Utah has no rivers protected under the 1968 federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, but that might change. This month, the Forest Service released a draft report on recommendations for possible wild and scenic designation within the Uinta National Forest. This forest alone has 92 small sections of rivers eligible for designation, but the agency […]
Water
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 inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Note: this front-page essay introduces this issue’s two feature stories: “A tale of two rivers: The desert empire and the mountain” and “Reclaiming a lost canyon.” The proposal to drain Lake Powell is exhilarating. Not because it is necessarily a good idea. That remains to be seen. The proposal is exhilarating because it means democracy […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
A tale of two rivers: The desert empire and the mountain
“We’ve done our best and worst and a lot of inattentive average work in settling this our Western place.” – Colorado Justice Greg Hobbs, at Bishop’s Lodge 1997 “It would be quite a remote period before (the Upper Colorado Basin) would be developed – 50 or 100 or possibly 200 years.” – Delph Carpenter, testifying […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Reclaiming a lost canyon
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 […]
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 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 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 […]