introduced himself as the field manager for the California Rice Industry Association. He wanted to invite me on a “good will” tour of the Sacramento Valley rice-growing region, where he said I would see two salmon-blocking […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Dam deconstruction – what’s next?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Here are some of the other dams under attack throughout the West: Elwha River dams, Olympic Peninsula, Washington Built decades ago, these two dams have nearly destroyed what was once, given the host river’s size, a salmon fishery nonpareil. Estimates of the Elwha ancestral […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
River stretch ignites a fight
It’s a historic irony that the most pristine stretch of Columbia River real estate was protected from development by bomb-making at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Military patrols made sure no one got close. These days, anglers can fish freely for salmon on the Hanford Reach, a 51-mile stretch of river that boils past the chalky […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Let rivers heal
A report from the Oregon State University Department of Fisheries says that current salmon habitat and river restoration efforts will fail unless they focus on entire watersheds or landscapes, rather than on a single process or species. For such a holistic approach to work, the report says, overgrazing, pollution and too much water consumption must […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Sierra Club moves to fortify its ‘drain Lake Powell’ campaign
The only people who love the idea of draining Lake Powell more than Sierra Club board member and former executive director David Brower are in the West’s congressional delegation. They jumped on the idea with glee, holding a House hearing in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23, issuing press releases, and generating hundreds of letters to […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
For sale: a Colorado water district – maybe
COLLBRAN, Colo. – At first, it seemed simple: The federal government would sell its small irrigation projects to the local water conservancy districts that use them. The idea sprang from Vice President Al Gore’s mandate to reduce federal bureaucracy. But officials in three Western states are learning that purchases can turn nasty when they go […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Fixing Fish Creek
The past 50 years have not been kind to Mount Hood National Forest’s Fish Creek watershed. In the past two years alone, over 200 landslides have ravaged its 30,000 acres, where unstable slopes have been made even weaker by decades of logging and road building. Now, with the forest at 60 percent of its original […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Tribe hopes to dam its way to jobs
For decades, the Uinta Mountains have been seen as a watering can for swelling suburbs and thirsty croplands in northern Utah. Under the Central Utah Project (CUP), a massive, 40-year effort to capture Utah’s share of Colorado River Basin water, snowmelt from the Uintas has been dammed, plumbed and piped to cities along the Wasatch […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
An Idaho daily breaches the Northwest’s silence over tearing down dams
The Idaho Statesman likes to think its editorials are felt far beyond the modestly populated Boise metropolitan area in southwestern Idaho where the paper is headquartered. We were never sure just how far, however, until recently. That’s when the six members of the editorial board, which includes the publisher, top editors and a community representative, […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Accident shakes Flaming Gorge Dam
A broken pipe in Utah’s Flaming Gorge Dam gave Bureau of Reclamation officials a scare June 21. Downstream, a blue-ribbon trout fishery got a shock, too. The control room at the dam was empty the evening one of its two bypass tubes burst, gushing water into the dam’s power plant, generator room and offices. An […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
A-LP looms liter
In a move that’s either desperate or practical, proponents of southwestern Colorado’s Animas-La Plata water project applied “tough love” to their aging proposal and unveiled a leaner alternative in early July. The reservoir and pumping project that was supposed to provide water for irrigators and cities in Colorado and New Mexico is also key to […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Owens Valley finally loses patience
A water grab 84 years ago that turned one of California’s largest lakes into a dust bowl and enabled Los Angeles to boom may not have been permanent. By a vote of 6-1 July 2, rural elected officials ordered Los Angeles to forego diverting 43 million gallons of water a day from Owens Lake. The […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Whitewater comes roaring back
GRACE, Idaho – After more than 90 dry years, a canyon near this quiet town recently filled with the roar of whitewater. Kayakers in mid-May ran the rapids through Black Canyon while a nearby power plant went two days without the river’s water. But PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore., didn’t release the Bear River back to […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Lakes vanish – and then return
Over the past decade, a 10-mile stretch of lakes, creeks and a waterfall in southwestern Washington’s Lincoln County disappeared. This spring, they came back. Pacific Lake, Tule Lake and Delzer Falls, all part of the Lake Creek water system, are among the watering holes that dried up, much to the dismay of local residents. A […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Las Vegas may shoot craps with its water
LAS VEGAS, Nev. – An opinionated scientist and a vocal group of senior citizens are trying to stop the juggernaut of growth here. So far, they haven’t had much effect. Las Vegas keeps on booming. But they’ve raised the specter that the city may be fouling its water supply. Larry Paulson is a biology professor […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Boise pushes on its river, and the river shoves back
The “New West” has settled along the banks of the Boise River. An urge to live and work near rushing water has transformed a braided, meandering waterway, once cloaked in nothing more than cottonwoods and rural attitudes, into an urban amenity flanked by office parks, pubs and a forest of pricey homes. Think of riverfront […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Who’ll run Hanford Reach?
If Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has her way, the last free-flowing, undammed stretch of the Columbia River – the Hanford Reach – will stay that way under federal management. First, however, Murray has some politicking to do. She and Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., plan a public hearing June 21 in Mattawa, Wash., on the future […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Threatened Rivers
The West continues to hold its own in the competition for the nation’s most at-risk rivers. Five of this year’s top 10 endangered rivers are in the West, according to American Rivers’ annual report, North America’s Most Endangered and Threatened Rivers of 1997. This year’s 45-page report focuses on threats more subtle than the untreated […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Judge settles Telluride wetlands dispute
The Environmental Protection Agency has won a seven-year dispute with the Telluride Ski and Golf Co. (Telski) over the resort’s destruction of protected wetlands that feed the San Miguel River, one of two undammed rivers left in Colorado. U.S. District Court Judge John Kane accepted a $3.8 million settlement against the company last month, requiring […]