In Gallatin County, Mont., and Delta County, Colo., local
citizens and county governments are fiercely resisting the recent,
no-holds-barred push to drill for coalbed methane.
Magazine
September 2, 2002
As a new boom in coalbed methane gas drilling hits the West, some counties are taking on industry-friendly state regulating agencies and demanding that gas companies listen to local concerns. Also in this issue: EPA chief Christie Whitman and Idaho Sen. Larry Craig dipped champagne glasses in Idaho's Lake Coeur d'Alene and toasted the newly-created commission tasked with cleaning up mining waste in the lake. But the Coeur d'Alene Tribe wants the problem to be taken seriously.
Feature
Sidebar
Poor but coal-rich Delta County, Colo., made history when
its county commissioners, responding to a determined citizens'
movement, voted to deny four coalbed methane test wells and attach
conditions to the drilling of a fifth.
Essays
For environmental as well as aesthetic reasons, parks like
Grand Teton in Wyoming are doing away with wilderness outhouses,
and requesting hikers to use "poop bags" to pack out human
waste.
Perspective
The Bush administrations' push to drill and drill yet more
in the West is likely to have surprising consequences, arousing
even some Republicans to protest.
Writers on the Range
The term "NIMBY" is used as a term of abuse, but the
writer says that when it comes to things like coalbed methane
drilling on Colorado's Western Slope, he is eager and proud to
declare: NOT IN MY BACKYARD.
Book Reviews
Land, Wind and Hard Words: A Story of Navajo Activism by
John W. Sherry tells the story of the Navajo grassroots
environmental group Dine CARE and the dedicated small group of
people who founded it, 10 years ago.
The Culminating Conference for the year-long series,
Moving Waters: The Colorado River and the West, is set for four
days in September in Flagstaff, Ariz.
As part of the United Nations' 2002: The Year of the
Mountains proclamation, a program on the problems facing mountain
peoples will be held in Silverton, Colo., Sept. 26-28.
In Barefoot Hearted: A Wild Life with Wildlife, Kathleen
Meyer relates her adventures in Montana's Bitterroot Valley, where
she shares an old dairy barn with her boyfriend and numerous
uninvited animal guests.
Bradford Morrow's novel, Ariel's Crossing, tells a
poignant story of family and reconciliation in New Mexico, where
the nuclear weapons testing of 40 years ago still haunts the land
and the people.
Outdoor Classroom on Rangeland Health
Sopris Foundation's Web site
Western Colorado Congress
Heard Around the West
Mini-ranch sold on eBay; smashed toilets become office
foundation; Aspen man blown away by job requirements; "Russian
Mafia" robbing Idaho hikers; meth addicts stealing old-growth
trees; Water Board plans cloud-seeding; and grasshopper
plague.
Dear Friends
Breaking all the rules, HCN writes about local coalbed
methane story; Visitors; interesting mail about enviro
"psychohistory"; no Centennial Hotel in Elko; HCN goes to Seattle
for board meeting, potluck
Mountain photographers Galen and Barbara Rowell die in a
California plane crash.
News
The planned Superfund cleanup of Idaho's Lake Coeur
d'Alene is taken from the EPA and given to a controversial new
local commission, although the Coeur d'Alene Tribe says it will
force the EPA to take back the project, if necessary.
180 lynx to be released in Colorado; stricter noise rules
in Grand Canyon; Bureau of Indian Affairs to create federal Indian
Energy and Minerals office; bark beetles hit Arizona pinon
pines.
On the Navajo Reservation, Indigenous Community
Enterprises is using thinned small trees from fire-prone, overgrown
forests to build hogans for housing - and the tribal economy as
well.
Fire-proofing houses is a thriving new business in
Durango, Colorado's fire-prone forests, but the only real solution
to the problem is to quit building in the urban-wildland interface,
many say.
Letters
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