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 […]
Saving spotted cows
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 […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Orphaned cubs returned to wild
Columbia Falls, Mont. – Two orphaned black bears got a late jump on hibernation but a new lease on life when they were placed in a man-made den last month. Biologists hauled the tranquilized twin cubs by snowmobile, then tucked them into the 20 below zero snow cave. If all goes well, they will slip […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Remnant grassland survives in Oklahoma
A wildfire engulfs the sprawling prairie, burning out invading brush and trees and clearing away dead plants. Left behind is a charred landscape that within days will grow anew – lush, green and healthy. Lightning strikes used to produce these violent, spectacular wildfires that roared for miles. Today people play the part of nature by […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Ex-logger Andrus says our forests are overcut
FAIRMONT HOT SPRINGS, Mont. – Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus used his time at the podium during a rare meeting of Forest Service district rangers Feb. 16 to complain that timber-sale goals in national forest management plans were boosted by politicians eager to please big timber companies. “Your ASQs (allowable sale quantities) are not accurate. They […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Can gold mining be slowed by a boycott?
In their eighth year of marriage, Jan and David Zimmerman quietly removed their gold wedding rings. There had been no angry words; the problem was gold. The year was 1990, and the Chicago Mining Corp. was building a cyanide gold mill above the Zimmermans’ home in the tiny town of Pony, Mont. Concerned about possible […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Dear friends
Commuting hell For many people in this town of 1,400, commuting to work means a hike, a bicycle ride or short trip by pickup. But for Chris Manning, who works in the Aspen post office, going to work means traveling over McClure Pass, a two-hour slog each way. Tough, but worth it for Manning and […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
A guide to some trashy reading matter
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Pay as you waste, says EPA. When it comes to trash, most reading matter is so boring that it belongs in the local landfill. Two informative exceptions: The Garbage Primer: A Handbook for Citizens, produced by the League of Women Voters and published in […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Federal land managers put up no-dumping signs
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Pay as you waste, says EPA. New EPA rules haven’t been the only federal vexation for rural counties. About 425,000 square miles of “land that nobody wanted” is administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management, and in almost 300 places in the West, […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
State-by-state trash
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Pay as you waste, says EPA. Idaho had 85 landfills, according to Katie Sewell, solid waste coordinator in the state department of environmental quality; by summer, that will be down to 30, and most of the panhandle counties will ship their trash to big […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Washington county splits in half over proposed dump
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Pay as you waste, says EPA. HOOPER, Wash. – Burying Seattle’s garbage in rural eastern Washington is like putting a toilet in a refrigerator, according to cartoonist Milt Priggee of the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman Review. That sums up the feeling of opponents of a […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Pay as you waste, says EPA
It’s a new world for rural trash
Posted inMay 2, 1994: A struggle for the last grass
A struggle for the last grass
SILVER CITY, N.M. – Black Canyon is a place that only a hard-core stream addict should be able to love, so barren are its edges, so sparse its grasses. Superficially, the canyon offers a park-like atmosphere in America’s first wilderness. The stream runs freely over its shallow bed, and a few 75- to 100-foot-tall cottonwoods […]
Posted inMarch 21, 1994: On the borderline
Earth First!ers experience Idaho-style justice
MOSCOW, Idaho – State and federal judges have been hammering members of Earth First! who are fighting the Cove-Mallard timber sales in central Idaho. In early February, Earth First!er Erik Ryberg was sentenced to six months in jail, with four months suspended, for interfering with a U.S. Forest Service officer. Ryberg also must pay a […]