Spurred by a Sierra Club lawsuit, Texaco has agreed to prevent further contamination of the North Platte River by its defunct oil refinery near Casper, Wyo. If the EPA and Justice Department approve the consent decree next month, Texaco must clean up the river, report monthly to the Sierra Club, and step up efforts to […]
Citizen action gets results
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Montana man charged in wolf killing
A 42-year-old unemployed Red Lodge, Mont., man has been charged with killing one of 15 wolves restored to Yellowstone National Park. Chad McKittrick appeared in U.S. District Court on May 18, where he faced misdemeanor charges of illegally killing the large male wolf. A hunting partner turned McKittrick over to authorities, who found the wolf’s […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Californians talk too much trash
As co-chairs of the Kanab (Utah) Beautification Committee, California retirees Ken and Pat Nute discovered it takes more than good intentions and a little elbow grease to clean up a town. Tact would have helped, say city council members, who voted to disband the committee in March after Ken Nute flashed photos of houses he […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Heard Around the West
The House of the Utah Legislature has voted 69-2 to exempt the smoke of Native American ceremonial pipes from the state’s Clean Air Act. According to the Associated Press, one nay vote came from a “white Republican Mormon,” Gerry Adair, who won’t okay any form of smoking because his father died of emphysema. The other […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
This budget cut is destructive
Business isn’t being conducted as usual on Capitol Hill these days, and no better example exists than the perils besetting the Land and Water Conservation Fund The fund, created in 1965 at the height of the Great Society, was designed to finance federal purchases of land for recreation and habitat enhancement, and to give states […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Just a moment! Can we learn from a bogus book?
A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism, by Gregg Easterbrook, 745 pages, $27.95; cloth, Viking. At no extra charge, you get with Gregg Easterbrook’s 745-page, $27.95 book, A Moment on the Earth, an erratum. Easterbrook had incorrectly written that the Environmental Defense Fund had sold, instead of given, its advice to […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Legislature votes to hamstring Washington state
By late July, Washington state could have the most far-reaching “takings” law in the nation – one so dramatic that even zoning might require landowner compensation. The Washington Legislature’s recent approval of Initiative 164 has elated its backers. “It is a crushing blow for big-government advocates, over-zealous state and federal bureaucrats, and cash-laden, well-heeled environmental […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Flip-flop on storing nuclear waste shakes up tribe
MESCALERO, N.M. – On a wind-whipped spring afternoon, tears streamed down the face of anti-nuclear activist Rufina Laws as she stood in the tribal parking lot. Leda Bob, a former tribal secretary, had just hurled a bagful of campaign literature at Laws and cursed her. The scene symbolized the nastiness that overtook this southern New […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Huge snowmelt may lift salmon past killer dams
Just when everything looked dim for endangered salmon in 1995, the snow gods came through. They hurled tons of snow at the central mountains of Idaho, which, combined with heavy spring rain, should mean big runoff in the creeks and rivers in the weeks ahead. By the beginning of May, the floodwaters were already beginning […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Wyoming tribes get support to keep a river wet
As the Wind River slices through the 2.2 million-acre Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, home to some 8,000 Shoshone and Arapaho tribal members, it becomes the “most abused water system in the Western United States,” says Tom Dougherty of the National Wildlife Federation. But Indians aren’t the abusers. Dougherty says the culprits are non-Indian […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Ranchers charge tourists for a dose of reality
SALINA, Utah – Jeff Powell and Susan Rottman are schooling about 60 ranchers in the vocabulary of the New West: Family farms are destination vacations, chores are recreational activities and cattle drives are adventure tourism. This is a crash course in “recreation ranching,” a fledgling industry in the mountain states and, some say, the economic […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
The pendulum swings from dry to wet
Westerners who have been praying for an end to a decade of drought may have prayed a little too hard. The West is wet once again, and in some places downright soggy. Many states have been so loaded with snow this winter that residents are keeping their fingers crossed as rivers surge to the flooding […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Dear Friends
Ramon in Paonia We’re a little upset with Ramon – an activist against logging clearcuts whose 20 acres of private land is the staging ground for the continuing fight against fragmenting the Cove/Mallard area in central Idaho (HCN, 3/6/95). If we had known the exact day of Ramon’s visit, we would have organized a public […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
The result of groundwater pumping is obvious in Nevada, too
Dear HCN, We read with great interest and a sense of déja` vu Steve Stuebner’s article on the Big Lost River being dewatered due to groundwater pumping (HCN, 2/20/95). Déja` vu because here in Nevada we are dealing with the imminent collapse of a desert lake ecosystem, and groundwater pumping for agriculture is playing an […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Salvage bill sells out democracy
SALVAGE BILL SELLS OUT DEMOCRACY Dear HCN, This is an open letter to Colorado Sens. Brown and Campbell, who recently voted for the salvage logging bill: I am writing to express my outrage at your vote to exempt the logging industry from environmental laws. There can be no justification for allowing a particular industry to […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Inciting to violence is not acceptable
INCITING TO VIOLENCE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE Dear HCN, At a recent news conference, a reporter asked House Speaker Newt Gingrich if he felt that the anti-government rhetoric of the new Congress might be partly responsible for encouraging actions like the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Gingrich replied that it was a “grotesque and […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
A superb issue
A SUPERB ISSUE Dear HCN, As a longtime reader of HCN, I am writing to commend your paper on the superb April 17 issue, and particularly on your lead story, “The New West’s servant economy.” The environmental movement has been criticized – sometimes justly – for ignoring the human condition, as if humanity is not […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Shrinking salmon
Not only are salmon runs diminishing in the Pacific Northwest, the fish themselves are also shrinking, according to several recent studies. A study conducted at five Washington hatcheries revealed size decreases from 11 percent to 27 percent over a 12-year period, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. That means some salmon that used to average 6 pounds […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
A question of logging
Jon Roush, president of the Wilderness Society, found himself in an embarrassing position last month. The Nation magazine lambasted him for selling timber worth $140,000 from his western Montana ranch. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair questioned why a man paid $125,000 a year to protect wilderness would log private land adjacent to a national […]