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 […]
Groups are wary of aluminum companies bearing gifts
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 […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Painting for quieter skies
Artist Wilson Crawford recently painted Thumper Meets the Airport Expansion to protest a proposal to lengthen the runway in Taos, N.M. The painting shows giant airplane wheels squishing a rabbit against a backdrop of purple mountains and blue sky. Along with more than 100 artists, Crawford donated his work to a two-week exhibit, Quiet Skies, […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Bandelier overrun by hooves
If left unchecked, growing numbers of elk and wild cattle could leave New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument eroded and overgrazed, park officials say. Nearly 30 cows and over 2,000 elk now trample the park’s fragile hillsides and brittle archaeological ruins and, according to an environmental assessment released Jan. 13, the cattle herd could double in […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Public foots DOE bill
The Department of Energy spent millions of dollars over a 32-month period defending its contractors from the public. A DOE internal document says that the agency paid $47 million to private attorneys from Oct. 1, 1990, through May 31, 1993, to defend its private contractors from class action lawsuits. The suits charged firms such as […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Agency reins in Wyoming rancher
After catching a Wyoming rancher illegally subleasing federal grazing permits, Forest Service officials cancelled half his grazing privileges and suspended the remainder for three years. The rancher, George Salisbury, who is also a longtime county commissioner and state legislator, insists he is innocent. “I owned the cattle, I just didn’t have the paperwork to justify […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Chevron gets a go-ahead
The Forest Service is going to let Chevron USA drill an exploratory well two miles north of the boundary of the High Uintas Wilderness in northern Utah. Wasatch-Cache Forest Supervisor Susan Giannettino’s decision allows Chevron to construct a bridge, 2.8 miles of new road and improve 2.1 miles of an existing road, as well as […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Campbell sides with Telluride
Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D, Colo.) says he will introduce legislation to condemn a developer’s dream house built in Colorado’s West Elk Wilderness – if the Forest Service rejects a proposed land exchange with the developer. A Campbell spokeswoman said the senator wants to give the Forest Service another tool to deal with Tom Chapman, […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Yucca Mountain’s fault
Geologists working for the U.S. Geological Survey and the state of Nevada have discovered a new earthquake fault cutting directly through Yucca Mountain, the site slated for the nation’s first high-level nuclear waste repository. Geologists believe the new sheer zone, combined with the already known Ghost Dance Fault, could reduce the underground space available for […]