Spurred by a Sierra Club lawsuit, Texaco has agreed to prevent further contamination of the North Platte River by its defunct oil refinery near Casper, Wyo. If the EPA and Justice Department approve the consent decree next month, Texaco must clean up the river, report monthly to the Sierra Club, and step up efforts to […]
Water
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Rivers in jeopardy
RIVERS IN JEOPARDY It sounds like an honor, but it’s not. This year, the West contains four of the nation’s 10 most endangered rivers, chosen annually by American Rivers, a river conservation group. Because of a proposed gold mine near Yellowstone Park in Montana, the group voted the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River the […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Wyoming tribes get support to keep a river wet
As the Wind River slices through the 2.2 million-acre Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, home to some 8,000 Shoshone and Arapaho tribal members, it becomes the “most abused water system in the Western United States,” says Tom Dougherty of the National Wildlife Federation. But Indians aren’t the abusers. Dougherty says the culprits are non-Indian […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Slashing water welfare
Slashing water welfare The Bureau of Reclamation released new rules this month to stop corporate farms from using subsidized water meant for family farmers. In a 1993 court settlement with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Bureau promised to look comprehensively at the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982 and propose regulations to close loopholes. Subsidies […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
The fight for Reclamation
When John McPhee, in Encounters with the Archdruid, rides down the Colorado River with Floyd Dominy, the bullheaded Commissioner of Reclamation during the 1950s and 1960s, and David Brower, Dominy plunges into the Lava Falls rapid with a cigar clenched between his teeth. Doused by the maelstrom, the cigar, minutes later, glows again: McPhee’s sly […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Dams were built on breathless prose
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. To have a deep blue lake Where no lake was before Seems to bring man A little closer to God. A sweet breeze Across deep water The campfire’s glow Day’s end Peace – From Lake Powell: Jewel of the […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Grand Canyon flood postponed
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Biologists and Colorado River raft guides alike thought it was a sure thing: For one week in the spring of 1995, floodwaters from Glen Canyon Dam would roar through the Grand Canyon as they hadn’t since the high water summer […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
One project seems like the same old BuRec
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. Although the Bureau of Reclamation says it is now a water-conserver, and not a dam-builder, one ghost from the past continues to linger. Southwestern Colorado’s Animas-La Plata water diversion project, first approved by Congress in 1968, is still slated for […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
So far, it is the rivers of the region that have suffered
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. So far, it is the rivers of the region that have suffered the greatest change in canyon country. This is not the fault of Major John Wesley Powell, a largely self-taught naturalist, geologist and ethnologist. Powell went on to organize […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
ARCO, Idaho – They stand like giant tombstones in a graveyard. Hundreds of black cottonwood trees – all dead or just barely hanging on – line the dry cobblestones of the Big Lost River. Charlie Traughber cusses state water authorities as he points out decaying groves of cottonwoods across the Big Lost River Valley. “Gawd, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
River purity is a new goal for all sorts offarmers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry. On a clear evening in the Magic Valley of southern Idaho, Don Campbell heads down a hill to check on his catfish. They’re enclosed in a group of raceways below his house overlooking the Snake […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Environmentalists and feds try to save Idaho’s rivers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry. You can’t have a healthy river without water. But it used to be state policy to choke off the Middle Snake at Milner Dam and divert all of its flow into irrigation canals. Some life […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
For about as long as anyone can remember the good citizens of Albuquerque have been living a fantasy when it comes to water. Despite receiving only eight inches of rain a year, residents have grown up washing their cars in the street, playing golf on lush coastal grass and using some 250 gallons of water […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Another water project is drowned
After almost 20 years of controversy, Homestake II has joined the growing ranks of defeated Colorado water projects. On Nov. 17, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld Eagle County’s decision to reject construction permits. The ruling, which recognized Colorado counties’ broad discretion in land-use matters, could be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. But regardless […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Horses must back off
Horses can’t poop in a source of drinking water for 25 homes in Lama, N.M. The Taos County court recently found Dr. John Wilson and his wife Barbara guilty of allowing their horses to pollute the El Rito de Lama Acequia, reports The Taos News. For more than 200 years, the acequias – irrigation ditches […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
BuRec to allow water thefts to continue
A crackdown against illegal use of federal water from dams in the West won’t take place anytime soon (HCN, 10/31/94). That’s because a long-awaited plan for curbing abuses is being shelved by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Under pressure from farm irrigators, the BuRec has begun work on what some observers predict will be a […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Eight charged with bombing a river
A former rafting guide and seven other men may be sent up the river for bombing a Class 6 rapid. A federal grand jury in Phoenix, Ariz., indicted William K. Stoner, 34, and his co-conspirators Oct. 13 on charges they blew up Quartzite Falls in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon Wilderness. The boaters are accused of […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Who’s who in water spreading
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Water for the taking. WaterWatch, based in Portland, is one of the nation’s first statewide groups focused solely on water quantity, rather than water quality. It has filed legal challenges to Oregon’s system of issuing water-use permits, which, says founder Tom Simmons, has turned […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Ripples grow when a dam dies
Four years after the defeat of Denver’s proposed Two Forks Dam, water development in Colorado has changed drastically. No longer is Denver the imperialistic leader of Front Range urban development. And no longer are environmentalists a fringe influence, forever fighting the good fight against dams and forever losing. The change is visible at three major […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
On Friday, the fish took some of it back
Note: This article is a sidebar to the essay titled “Ripples grow when a dam dies“ Chips Barry, who heads the Denver Water Department, says his major responsibility is not the acquisition of new water supplies. “It’s to hang on to what we’ve got in the face of instream flow and endangered species and interstate […]