Dear HCN, I really loved Hal Walter’s piece on llamas (HCN, 8/19/96). I hope it will dispel the myth about the world’s most over-rated beast. As for Chris Ransick on Rock Springs, he’s full of shit. There is an excellent diner (cum Chinese) on Elk Street. I’ve no idea who Poiesis is, but I hope […]
On llamas and lousy poetry
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Llamas are like compact cars
Dear HCN, Hey, Hal Walter, take a geography class (HCN, 8/19/96). Juan Valdez lives in Colombia, llamas don’t. Coffee grows in the tropical highlands, llamas haul loads over high and arid Andean passes in the altiplano of Peru, Bolivia and Chile – just a few thousand feet higher than your 12,000-foot Colorado mountain pass. And […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Wilderness therapy is cutting edge
Dear HCN, I am a former staff member of Pathfinders, a wilderness, emotional-growth program which ceased operation in July due to an investigation into alleged negligence and abuse after two students contracted strep A virus in Colorado. I thought that your article on a Utah wilderness therapy program (-Tough love proves too much’, HCN, 6/10/96) […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Logging protests go mainstream
Dear HCN: Last November, I was in the White House, having secured an appointment with the Clinton administration to talk about the salvage-logging rider. I wore the same suit as when I was arrested for civil disobedience two days before – now somewhat scuffed up. We started into discussions about the terrible impact of the […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Whatever happened to letting fires burn?
The summer wildfire season is drawing to an end, but the West is still burning. And despite a plethora of ecological research that demonstrates the value of fire as an ecological and evolutionary force, land-management agencies continue to suppress fires, except in a few wilderness areas or other reserves. Not only is such a policy […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
It’s the grizzlies and the birds, stupid
CHICAGO, Ill. – “We saved Yellowstone from mining,” President Clinton intoned in his acceptance speech, which was characteristically long, detailed and completely devoid of eloquence. Clinton did not say, “Bob Dole wouldn’t have done that”; he didn’t have to. Dole had done it for him in his own acceptance speech, which was more eloquent, almost […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Grazing bill returns for another round
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another new article titled “Multicultural grazing boards off to a good start.” If Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has his way, the Resource Advisory Committees, which just turned one year old, will never reach their second birthday. A bill sponsored by […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Multicultural grazing boards off to a good start
DENVER, Colo. – Call them the cowboy and the lady. He is T. Wright Dickinson, tall, rail-thin, a third-generation rancher living on 35,000 high-desert acres in northwestern Colorado. She is Kathy Carlson, dressed in an ankle-length dress, glasses framing a tanned face, a veteran of Washington, D.C., politics for the National Wildlife Federation who moved […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Bombs go up in smoke in a rural Utah county
On the morning of Aug. 22, giant furnaces sparked into life in Tooele County, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. Inside the infernos, M-55 nerve gas rockets were reduced to shrapnel and smoke. But three days later, the destruction of chemical weapons abruptly halted after traces of nerve gas were detected in a […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Opal Creek is blowing in the (political) wind
Since the wilderness battles of the early 1980s, Oregon forest activists have fought to protect Opal Creek, a lovely, nearly intact old-growth watershed on the western flank of the Oregon Cascades. Last spring, Sen. Mark Hatfield announced that he would at last grant their wish. The Oregon Republican, retiring next January after 30 years in […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Dear friends
New interns Recently, while chewing sloppy melted chunks of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and watching shadows cast by moonlight cross the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, intern Patrick Dowd got his first taste of the area around Paonia. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, moving inland in 1991 to […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Choose not to go boldly outdoors
I don’t hike often in Elk Meadow anymore, the county park near my home in Evergreen, Colo. I don’t hike often in Boulder’s open space parks, either. And I don’t hike any more in Rocky Mountain National Park. Everywhere I look our local and national wild places are crowded with ecology-minded recreationists, and I am […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Speak up for a quiet Grand Canyon
On my first visit to the Grand Canyon 45 years ago, I was overwhelmed by its magnificent silence, tranquility and timelessness. That serenity is hard to find today. It’s destroyed by the relentless drone of planes and helicopters. A thousand flights a day, 100 flights an hour rain noise down on the canyon. At best, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Heard around the West
When we saw a copy of the Boobyprise out of Cody, Wyo., we thought: “That’s it! This endangered species stuff has gone too far.” For there was a photo of a flying dinosaur carrying off a human being. Worse than the photo was the headline – “Dinosaur reintroduction in Yellowstone Park has gone better than […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
For more information
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. The TRI is available in several formats. Many public libraries have the report. Individuals can access it using on-line computer databases or purchase it on CD-ROM or on computer diskettes. For data-use assistance, call 202/260-1531 or fax to 202/260-4659. EPA also maintains a national technical […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
The Toxic West
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. (Text adapted from a graphic available in the print version of this issue.) MONTANA Population 856,000 Total Facilities 24 National Rank for Air/Water/Land Releases 18 Transfers into State/Rank 16 Transfers out of State/Rank 42 Top Ten Facilities for Air/Water/Land Releases Facility County Total Releases/lbs. ASARCO […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
An off-the-books polluter
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. If the mining industry, which has produced at least 40 Superfund sites nationwide, becomes a part of TRI, it will make a lot of other polluters look like they were spitting in the ocean. “I don’t think there’s any ‘perhaps’ about it,” says Phelps Dodge […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Top 20 polluters
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Rank | Company | Location | Air/Water/Land Total lbs. released 1 Magnesium Corp. of America Rowley, Utah 55.7 million 2 ASARCO Inc. East Helena, MT 43.6 million 3 Courtaulds Fibers Inc. Axis, AL 33.4 million 4 IMC-Agrico Co. Mulberry, FL 25.7 million 5 Lenzing Fibers […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
The filthy West
Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Posted inSeptember 2, 1996: Last line of defense: Civil disobedience and protest slow down 'lawless logging'
Not welcome
Dear HCN, Catron County Attorney James Catron may be correct when he asserts that “he and Catron County residents personify the frontier ethic portrayed by James Fenimore Cooper” (HCN, 6/24/96), but is he aware that Cooper despised frontiersmen and their “ethic’? In The Pioneers, the 18th century settlers’ only “ethic” is the myth of superabundance; […]