The health and safety of workers cleaning up the nation’s nuclear weapons complex have been badly neglected, according to a study by the Office of Technology Assessment, a research arm of the U.S. Congress. Because of the historic autonomy and secrecy of its atomic mission, the Department of Energy is the only federal agency exempt […]
Workers need protection
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Symposium won’t be dry
-Rivers at the Crossroads: Law, Science, Politics, and People” will bring together conservationists, agriculturalists and politicos to talk about water-use conflicts in Idaho and other Western states. Symposium organizer Marty Bridges says the meeting will give people the opportunity to voice their concerns about water-use policy directly to the heads of the Idaho Department of […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Back to the sun
When oil became scarce in the 1970s, New Mexico’s solar industry quickly boomed and then busted. State tax subsidies had helped sell complicated new systems that sometimes didn’t work, and by the mid-80s many people ditched their solar designs. In an effort to rebuild its solar industry, the New Mexico Natural Resources Department has published […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
From driveways to watersheds
When oil became scarce in the 1970s, New Mexico’s solar industry quickly boomed and then busted. State tax subsidies had helped sell complicated new systems that sometimes didn’t work, and by the mid-80s many people ditched their solar designs. In an effort to rebuild its solar industry, the New Mexico Natural Resources Department has published […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
E-Mail for the rural West
The West’s great distances, geography and weather often isolate its communities. That can make for a high quality of life but difficult communications. The Helena, Mont.-based computer non-profit WestNet hopes to overcome those barriers by providing a computer-based bulletin board service. With a computer and a modem, anyone – from ranchers and loggers, to Native […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Reclaiming high places
Alpine forget-me-not, a miniature, bright blue flower, grows above timberline through constant winds, glaring sun and only two months of summer. Now, in addition, it faces the added stresses of mines, ski areas and increased radiation through a thinning ozone layer. At the 11th annual High Altitude Revegetation Workshop, scientists and managers will discuss how […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Forcing the spring
Mainstream organizations such as the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation often define the environmental movement. In Forcing the Spring, writer Robert Gottlieb shows that alternative groups, such as Mothers of East Los Angeles, are equally important. These grass-roots groups rely on community members more than experts, concentrate on changing the social order rather than […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
No change on the range
When you’re right, you’re right, and when Philip Fradkin worked for the Los Angeles Times from 1964-1975 as that paper’s first environmental reporter, and for Audubon from 1976-81 as that magazine’s first Western editor, he often batted 1,000. Fradkin recalls those days in his book of collected essays, Wanderings of an Environmental Journalist: In Alaska […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Will timber plan fly?
The Clinton administration’s final plan for Northwest forests was delayed for release until March 31, but a Feb. 23 summary reveals it hasn’t much changed since last July when it was first proposed. The plan calls for annual federal timber sales of 1.05 billion board feet across the range of the northern spotted owl. That’s […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Cows crowded out
Bob Niccoli, a life-long rancher in Crested Butte, Colo., says the decision to sell his ranch and leave town just got easier. Niccoli protested a proposed development near his ranch in early January. He asked Gunnison County planners to require developer Dan Gallagher to build his 12 houses 100 feet back from a riverside cliff […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Quake’s shakes move masses
At least one business sees a silver lining in the recent Los Angeles earthquake. The Nevada-based Greener Pastures Institute, which helps “urban opt-outs’ find their footing in the unfamiliar terrain of the rural West, is getting a lot more phone calls. The Institute’s newsletter circulates to about 2,000 people, two-thirds of whom live in Southern […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
STOP-M in Oregon
Since 1989, miners have staked over 40,000 claims to mine microscopic gold dust in eastern Oregon. The prospectors foresee massive open-pit cyanide mines to retrieve the gold, but so far no such mines exist in the state. Newmont Grassy Mountain Corp. ow wants to develop a claim 25 miles south of Vale, a small town […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Saving spotted cows
More than 1,000 miners, loggers and ranchers rallied in Boise Jan. 18 to save “endangered people.” Partly organized by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, supporters of the rally said environmental controls were socialistic and may snuff out traditional extraction-based industries. “When you deny the cutting of a tree, you’ve denied somebody a job,” Craig told the […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
No home on the range
The Great Buffalo Herd Monument is extinct – at least on public land. The brainchild of a New York artist, the Mt. Rushmore-type monument would have placed 1,000 copper, moving, moaning bison on a high sage- and pine-covered plateau called the Beaver Rim south of Lander, Wyo. But when the agency which manages the land, […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Andy Kerr on the warpath
Andy Kerr, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, filed a criminal trespass complaint against a Spokane, Wash., television reporter for being on his recently purchased property in Wallowa County, Ore. without permission. Tom Grant of KREM-TV was discovered on the front porch Feb. 6 by the house’s caretaker after he had videotaped the […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Baca is back
Jim Baca, who was recently shot out of a cannon in Washington, D.C., hopes to soft-land in the governor’s mansion in Santa Fe, NM. Baca was fired by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as head of the Bureau of Land Management (HCN, 2/21/94) in a dispute over management style. He has announced that he will run […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Can San Luis resist ‘regional chaos’?
It was a Colorado state helicopter that turned Maria Mondragon-Valdez around on the subject of the 77,000-acre Taylor Ranch. Originally, she supported a proposal for a split purchase of the mountain tract she and other San Luis Valley residents call La Sierra, and which they believe was stolen from their community in 1960. The proposal […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Let’s not heap injustice upon injustice
SAN LUIS, Colo. – The ownership of the Taylor Ranch in Colorado’s San Luis Valley has been a bone of contention for the past 34 years. However, the story of the land has a longer history and the feelings about it run deeper because the Taylor Ranch is not just another piece of mountain real […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Miners hope to become subdividers
The bankrupt owners of a coal mine in central Colorado want the state to drop a lawsuit against them in exchange for cash and equipment. But there’s a catch. Mine owners want to subdivide 6,000 acres to generate some of the money for the mine’s reclamation. Mid-Continent Resources’ latest plan to pay off its debts […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Groups are wary of aluminum companies bearing gifts
Are Northwest aluminum companies, intent on diverting attention from salmon-killing dams, offering bribes to environmental groups to join frivolous suits against the fishing industry? Some environmentalists think so. Last spring, aluminum companies filed a federal suit to block commercial fishing in the lower Columbia River, claiming the fishing was wiping out too many threatened chinook […]