I’m engaged to New Mexico. I’ve been engaged for eighteen years. I’ve worn its ring of rainbow set with a mica shard. I’ve given my dowry already, my skin texture, my hair moisture. I’ve given New Mexico my back-East manners, my eyesight, The arches of my feet. New Mexico’s a difficult fiancé. —excerpt from “Something […]
Departments
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Drought will come, regardless
I need to fine-tune your editor’s note on long-term drought (HCN, 1/24/05: Who’ll stop the rain?), I’m sure that you folks have heard about the tree stumps in Lake Tahoe. They are over 100 years old and reveal to us that drought has been here in our recent past and it lasted for a very […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Political appointee slashes forest protections
White River National Forest may lose safeguards for water and rare wildcat
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Energy without hypocrisy
I have a confession to make: I like natural gas. Every morning at five minutes before 6:00, I wake up to the gentle whumph of the gas heater kicking on in the family room. I then get out of bed, tap on my son’s door and call, “Time to get up,” and plant myself in […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Forest Service employees and activist face racketeering charges
Developers’ attempt to silence critics of condo project could make history
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant
In Colorado, a gas company edges in on a radioactive blast site
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Small tribe in Idaho weighs big water deal
Nez Perce will decide whether a $193 million package does enough for salmon
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Dear friends
BOMBS AWAY! This issue’s cover story mentions Project Plowshare, the federal government’s campaign, during the 1960s and early ’70s, to find “peaceful” uses for nuclear bombs. Longtime HCN subscriber Chuck Worley of Cedaredge, Colo., remembers it well: Worley, now 87, and his former plumbing partner, the late Fred Smith, protested the use of nuclear bombs […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Ready… fire… aim!
A decade into a massive energy boom, the West decides it’s time to deal with the impacts on the land, air, water and wildlife
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real foe
While Wyoming ranchers and hunters are facing off with gas companies eager to drill their rangelands and hunting grounds, Massachusetts lobster barons are facing their own showdown with an energy juggernaut. Has the West found an ally in Eastern blue bloods and politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? Not exactly. In Wyoming’s Powder River […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
State laws — and small staff — muzzle would-be watchdog
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant.” The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, charged with overseeing energy development in the state, is conflicted. The commission’s mission is to facilitate oil and gas production. At the same time, it is supposed to protect the public’s […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Whose rules rule on Otero Mesa?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant.” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, D, knows who his friends are. In 2003, speaking before the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, he told the assembled governors and industry bigwigs that they built his state’s budget surplus. And […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA Every time you turn around, the members of some worthy organization are shedding their clothes to pose nude for a calendar. The fun is in the photography, because while the librarians or firefighters may be naked, they are always strategically hidden behind some fire hose, book or fence. In Carmel, Calif., a group called […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Wastewater goes unwatched
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant.” On an average day in Wyoming, energy companies drill nine new wells to pull methane gas out of the state’s coal beds. In 1995, the state had 427 coalbed methane wells. Now, the total is more than 21,000, […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Follow-up
The Union of Concerned Scientists is concerned again — this time, about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Union, a nonprofit coalition of scientists and citizens, has released the results of its survey of Fish and Wildlife Service employees: Forty-four percent say they have been told, “for non-scientific reasons,” to refrain from making findings […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
A Lively Exchange with the Interior Department
HCN GOT IT WRONG ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION To the Editor: The Dec. 6 feature article, “Taking the West Forward,” contains a thoughtful overview of issues facing the West but it grossly mischaracterizes the Bush Administration’s policies and programs. The article states the administration has “opened the region’s resources to development” when in fact public […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?
The story of an ailing town in northwestern Montana calls into question the health of the environmental movement
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
HCN has it wrong on Bush
The Dec. 6 feature article, “Taking the West Forward,” grossly mischaracterizes the Bush administration’s policies and programs. The article states the administration has “opened the region’s resources to development” when in fact public lands, at the direction of Congress, have been open for years. More typically, this administration has restricted development in previously open sensitive […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
The Editors Respond
We appreciate Rebecca Watson’s invitation to Westerners, and we salute the many positive efforts Interior is undertaking to protect wild places and involve the public. But we do not believe HCN has mischaracterized the Bush administration’s record. On the subject of opening land to development: In 2001, the Department of Agriculture rewrote the Roadless Area […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
From folk singer to fierce activist — the life of Katie Lee
Among desert rats and river lovers, folk singer and activist Katie Lee is legendary. A Hollywood actress in her youth, Lee started running Southwestern rivers in her 30s and became an outspoken defender of her beloved Colorado River. She fought the damming of Glen Canyon, and celebrated its beauty and mourned its loss in All […]