High Country News October 27, 2003
Feature
The Gear Biz
The West might still be the nation’s outdoor playground, but the Western companies that make outdoor recreation gear are finding greener pastures overseas
Editor's Note
Pieces of the economic puzzle
The West’s small towns have always been subject to boom-and-bust economies, and even when the coal mines close and the factories move overseas, new economic engines will likely take their place
Dear Friends
Dear Friends
Tom Bell and Louise Murie MacLeod at HCN’s fall board meeting at Moose, Wyo.; lots of visitors
News
California strikes a water truce
A landmark California water deal has Imperial Valley irrigators finally agreeing to sell Colorado River water to San Diego, without sacrificing the Salton Sea
Follow-up
"Socially responsible" investors counsel caution in coalbed methane development; Western Watersheds Project goes after Wyoming rancher Frank Robbins; Fish & Wildlife to protect habitat for threatened bull trout; and environmentalist’s truck hit by arson i
Bill would redraw the boundaries of national monument
Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg, R, wants to yank private lands out of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, but some local ranchers fear his bill will just make it harder for them to sell their property.
Gas industry gets cracking
Environmentalists and landowners are worried about the use of hydraulic fracturing to extract coalbed methane, but the industry – and the EPA – are carefully protecting the process and its secrets
National monuments are here to stay
The Supreme Court refuses to hear arguments against six national monuments that President Clinton created under the authority of the 1906 Antiquities Act
A bright spot for illegal workers
The proposed Agricultural Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act of 2003 would give legal residency to about a half-million undocumented immigrant farmworkers
West Coast states tackle global warming
Outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis is working with Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Washington Gov. Gary Locke on a regionwide plan for slowing greenhouse gas emissions
Mining companies slapped with half the bill for Superfund mess
In Idaho, a judge rules that Hecla and Asarco are responsible for pollution in the Silver Valley, but that the two companies created only half the mine tailings and therefore need pay for only half the estimated damage costs
Book Reviews
Snowmaking and drought: a bad combination
Artificial snowmaking at Colorado ski resorts can lead to pollution problems when water is taken from rivers contaminated by heavy metals from mining
Calendar
Right and wrong on public lands
From Conquest to Conservation: Our Public Lands Legacy by Michael P. Dombeck, Christopher A. Wood and Jack E. Williams takes a hopeful view of the ecological future of the nation’s public lands
Gas drilling blamed for smog
Scientists say that oil and gas drilling is responsible for creating high levels of smog-forming hydrocarbons in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado
Essays
My Sensitive Man meets culture shock on the range
A sensitive male from Vermont comes face-to-face with Western violence at the movies
In the Northwest, salmon go swoosh
In downtown Portland, Ore., the writer collides with "Salmon Nation" – a new brand name for a new style of conservation, or maybe consumerism
Heard Around the West
Heard Around The West
Seabiscuit moves to Colorado; black bear vs. David Letterman; Hanford’s radioactive wasp nests; Helen Thomas vs. Brigham Young University; BLM ranger Dick Godwin vs. desert junk and shot-up appliances
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