Someone finally got the best of Quartzite Falls, one of the toughest rapids in North America. They blew it up. Most boaters had to portage around the dangerous class-six rapid in Arizona’s Salt River Canyon Wilderness, and two were killed last year trying to run it. But a powerful blast sometime this winter smoothed it […]
Explosives “rearrange’ a class 6 river rapid
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
A forester thrives in the belly of the beast
Wildfire is burning in the Wet Mountain Valley near Colorado Springs, Colo. I smell the smoke before I see it. I might be glad for a stirring burn: we’re a century or so overdue. But three generations of us are here for a family reunion. Just a few steps west of our cabin, the San […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Seattle resident turns open sewers back into streams
After John Beal returned to Seattle from the Vietnam War, he and his family often picnicked on a wooded hillside where a large pond fed a meandering stream. Twelve years ago, developers bought the property and sold it to a sand-and-gravel pit operator. “I watched over a period of five years as it was absolutely […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Babbitt backs plans to kill predators
In a series of deft administrative maneuvers, the Bureau of Land Management side-stepped protests by environmental groups that had restricted federal predator-control activities on millions of acres of public land in the West. With approval from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the BLM is now issuing predator control plans with a provision that puts them immediately […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Coal firm may pull its straw out of aquifer
MOENKOPI, Ariz. – Hubert Lewis recalls hot summer days when he and other children of this Hopi village would get relief from the cool water in Moenkopi Wash. Moenkopi – which in Hopi means “a place where water flows’ – sits right above one of the few waterways that traverse the arid reservation in northeastern […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Wilderness developer accused of fraud
Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell has asked a U.S. District Attorney to investigate Tom Chapman for fraud, following a tip from one of the developer’s former business associates. Chapman is notorious for starting to build a massive, $1 million log cabin on a private inholding in the West Elk Wilderness near Paonia, Colo. After much […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Dear friends
Odds and ends Diane Sylvain, who sends checks to HCN’s writers, artists and photographers, calls them mystery free-lancers: people whose work we’ve just used, but for whom we no longer have correct addresses. At the moment, we’re trying to reach William L. Payne, Will C. Wright, Roger Holcomb, Alan McKnight, Roxann Moore, Phillip Renault and […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
New plan will protect salmon habitat
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. After months of delay, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have proposed temporary regulations to protect rivers and streams on public lands in the Pacific Northwest. Known as “Pacfish,” the new plan establishes buffer zones along […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
A guide to the players
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built and operates four federal dams on the lower Snake River, and four more on the Columbia River. Fishery agencies estimate these dams and reservoirs account for about 95 percent of all human-caused mortality […]
Posted inApril 18, 1994: The salmon win one
Salmon: the Clinton-Babbitt train wreck
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The salmon win one. In 1991, at the Citizens’ Salmon Congress in Hood River, Ore., Michelle DeHart of the Fish Passage Center spoke eloquently – again – about the death of salmon. The center is the tribal and Northwest states’ office that monitors the […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Rural co-ops must change
Under a draft proposal by the Western Area Power Administration, over 600 publically owned utilities and rural electric associations must add renewable resources and energy efficiency to their planning procedures or forfeit their right to buy cheap federal hydropower. WAPA’s Draft Energy Planning and Marketing EIS, released March 25, would require all utilities that buy […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Energy Fair
Alternative energy technologies will be on display at the second annual, free Energy Fair April 30-May 1 in Montrose, Colo. Vendors will feature tepees, dome houses, earth-sunken homes, devices to computerize energy conservation and energy-efficient lighting and building materials. Workshops will examine bio fuels and hybrid solar systems, among other topics. Events include baking cookies […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Trees are more than logs
An “idea fair” sponsored by the Forest Service and a coalition of private and public organizations will show how to extract higher value from forest products before they leave timber-dependent communities. “Growing Sustainable Forest Enterprises, An Intermountain Idea Fair” examines how timber can be made into specialty products such as toys or furniture rather than […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Working on writing
At the end of April, hundreds of journalists will gather in Salt Lake City, Utah, and five other cities across the country to work on their writing. “This is a great experience for journalists to get meaningful training at a low cost,” says David Ledford, managing editor of the Salt Lake Tribune and organizer of […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Clearcut
We can only wonder how Thoreau would have reacted, beyond suffering simultaneously from apoplexy and a coronary, to the trashing of nature that Clearcut reveals. Not just leaves and grand passages, but entire chapters have been ripped out. *David Brower In Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry, disturbing aerial views bear witness to the elimination […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Guide to takings law
In 1986, David Lucas purchased two coastal lots in South Carolina for $1 million. Two years later the state legislature passed the South Carolina Beachfront Management Act, which prohibited Lucas from developing his property because his homes would have been too close to the ocean. Lucas sued the state of South Carolina and eventually took […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
A sense of Nevada
At Home in the Wasteland: Nevada Visions of Environment and Community is the title of a forum sponsored by the Nevada Humanities Committee, April 15 at the University of Nevada Reynolds School of Journalism auditorium in Reno. The panel features photographer Peter Goin, geographer Paul Starrs, historians James Hulse and Elizabeth Raymond, teacher and state […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Troubled waters on the Arkansas
-How bad is the water in the Arkansas – Really?” A conference on Colorado’s most popular rafting river will ask that question at an Upper Arkansas Watershed Forum, April 7-8. It brings together water quality and quantity experts to discuss heavy metals pollution, water rights, possible wild and scenic designation for the Arkansas, and a […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Indians and water
During the feverish development of water projects throughout the West, most Native American tribes were left out. But under federal law, Indian reservations have senior rights to vast amounts of water – more than Western states could spare even if they wanted to. Thus it is no surprise that today almost every state and reservation […]