A 12 million-ton relic of the Cold War willget hauled away from Moab
News
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Backbreaking work props up ‘sustainable’ crops
Organic farmers lead the fight against new worker protections
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
As threats loom, conservation dollars disappear
Feds back away from buying sensitive land
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Surprise bequest to protect Columbia Gorge
A scrappy conservation group in Portland has received a giant gift. The $4 million windfall for the Friends of the Columbia Gorge came from Norman Yeon, the son of a legendary Oregon timber and real estate baron. Yeon’s father, John Baptiste Yeon, earned $2.50 a day as a logger when he first arrived in Oregon […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Climate model may help farmers know what to grow
What farmer hasn’t wished for a weather-predicting crystal ball? Now, growers in the Yakima Valley have the next best thing: a high-tech climate model that may benefit the entire West. The climate model is adapted from a West-wide model developed by the Department of Energy, which predicts that, over the next 50 years, Western snowpack […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
D-Day for dam decommissioning approaches
Preparations have begun to bring down the dam that has withheld water from 14 miles of Fossil Creek in central Arizona for almost a hundred years. In 1908, laborers built Arizona’s first commercial hydroelectric plant, which diverted more than 95 percent of Fossil Creek’s water. The plant, along with a second facility built nearby in […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Farmers and ranchers say city is stealing water
Steel pumps and filter towers may soon rise from the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico — and that has a small agricultural community seriously concerned. The growing city of Alamogordo wants to draw water from deep within the Tularosa Basin aquifer. But that water is salty. To make it drinkable, the city plans to […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Follow-up
The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, Nikki L. Tinsley, plans to investigate allegations that bunk science led to her agency’s claim that hydraulic fracturing poses “little or no threat” to drinking water. “Frac’ing,” a technique pioneered by Halliburton, increases the production of a gas or oil well by injecting it with liquid, which can include […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
‘Sound science’ in doubt at Yucca Mountain
E-mails show federal employees circumvented quality assurance procedures
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
A chemical cocktail pollutes Western water
Traces of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, other compounds turn up in streams and wells
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Skiing, or wheeling and dealing?
New resorts smell a lot like real estate bonanzas
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Developer under fire for destroying desert
A developer who was grading the desert for one of the largest developments in Arizona history now faces a lawsuit alleging major violations of state environmental laws. In February, the state attorney general’s office accused developer George Johnson and the five companies he owns of illegally destroying 40,203 native desert plants, bulldozing seven archaeological sites, […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The last happy agency biologist — and other April Foolery
Public servant decides it’s time to put his feet up and relax
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Ski areas’ ‘green’ image not backed by action
Researchers call ‘Sustainable Slopes’ program ‘greenwashing’
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Rock jocks fight a mining company
Land swap would undo a presidential order for land protection
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The public pays to keep water in a river
A new wave of ‘takings’ lawsuits could bust the environmental protection budget
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Who owns Klamath water — farmers or the public?
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “The public pays to keep water in a river.” For four years, farmers on the California-Oregon border have battled the U.S. government in the courts for $100 million in damages, after the Bureau of Reclamation withheld irrigation […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
Indian tribe to share refuge with feds
At a time when Indian tribes are making headlines for taking control of their ancestral lands, the Nisqually Tribe plans to share some of its land with the federal government (HCN, 3/7/05: Tribe close to sharing federal bison refuge). In 1996, the tribe worked out a deal to buy a 310-acre inholding in Nisqually National […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
Biohazard lab takes shape
A huge construction crane towers over a corner of the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories campus in Hamilton, a small town south of Missoula. As the crane slings buckets of concrete, a $66.5 million building takes shape. It’s part of the federal government’s ominous-sounding Project BioShield. In locations ranging from Texas to Massachusetts, […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2005: An Empire Built on Sand
Cheese producers just say ‘no’ to Monsanto
Oregon dairy farmers reaffirmed their intention to keep a bovine growth hormone off their cheese plate, much to the chagrin of the drug’s manufacturer, bioengineering giant Monsanto. On Feb. 28, farmers in the Tillamook County Creamery Association, the second-largest producer of natural chunk cheese in the United States, voted 83 to 43 to uphold a […]