The other dangers of drilling

Oil and gas drilling poses significant future safety and environmental threats (“When Your Neighborhood Goes Boom!” HCN, 10/28/18). Wells are drilled and cased with steel and a layer of cement to prevent reservoir fluids from contaminating fresh water zones above the hydrocarbon reservoir and escaping to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, over time, the cement degrades, allowing […]

A recent letter to the editor laments the author’s belief that HCN “seems to have become just another ‘woke’ partisan magazine” (HCN, 10/15/18). I disagree and applaud HCN’s efforts to diversify your coverage and engage the less-than-savory realities of the American West — racism, extraction and destruction. Basic historical literacy reveals that genocide is the […]

I find it interesting that Peg Ferm of Monroe, Washington, writes in a letter to the editor that she thinks HCN’s article on Imperial Beach has no relevance for her (HCN, 10/15/18). Monroe, in Snohomish County, is located in a floodplain. There have been record (disaster-level) floods 18 times in the past 56 years in […]

A recently published article (“Nature Retreat,” HCN, 10/15/18) asserts that Imperial Beach is addressing sea-level rise by planning massive moves away from the coastline, technically known as “managed retreat.” Contrary to the author’s assertion that little has been done to address this “slow-moving catastrophe,” many California coastal communities either recently have or will soon complete […]

I wanted to commend Paige Blankenbuehler’s “The Big Threat to Bighorns” (HCN, 9/3/18). My friends and I do a big backpacking trip each year in Western wilderness areas. This year, we did a roughly 40-mile loop through the Flattops Wilderness in northwest Colorado. There were few people, but lots of cows. For roughly seven miles, […]