Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, At Hanford, the real estate is hot. During the four decades the Hanford Nuclear Reservation produced weapons-grade plutonium, it laced eastern Washington’s soil, water and air with radioactive sludge that may never disappear. Recently, Hanford also became synonymous with human radiation experiments that make […]
Amid the lovely the lethal remains
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
At Hanford, the real estate is hot
To become a Yakima Nation warrior, a young man had to run from the top of Rattlesnake Mountain to the Columbia River and back to the mountain top. That meant dropping 2,400 feet to the valley floor, sprinting 10 miles to the water, and then returning to climb this rise, which looks like a crumpled […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
They’re stepping down
Two powerful Western Republicans announced they would not seek re-election in 1996. Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said in early December that he would step down because “Thirty years of voluntary separation from the state I love is enough.” Soon after, Alan Simpson of Wyoming said that he, too, […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Allard takes aim
Last April, the League of Conservation Voters awarded Colorado Rep. Wayne Allard a score of zero for his environmental votes during his first 100 days in office. Now, Allard’s rating might dip into the negative numbers. A provision of Allard’s in the 1995 Farm Bill would prohibit the Forest Service from changing management plans to […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Round two for a grazing bill
Three months after a coalition of environmentalists, hunters and anglers shot down his grazing bill, Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico has resurrected it (HCN, 8/21/95). The new version is 60 pages leaner and ensures public-lands access for fishing, hunting, and other recreational uses. Ranchers like the new bill and its emphasis on cooperation […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Judge says counties aren’t supreme
In a blow to the county supremacy movement in Nevada, a federal court charged an Elk County resident with trespassing and ordered him to remove his cattle from a national forest. The court said Cliff Gardner illegally moved livestock onto the Humboldt National Forest in May 1994 despite repeated Forest Service requests that he apply […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Dan Dagget’s solution is simple – too simple
Dear HCN, Dan Dagget’s essay (-It’s unAmerican, or at best unWestern, but cooperation works,” HCN, 10/16/95)is a clean and tidy one-size-fits-all solution to the environmental crisis. Certainly cooperation has its place in the scheme of things. Yet many environmental problems are international in scope and interconnected in nature. Suggesting that cooperation is the only or […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Idaho is a cheap date
Dear HCN, The deal that Idaho’s Gov. Batt worked out with the DOE is a bad deal for Idaho and a bad deal for the rest of the West (HCN, 11/13/95). The pressure that Gov. Batt claimed to be feeling was coming mainly from Idaho’s congressional delegation and, I suspect, from his political funders. Without […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Short takes
Coeur d’Alene Resort will serve as the backdrop for “Dynamics of Northern Idaho Forests: A Symposium on Plants, Animals and People,” Feb. 2-3. Sponsors include the Sierra Club, the Intermountain Forest Industries Association and the Bureau of Land Management. Write North Idaho Forest Symposium, P.O. Box 564, Potlatch, ID 83855 (208/875-1528). Chip away at today’s […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Bird Brains
-If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.” * Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, c. 1880s Like coyotes, some members of the crow family have long been considered vermin. Scruffy crows steal crops; ravens rip into garbage; magpies and jays steal eggs and nestlings from “innocent” […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Agency chooses death
Killing is the method most frequently used by the federal government to control livestock predators such as coyotes, lions and bears, according to a recent report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Although guidelines for Animal Damage Control staff require them to consider non-lethal methods of control first, federal investigators found […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
DOE’s little list
Environmental journalists interested in knowing how they measure up have a new yardstick: a rating by the Department of Energy. In a report made public in early November, the DOE ranked reporters by how they treated the agency – a 100 score being most favorable. “As far as I’m concerned, if you have too good […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Do-it-yourself preservation
With just a handful of federal agents patrolling millions of square miles of the West, it’s not surprising that looting and vandalism of Indian artifacts are rampant. But with budget cuts portending even less money for enforcement, where will help on the ground come from? One answer is from volunteers, people who give their time […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
For media mavens
The first-ever Media and Democracy Congress invites journalists to San Francisco for four days to hear 52 speakers, including Backlash author Susan Faludi, National Public Radio’s Ray Suarez and Victor Navasky of the Nation magazine. Up for discussion: “Publishing activism: How to transform readers and consumers into citizen activists,” “Commercialism: The quest for truth in […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Environmentalists say agency uses them as scapegoats
For hundreds of years, rural Hispanics have gathered firewood from the forests of northern New Mexico. After all, it was once their land, given to them in Spanish land grants as far back as the late 17th century. Even after the Forest Service took control of the land grants in the early 1900s, local families […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
BPA: Making amends for a destructive past
Note: this article appears in the print edition as a sidebar to another news article, “Changing times force agency to swim upstream.” The Bonneville Power Administration was born out of the Depression. Talk of taming the wild Columbia River and its tributaries began in the 1920s, but Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t authorize the […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Changing times force agency to swim upstream
Three lobbyists in suits strode down the marbled halls of the Senate office building one day last fall. Their mission: to convince the Northwest’s congressional delegation to fight a bill requested by the Bonneville Power Administration. The bill would exempt three runs of imperiled Snake River salmon from federal protection. The men turned into a […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Hobbled federal wolf program attracts friends and money
With a little help from their friends, another batch of Canadian wolves will be released in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho this winter, despite congressional budget action designed to halt the project in its tracks. Environmental groups have pledged $40,000 so far, enough money to find and identify about 30 appropriate wolves in British […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Move to repeal logging rider gathers speed
Since it became law four months ago, the salvage logging rider has proved a mixed blessing for the timber industry, an embarrassment to the administration and a rallying point for environmentalists. Often called the worst environmental legislation to emerge from the 104th Congress, the salvage law could soon become a litmus test for President Clinton […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
Dear Friends
Utah in the news Staff is still exhausted thinking about the trials of Utah Republican Rep. Enid Waldholtz. Her tears flowed copiously for almost five hours two weeks ago while she told the nation she was financially deceived by her husband. Retiring Democrat Rep. Pat Schroeder of Colorado minced no words in giving Waldholtz advice: […]