OLANCHA, Calif. – Crystal Geyser’s 100,000-square-foot bottling facility sticks out incongruously in this Owens Valley town of some 200 people. In the late 1980s, the company spent two years tasting water from all over the West, searching for a spot to build a new bottling plant. Crystal Geyser, one of the nation’s top sellers of […]
Water
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 14, 1996: Greens prune their message to win the West's voters
Boise braces for floods
Sandbags may have replaced mountain bikes as the “in” thing for Boise residents this fall. Forty thousand sandbags were recently snapped up by homeowners and businesses after the city’s public works department offered them to the public to ward off possible floods and mud slides this winter. City officials say an August fire that denuded […]
Posted inOctober 14, 1996: Greens prune their message to win the West's voters
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to adjudicate
It’s fall in the Pacific Northwest, and the winter rains have already begun. For the next seven months or so, storms will pummel the state of Washington, filling every rivulet and river in the state and chasing people to stores in search of umbrellas and galoshes. But while most people worry about coping with gray […]
Posted inAugust 5, 1996: Disappearing railroad blues
Animas-La Plata hits a wall in the House
An attempt last year in the House to halt funding for the Animas-La Plata dam project in southern Colorado failed by a miserable 151-275. This year, a second try slipped by 221-200. What changed the 75 or so Representatives’ minds? Election year, says Jeffrey Stier, spokesman for Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who led the successful […]
Posted inAugust 5, 1996: Disappearing railroad blues
A radical water czar is cashiered by his board
It is not on quite the scale as the 1989 defeat of Denver’s $1 billion Two Forks Dam, but it is worth a mention. On July 16, the Colorado River Water Conservation District board fired its secretary-engineer, Rolly Fischer, after 28 years on the job. Fischer was fired – officially he resigned – in large […]
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 inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
The history of two canyons, in photographs
Out of the flood of books on the Colorado River, two recent illustrated volumes caught our eye. Robert H. Webb’s Grand Canyon, a Century of Change features pairs of matched photos, old and new. The author, a hydrologist involved with Glen Canyon Environmental Studies, spent seven months replicating hundreds of photographic views from the Stanton […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
In the context of the place, it was a very strange idea. We were sitting in a boat on dark green water deep in a red-walled canyon, a few hundred yards downstream from a 10 million-ton mirage. The mirage of smooth brilliant white looked curiously fragile in that otherwise raw landscape of red sandstone, green […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Deciding what kind of river we want
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river It is too early to predict whether the river now will be run in peace and harmony. The Glen Canyon environmental impact statement recommends to the secretary of the Interior that an “Adaptive […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Ten at risk
10 AT RISK The Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming is one of the nation’s wildest rivers outside Alaska. It’s also the most endangered, according to American Rivers. For three years running, it’s topped the group’s annual report, North America’s Ten Most Endangered and Threatened Rivers. The reason: Plans for the proposed […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
River bomber discovered down under
When Ken “Taz” Stoner failed to show in court last March, everyone suspected he had skipped town. Stoner was scheduled to be sentenced for his role as the mastermind behind the destruction of Quartzite Falls, a Class VI rapid in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon Wilderness (HCN, 10/31/94). But, as a federal investigation later discovered, the […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
Contradictions on the Columbia
One environmentalist called it “a case of schizophrenia’: Oregon officials recently extended Boeing Aviation’s permit to divert water from the Columbia River even though the state has spent more than $1 billion augmenting the river’s flow to restore salmon. Environmentalists hadn’t paid much attention to Boeing’s permits in the past because the aerospace firm never […]
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 inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Dam destruction moves closer
The Elwha River in Washington was once home to the largest salmon in the continental United States. But when the Bureau of Reclamation built two dams in 1914 and 1927, 100-pound chinook were unable to make the downstream passage and disappeared. Now that the Clinton administration has allotted $111 million of its proposed 1997 budget […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Stirring things up on the Colorado River
As a media event, the Grand Canyon spring flood of “96 was a roaring success. On cue from the Today Show, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt turned a wheel, pushed a button, pulled a lever and opened the first of four jet tubes to send Lake Powell water downstream into the Grand Canyon. Whether the flood […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Stop the flooding
The devastating floods that swamped Oregon early this year could be reduced in the future by restoring former wetlands and woodlands in the Willamette River floodplain. That’s the conclusion of a study commissioned by River Network, a Portland, Oregon-based conservation group. The 60-page study, written primarily by Kevin Coulton of Philip Williams & Associates, an […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Last chance for wetlands
Is the marsh in your neighborhood in danger of being bulldozed for a strip mall? In fast-growing Washington state, where experts estimate 33 to 50 percent of wetlands has been lost, that scenario isn’t farfetched. But the Washington Wetland Network (WETNET), founded by the Seattle Audubon Society, can help. WETNET is composed of more than […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Idaho just says no to hydro dam
Twin Falls, Idaho – In the end, it wasn’t even close. On Feb. 13 the state’s five highest elected officials unanimously rejected a proposed dam on the Snake River at Auger Falls. The vote came despite developer Steve Harmsen’s state water quality permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. What led the Idaho Land Board, […]
Posted inFebruary 19, 1996: Can a Colorado ski county say 'Enough is enough'?
BuRec gets a new leader
The Bureau of Reclamation, slimmer now after former chief Dan Beard cut 1,500 from its workforce and $107 million from a $911 million budget, has a new boss. “I don’t have any agendas,” says Commissioner Eluid Martinez, who worked as New Mexico’s state engineer for four years. “I just want to do a good job […]