Rampant growth in the Phoenix area and a severe drought on the Colorado River challenge the sustainability of the Central Arizona Project.
Also in this issue: A groundbreaking settlement between New Mexico environmentalists and the city of Albuquerque may keep water in the Middle Rio Grande and help both farmers and endangered silvery minnows.
‘Safe dose’ of rocket fuel now larger
Perchlorate, a tasteless, colorless component of solid rocket fuel, has been detected in the drinking water of 26 states. Despite its toxicity, it is not yet regulated. However, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water is considering new drinking water standards for the dangerous salt, following a recent National Academy of Sciences report. The EPA…
Libby locals should have defended themselves
Let’s see if I have Ray Ring’s point of view right: Powerful resource extraction corporations spend years demonizing environmentalists. Not-very-sophisticated locals join the powerful and spend years speaking ill of “damn environmentalists.” Local enviros move on to other “opportunities.” Is Ray Ring telling us we should feel guilty for not assisting those whose lack of…
This environmentalist fought asbestos
I work as an environmentalist and as a geologist. I worked as a geologist at the Hamilton vermiculite mine mentioned in the Libby, Mont., article, when exploration and permitting was in progress (HCN, 2/21/05: Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?). At a community meeting, I heard the managers tell officials and the…
Outside the movement — and inside the system
As an environmental scientist who has been working on related issues for 30 years, I’ve never felt myself a member of any “movement,” and I would surmise that few of my practicing colleagues do either. On Earth Day, we’re generally out doing something besides marching in parades and selling T-shirts. If the “movement” as it…
Environmentalists didn’t fail Libby
Ray Ring’s bizarre exercise in contorted logic raises the bar of non-sequitur journalism to dizzying new heights. But then, that should have been expected, given the fatuously malignant banner lead on your Feb. 21 cover: “Have Environmentalists Failed the West?” What’s next, HCN? “Did Seismologists Fail the Sumatrans?” Or maybe … “Did Firemen Fail the…
Where were the unions?
High Country News asks: “Where were the environmentalists when Libby, Mont. needed them most?” (HCN, 2/21/05: Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed them most?). However, the more interesting question, closer to the bone, is: “Where were the labor unions?” As Montana’s congressman for 18 years, I knew many of the miners from W.R. Grace’s…
Enviros need some help with public relations
Jim McCarthy’s comments relating to the end of power rate subsidies for farmers in the Klamath Basin illustrate clearly why conservationists are losing the battle for hearts and minds outside of our largely urban and/or liberal base of support (HCN, 2/7/05: Klamath farmers face new threat). According to the story, Klamath Basin farmers are faced…
The life of an unsung Western water diplomat
Mark Twain once remarked that in the West, “whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.” But Delphus E. Carpenter, who spearheaded the 1922 Colorado River Compact among seven states, would have disagreed twice over. Carpenter not only abstained from spirits, but believed water problems could be resolved through diplomacy instead of fisticuffs. His life…
Follow-up
Keep your eyes peeled for yellow snow on the ski slopes: The Coconino National Forest supervisor has approved the use of treated wastewater for snowmaking at the Arizona Snowbowl ski area (HCN, 2/21/05: Snowmaking on sacred slopes stirs controversy). Resort owners hope to boost profits by keeping the slopes open during dry times. Leaders of…
Gators, dirt and hot tubs in the Cowboy State
Readers will recognize the collection of colorful characters in Proulx’s latest installment of Wyoming fictions. The 11 stories in Bad Dirt feature trailer types, Eastern transplants, local roughnecks, and eccentric elders, living in a zero-sum economy of extractive plunder that would make native son Dick Cheney giddy with pride. In “Wamsutter Wolf,” mountain man wannabe…
Seeds of Deception
Seeds of Deception Jeffrey M. Smith, 280 pages, softcover $17.95, hardcover $27.95. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2003. Despite the reassurances of big biotech companies that genetically modified foods are safe and healthy, Jeffrey Smith says that just isn’t so. He investigates the many things that can go wrong with “Frankenstein foods,” explaining how unintended consequences can…
State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security
State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security The Worldwatch Institute, 237 pages, softcover $18.95. W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. The Worldwatch Institute’s latest annual report offers insight into issues from nuclear weapons proliferation to renewable energy. In a chapter on water, researchers provide examples in which locals and religious organizations, as well as water…
UFOs Over Galisteo and Other Stories of New Mexico’s History
UFOs Over Galisteo and Other Stories of New Mexico’s History Robert J. Tórrez, 160 pages, softcover $16.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. A retired state historian, Tórrez creates vivid vignettes of New Mexico’s past. He enlivens his accounts of arranged marriages, water disputes and stagecoaches with historical photos and documents. The book also contains…
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…
Let’s bury the word ‘environmentalism’
I kept hoping as I read “The Death of Environmentalism” that Shellenberger and Nordhaus meant their title literally, that the repetitive thud of the word across their text would lead them to suggest burying the word. They didn’t. But I will. Let’s stop using “environmentalism.” It’s a lousy word, not least for its harsh embedded…
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,…
The environment is about all of us
I’d like to respond to one of your letter-writers, D.D. Sparks, in the Jan. 24, 2005, issue. Sparks hopes “that those who become so passionate about the environment realize there are other people in the world besides themselves.” I would have thought that any reader of High Country News would already know this fact, but…
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…
It’s capitalism, stupid
At a time when the morale of the environmental community is at such a low point, why do Ray Ring and the editor wish to feature a story casting aspersions and fomenting factional bickering? One is led to believe that behind every issue, especially here in Montana where I have lived and worked as an…
Colorado couple turns healthy profit from healthy beef
Ten miles north of Durango, Colo., the property lines of the James Ranch are obvious. Red cliffs, cottonwoods and the Animas River frame one side, while to the south, west and north, new homes and a busy state highway push on the fence lines. It’s a common sight in many Western valleys: ranchers stubbornly clinging…
What’s worse than the worst-case scenario? Real life
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Arizona returns to the desert.” In the early 1990s, the U.S. Geological Survey and several other government agencies funded a little-noticed study of the effect of a major drought on the Colorado River. Researchers were particularly interested in its impacts on Lakes Powell and…
Heard around the West
COLORADO Whatever else you think about Aspen — wondering exactly when it ceased to be the rough mining town it once was, or marveling at the sight of men wearing fur coats so long they look like bears walking — there was always the presence of writer Hunter S. Thompson in nearby Woody Creek to…
Arizona returns to the desert
The worst drought in a century could bring home the true costs of growth
The best-laid plans
In a meeting I attended last year with a group of editors and reporters at the Arizona Republic, one writer asked an incisive question: “How do we get people to take water issues seriously?” In neighboring New Mexico, drought had dried up rivers and forced water rationing. But Arizona itself seemed flush. The state had…
Dear friends
A VISITOR Newspaperman Bob Wick stopped in at High Country News recently. Wick, who lives in Sierra Vista, Ariz., and his brother co-own almost 40 small newspapers across the country, including the nearby Montrose Daily Press. Wick is an environmentalist as well as a publisher, but what seems to consume him most is sculpture: He…
A look at the West, in the funhouse mirror
Life was much simpler when I viewed the battle to “save” the West through a black-and-white lens. As a young environmentalist, it was easier for me to condemn my adversaries’ land ethics and beliefs when I was unwilling to honestly scrutinize my own. And it was easier to attack my adversaries when I didn’t know…
Peace breaks out on the Rio Grande
Settlement between enviros and Albuquerque puts water in the river
Nevada desert to be sold for debt relief
Bush wants proceeds from public-land sales sent to Washington, D.C.
BLM land sold without study
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Nevada desert to be sold for debt relief.” On Feb. 9, several developers paid a surprising $47.5 million, more than four times the projected price, for 13,000 acres of federal land just north of Las Vegas. The…
A leak-proof fuel tank? No such thing
Leaking diesel taints drinking water on the Idaho-Washington line