By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House As the Montana Department of Environmental Quality mulls an expansion of a coal strip mine east of Billings, the public has an opportunity to give input on what environmental factors the agency should consider. Chugging away in the northern corner of the well-endowed Powder River Basin, the Rosebud mine is […]
Blogs
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Fecal matters
The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY is one of the nation’s most polluted waterways. Toxic sludge lines the bottom of the canal, designated a Superfund site, and used condoms, human feces and tampons bob on the surface. Every time it rains, wastewater treatments plants inundated with storm water flush sewage and run-off into the Gowanus […]
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Is the Western growth machine coming out of its coma?
I like to keep an eye on what the housing market’s doing in the West. That’s not because I’m invested in it — my family and I have been happy renters since we sold our house a year ago. I’m interested in the housing market because this one data set can tell so much about […]
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The carbon (spin) cycle
Cross posted from the Last Word on Nothing, a blog about science. We’ve got a lot of dead trees in the Rockies. More than usual. As the region has warmed, bark beetle populations have exploded, and they’ve been killing off massive swaths of pine and spruce. It’s hard to miss the damage, and when British […]
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Whither wilderness?
On a stretch of land along the eastern side of Colorado’s Arkansas River, enormous, sand-colored rocks pile up on each other, looking as if a giant child had picked up a handful and let them dribble out between her fingers. This rock jumble is overlaid with piñon pine, juniper, and spots of ponderosa. It’s land […]
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Like a rogue net
Oregon’s salmon politics have taken a curious turn. In late September several sportfishing groups publicly disavowed Measure 81, a voter initiative they had earlier sponsored to ban gillnets on the Columbia River. The reversal followed an announcement by Oregon governor John Kitzhaber that gillnets were his latest cause du mois and he wants them gone […]
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Flight for life
Something about helicopter pilots chasing bank robbers, busting spies and saving castaways impressed six-year-old Doug Sheffer. The Whirlybirds television episodes, over 50 years ago, were heroic and exciting and everything he seemed born to do. While his father tried to waylay those childish ambitions, it wasn’t too many decades before Sheffer had owned his own […]
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Endangered razorback sucker discovered in Grand Canyon
On Oct. 9, biologists electrofishing in Grand Canyon National Park caught a razorback sucker — the first one seen in the park in 20 years. The endangered fish, known for its distinctive humpback, huge size (up to three feet long!) and long life (40-plus years!) was once common in the Colorado River and its tributaries. As […]
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Binders full of newspaper endorsements
In the age of political Internet memes, which both entertain and influence voters, how important is a newspaper endorsement? The answer depends on who you ask. To voters, a newspaper endorsement may have little bearing on their vote, as NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflick reported. In interviews, a dozen voters suggested they put little to […]
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Utah tar sands project gets key go ahead
One Canadian company’s plan to extract oil from Utah’s tar sands just took a big step forward. In 2005, U.S. Oil Sands, a small Canadian company already active in Alberta, proposed a project to squeeze oil out of tar sands on Utah’s Tavaputs Plateau On Wednesday, the Utah Water Quality Board voted 9-2 to uphold […]
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Amphibian alterations
Parasites have always filled me with fear. I still experience the occasional bout of night terrors when images of Guinea Worms wriggling out of weeping lesions in my flesh flicker across my dream state subconscious. Over the past few days, while working on a piece for the next issue of High Country News, I’ve become […]
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Environment 2012
Environmental issues have barely registered a blip on political radar screens this campaign season. Sure, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had a notable bickering match about drilling on public lands in their town hall debate. But it devolved into a game of one-upmanship as to who would drill more. Yes, Obama continues to promote clean […]
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This rich Republican Mormon spreads the wealth
He’s a rich, conservative Republican businessman, and the scion of a powerful Mormon family. And four years into a devastating economic crisis, he has come to Washington, D.C., amid cries to balance the budget, to offer a solution. Mitt Romney? Nope. It’s Marriner S. Eccles. The year was 1933, and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee […]
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Glimpses of moderation this election season
Like a lot of you, I’m feeling depressed in the runup to the November 6 elections. The relentless attack ads demonizing every candidate around the West, and our further fragmentation into hostile camps — six political parties qualified for Wyoming’s ballot alone, a new record for that state, for instance — I’m beginning to think […]
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Is the future of Western water in jeopardy?
Updated 10/22/2012, 12:14 p.m., MDT “Supreme Court decision could lead to ‘water anarchy’ in the West““U.S. on the verge of water anarchy““Utah’s water future in court”“Ruling key to Colorado water future““Upcoming ruling key to New Mexico’s water future“ These headlines, splashed across major Western newspapers in recent weeks, and in the influential website Politico and […]
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Gettin’ down with cap ‘n trade
Next month, California will hold the first auction as part of its carbon cap and trade program. The program, which will be the second largest CO2 emissions trading system in the world, has been in the works since 2006, when the Golden State passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, a piece of legislation that mandated […]
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Bureaucracy and the birds
In 1975, the Department of Interior reassured Native Americans they would not be prosecuted by the federal government for using eagle feathers for cultural or religious purposes. But the “Morton Policy,” as the directive is known, didn’t answer several important questions, leading to confusion on the part of tribal members. For example, was it okay […]
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Drilling into the data
I’ve written here before about how the natural gas glut has led to low prices which has led to a drilling drought in many Western regions. But even I was surprised when I received the latest numbers from the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission and saw that drilling in my state had slowed to […]
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Putting a price tag on existence
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House There’s an important change brewing in the protection of endangered species. It appears to push economic considerations higher up in the part of the law dealing with critical habitat designation. The shift comes in the form of a proposed rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and […]
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BLM looks for balance
“We need to be smart. The future of how public lands are going to be managed is going to be based upon how they’re being used today.” — Retired Bureau of Land Management chief Bob Abbey, who stepped down in May, speaking to HCN in a recent interview. Judging by the way much BLM land […]