In what critics call political “shenanigans,” Utah
Republican Rep. Jim Hansen stole the bill number from a wilderness
proposal. H.R. 1500 has traditionally been the number for the Utah
Wilderness Coalition’s wilderness bill (HCN, 8/3/98). But
environmentalists withdrew the bill this winter in order to update
it, and Hansen introduced his own H.R. 1500. His bill would put a
10-year time limit on protecting areas as wilderness study
areas.
Wyoming Republican Sen.
Craig Thomas thinks the federal government is gobbling up the West.
In April, he introduced a bill that would stop the government from
acquiring more land in states that are more than 25 percent
federally owned. If agencies want to acquire more land, the
“No-Net-Loss of Private Lands Act” would require them to give up an
equal amount of land elsewhere. “The federal land agencies continue
to acquire vast amounts of land in the West and restrict these
areas for multiple-use purposes,” Thomas told the Cody
Enterprise.
On April 27,
tracking satellites and video cameras zoomed in on northern Utah,
where a truck carrying 48 barrels of radioactive waste was bound
for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad, N.M. (HCN,
7/6/98). “We’re not speed demons and we’re not in a hurry,” Jim
Mitchem, one of the truck drivers, told the Salt Lake Tribune. The
shipment was the first of almost 5,000 expected over the next two
decades from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental
Laboratory near Idaho
Falls.
By a vote of 7-6,
Colorado’s House Agriculture Committee killed a bill that would
have weakened control of hog farms. Voters last November passed an
amendment requiring environmental regulations; ever since,
corporate hog farmers have worked to water down any constraints on
air and water pollution.
* Greg Hanscom
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Wayward West.
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