Don’t waste us, say Nevada and Utah

By a two-to-one margin, Grand County residents voted down a toxic waste incinerator slated for the all-but-abandoned railroad town of Cisco. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/21.1/download-entire-issue

The U.S. Department of Energy and its private contractors aren’t ready to open the first nuclear waste dump in the world. Today, nearly 10 years old, almost fully constructed and containing $700 million in hardware, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project lies in a state of limbo. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.24/download-entire-issue

INEL employs more than 10,000 workers, or 2.5 percent of Idaho’s work force. Only the state government itself employs more people. But it comes with a legacy of pollution. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.24/download-entire-issue

Plagued by mistakes, accidents and incompetence, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons production system is grinding to a halt, and the West, alarmed by the pollution in its midst, has begun to revolt. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.24/download-entire-issue

Jackson Hole environmentalists and local government suffered two big defeats recently in the ongoing war over oil and gas leasing on Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.23/download-entire-issue

The mining industry trumped a citizens’ action group on initiatives that would have forced tougher reclamation and water protection standards and raised state taxes on gold mined by heap leaching or in open pits. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.22/download-entire-issue

Statewide, conservation and outdoor issues played a key role only in the race won by Rep. Richard Stallings. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.22/download-entire-issue

Mining is being shoved off the West’s center stage and into a smaller and smaller corner. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.20/download-entire-issue

Until the early 1980s, southern Utah was a battleground between extraction and preservation. Now, Ray Wheeler writes in the conclusion of his four-part series, the struggle is between industrial tourism, typified by Lake Powell and its several million annual visitors, and the more modest home-grown tourism centered on the region’s beauty and its small communities. (To […]

A combination of technological change and free market ideology has led the nation to abandon not just railroad and bus lines but its long-held commitment to universal transportation and communication. The article describes the Balkanization process and its consequences for the rural West. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.20/download-entire-issue

In theory, every U.S. citizen has an equal say in the management of public lands. In fact, residents of small towns dotted across the rural West exert a disproportionate control over those lands. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.19/download-entire-issue

Ray Wheeler wanders across southeastern Utah, attempting to discover why the area is so bound to extraction, even against its own economic interest, and whether change is possible. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.19/download-entire-issue

In theory, wild, beautiful and lightly populated Idaho should be bursting with national parks. In fact, its ranching, logging and mining roots have kept it totally free of parks. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.19/download-entire-issue

Butte, Montana is finding, under the leadership of an energetic chief executive, that there is life after mining. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.19/download-entire-issue