Clean, ‘green’ gas burns its neighbors as methane wells dominate the land.
Earth First!
Oregon-based Earth First! celebrates 20 years of the Earth First! Journal with a commemorative issue in late October. The special issue will highlight eco-radicals and their doings. Contact the EF! Journal at P.O. Box 1415, Eugene, OR 97440 (541/344-8004) or at www.earthfirstjournal.org. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline…
Was it chinook or sockeye?
Dear HCN, As always, your Aug. 28 issue was quite informative and very enjoyable. One critique I must make, though, has to deal with Rocky Barker’s analysis on the latest federal salmon plan. A reference was made about the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in the central mountains of Idaho. He went on to…
Does the “death tax’ protect open space?
The federal estate tax affects only the wealthiest 2 percent of the U.S. population. So why should most Westerners care about the current Republican push to repeal it? One reason is that part of that wealth isn’t cash. It’s undeveloped land. And in some cases, the threat of estate taxes keeps it permanently undeveloped. Here’s…
On the trail
Congressional races in Montana are heating up. Brian Schweitzer, the Democrats’ maverick Senate candidate, is still well behind two-term Republican incumbent Conrad Burns, but he’s made some small gains in recent polls. Schweitzer, a mint farmer from Whitefish, defends small-scale agriculture and criticizes rising health-care costs. Over the last year, he has shepherded busloads of…
Pick up an ax
Dear HCN, Joy Belsky, a staffer for the Oregon Natural Desert Association, wrote a thoughtful letter about matters of the imagination in the form of a critique of my essay, “Los Alamos is burning” (HCN, 5/22/00: ‘Los Alamos is burning’). By way of reply let me suggest that we don’t have to imagine a zero-cut…
Ranchers test an agency’s image
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt boasts that the BLM is moving away from its early reputation as the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining” to a more conservation-minded agency overseeing national monuments around the West (HCN, 11/22/99). This summer, when managers ordered cows off Utah’s drought-stricken Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, that new reputation was put to the…
Roadless in Montana
Dear HCN, Montana’s gallivanting Gov. Marc Racicot recently bellyached in Washington, D.C., about the administration’s roadless initiative. Since his case had just been thrown out of court in Idaho, maybe he was seeking refuge with fellow anti-enviros inside the Beltway. Obviously, he’s not listening to most of his constituents. Most Montanans, like the great majority…
Bush camp backpedals on toppling monuments
Vice presidential candidate Richard Cheney may have spoken too soon in August, when he said George W. Bush might rescind national monuments created by President Clinton (HCN, 9/11/00). U.S. presidents have created 114 monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act, and undoing them is unlikely, according to University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson. In 1996,…
Tourism can be self-righteous
Dear HCN, After reading the Geof Koss story, “Hikers stumble into an old dispute” (HCN, 5/22/00: Hikers stumble into an old dispute), I am reminded that any form of tourism on New Mexico land grants, or in traditional Hispano lands of southwestern and south central Colorado, must not merely purport to “respect” Native American and…
Something is polluting the water
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe says it has always farmed oysters on western Washington’s Dungeness Bay. But not any more. The state health department banned the harvest of shellfish in certain areas of the bay last May, because water-quality tests showed excess levels of fecal coliform bacteria. While fecal coliform isn’t a health hazard by itself,…
Red-legged frog habitat slated for protection
The red-legged frog was once common throughout California, but development has devastated its habitat and reduced the species to three viable breeding populations. Now, the amphibian may get the protection it needs to survive. On Sept. 8, under pressure from a federal court order, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated 5.4 million acres in…
A highway hits a speed bump
Only one highway moves commuters south to Salt Lake City, squeezing cars between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. The Utah Department of Transportation wants to change that with its proposed $370 million Legacy Highway, a controversial 125-mile freeway that just hit a speed bump. On Sept. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency announced…
‘Snooty’ garages banned
In keeping with Portland’s pedestrian-friendly building codes, city council commissioners have been waging a war on oversized garages. The Portland City Council unanimously concluded that “snout houses’ – the tract homes dominated by garages thrusting toward the street – lack community spirit and make pedestrians feel less safe. “These houses don’t (just) turn their backs…
A call to heed the wild
Environmentalists have long depended on photos of endangered landscapes to spur us into protecting wild places. The photographers hope that if they show us the wonder of these places, we will fight like mad to save them. Tupper Ansel Blake and Madeleine Graham Blake, the photographers of Balancing Water: Restoring the Klamath Basin, want their…
Yellowstone’s bison get a time limit
Yellowstone National Park’s long-awaited plan for managing its wandering bison herds hasn’t made everyone happy. The park’s final environmental impact statement, released in early September, tries to satisfy both bison advocates and the Montana Department of Livestock, which kills bison it fears could spread brucellosis to cattle. The park’s preferred alternative would allow a bigger…
From cumbersome to collaborative
The National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of its actions, has become synonymous with contentious public hearings and cumbersome environmental impact statements. But it shouldn’t be, argues Daniel Kemmis, director of the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula, Mont. “(NEPA) represents a national recognition…
Society for Ecological Restoration
The Society for Ecological Restoration’s Northwest Chapter is calling for paper abstracts before Sept. 29 for its spring conference, “Restoration and Recovery: Beyond Good Intentions.” Go to www.halcyon.com/sernw for more information about the conference, scheduled for April 2-6 in Bellevue, Wash. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Society…
Taos Art Association
The Taos Art Association is raffling off 40 acres of piûon and juniper-studded meadows. Tickets cost $50, and the winner of the Jan. 1, 2001, drawing will have the choice of either the land, located in Lindrith, N.M., or $10,000. The event raises money to reopen the association’s community auditorium. Call 505/758-2052 or visit www.taosnet.com/taa/raffle.…
Response to ‘squishy-soft’
Dear HCN, Few historians make Westerners more uncomfortable than Bernard DeVoto. Ed Marston’s Aug. 25, “Squishy-soft processes – hard results” article brings to mind one of DeVoto’s stinging bromides: “The West does not really want to be liberated from the system of exploitation that it has always violently resented. It only wants to buy into…
The latest bounce
A Fourth of July party landed Nevada’s Jarbidge Shovel Brigade in hot water (HCN, 7/31/00). The Justice Department has sued the group for clearing rocks and debris from a national forest road, closed to protect endangered bull trout. l For the first time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has formally apologized for mistreating Native Americans.…
Indian Land Consolidation Symposium
Reclaiming tribal lands is the topic of the 10th annual Indian Land Consolidation Symposium, Oct. 16-20 in Pendleton, Ore. The symposium, hosted by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, offers workshops, including “Public Lands: Impacting Changes and Transfers,” and “Land Use Planning.” Call the Indian Land Working Group at 541/276-3873. This article appeared in the…
A critical link
Dear HCN, I had the good fortune to visit with Lynn Dickey more than a decade ago, while researching the nuclear weapons train through the West (HCN, 6/5/00: Dear Friends). Lynn was a critical link in the chain of activists along the train route, and organized protests whenever weapons were shipped through her district. I…
Looters beware: Tribes are fighting back
Lori Watlamet can’t hold back tears when she talks about the looting of an old Native Indian village site in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Gorge. In May, with a reporter in tow, the law enforcement officer walked over a bluff that protects the site from plain view and her heart sank. Watlamet, a member…
A park rediscovers a surprising asset
Springdale, Utah – Though some still question the wisdom of spending $11.8 million on 350 shuttle buses for Zion National Park (HCN, 4/10/00), practically everyone agrees that they allow an unexpected experience to emerge from the surreal canyons of Utah. Quiet strikes tourists when they step off a propane-powered bus at any of the seven…
Colliding forces
Has Colorado’s oil and gas industry met its match?
The hope of a freshly planted field
Growing up, I often despised the cornfields surrounding my parents’ house outside of Bozeman, Mont. By the end of July, the plants rose to the sky, blocking our view and trapping their own musty sweat. When I pulled on patched jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, my eyes heavy at 6 a.m., the fields meant hard…
How well do you know your wells?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Colliding forces.” Understanding methane-gas drilling isn’t easy. Here are some basics about what might be underground in a Western backyard. Conventional wells extract methane gas from sandstone 1,000 to 20,000 feet below the surface. Sitting in zucchini-shaped air pockets in the rock,…
Of bison, the French and our faux wild
There’s an inside joke in these parts that Yellowstone bison have a thing for French photographers. It’s a weird twist on dwarf tossing, this propensity of theirs to spear and fling men with names like Jacques and Pierre. Now, this is not a hard and fast rule. The most recent casualty was an elderly Australian…
‘We need that gas’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Colliding forces.” Ken Wonstolen of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, in his own words, says that Colorado is an energy-dependent state, and the methane gas it produces is greatly needed. “We live in an energy-dependent state. Unless we’re willing to give…
‘It’s corporate greed’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Colliding forces.” Arnold Mackley, who is fighting to protect his ranch from 20-acre well densities, was a Garfield County Commissioner from 1988 to 1996. He currently is a consultant for a nahcolite mining company, but he and his wife have plans to…
Status quo reigns in New Mexico
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Colliding forces.” AZTEC, N.M. – Five miles below the Colorado border in Aztec, N.M., green-painted pumpjacks and oil wells line the highways like sentinels. Many residents of this town of fewer than 6,000 people say they worry about poor air quality, noise…
‘It’s hard to keep fighting’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Colliding forces.” Janey Hines runs the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance in Parachute, Colo.: “We have no idea how many wells will be here, or how many roads, because the oil and gas companies are not required to make a plan. Maybe it…
Heard around the West
Las Vegas, Nev., detective John Zidzik was patrolling his city’s airport when he noticed something peculiar about a traveler, a man in his early 30s. There were “unusual bulges in his groin area not consistent with male anatomy,” said the police officer, who conducted a delicate search. The bulges, moving oddly, turned out to be…
‘The playing field has to be leveled’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Colliding forces.” Charles Micale owns the My Way Ranch in Collbran, Colo. In October 1999, Strachan Exploration Co. drilled a methane well at the ranch’s entranceway; since then, Micale has been fighting for more property rights for landowners who live above methane…
Truth-telling needs a home in the West
Brothers is a store and a highway rest stop 43 miles east of the New West boomtown of Bend in central Oregon. It is also home to some of the most shocking roadside markers we saw in 3,600 miles of Western travel this summer. After days of reading highway signs that painted the surrounding area…
Open for business
Wyoming throws away its water to get out the gas
‘We became Michiwest’s sewer’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” Earl and Sue Boardman’s ranch on the banks of the Powder River is dotted with gas wells owned by the Michigan-based company Michiwest. In 1999, Earl Boardman shot a video of the dry water wells, eroded arroyos, and quagmires…
‘The industry’s philosophy has been to fragment the community’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” Mike Foate, who ranches north of Arvada, Wyo., has developed a Web site – powderriverbasin.org. – for landowners concerned about coalbed methane development in the area. He says he decided to go online to try to get information out…
‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” Byron and Marge Oedekoven, who own a ranch 12 miles north of Gillette, Wyo., have had a more positive experience with coalbed methane development on their property. Buteven though the company doing the development, Redstone Resources, worked with the…
Under pressure, Montana opts for a slower approach
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Open for business.” MILES CITY, Mont. – After it drains the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, the Tongue River flows north to join the Yellowstone near this eastern Montana city. The Tongue doesn’t carry a lot of water, but it’s a lifeline for…
Dear Friends
Our Boise get-together The latest meeting of the High Country Foundation board was in Boise Sept. 8-10, and although all of the subscribers who attend the paper’s roving potlucks are good cooks and convivial company, Idaho subscribers have ratcheted that high standard up a notch. The food was wonderful and plentiful, and the turnout was…
Clean fuel, dirty neighbors
We should be a little grateful this time around. The West’s last energy boom threatened the region with mountains of spent oil shale, huge pits from which the rock had been taken, air pollution from coal gasification plants, and large ditches carrying Columbia River water into the Colorado River Basin. This latest energy boom is…
Fires bring on a flood of federal funds
As this summer’s massive wildfires wind down, the West still can’t decide who’s at fault. Yet nearly everyone agrees on one thing: A century of fire suppression has disrupted the cycle of frequent fires in dry conifer forests, replacing old-growth pine stands with thickets of small trees. When the fuel buildup collided with drought and…