If you’ve followed any government effort to rein in the impacts of a polluting industry over the last several years, especially in the run-up to this year’s Presidential election, then you’re probably familiar with the beaten-to-death description of all new regulations as “job killers.” (That’s right people! This isn’t about public health or protecting private […]
It’s the pits
Posted inArticles
There’s (still) gold in them thar hills
In this episode of West of 100, High Country News contributing editor Jonathan Thompson visits a gold mine and ponders the illusory nature of gold prices, and Hadley Robinson reports from the Klamath River, once a popular destination for small-time gold prospectors that’s now at the center of the controversy over California’s ban on suction-dredge […]
Posted inWotr
If corporations are people, what are they really like?
ExxonMobil spits out a gob of chewing-tobacco juice and taps a baseball bat against the cleats of its shoes, knocking off the dirt clods. Then “Exx ‘Em” — as the fans like to call their slugger — steps into the batter’s box and slams the first pitch over the center-field wall of Dodger Stadium. Meanwhile, […]
Posted inGoat
Selling water to the highest bidder
At some point, the way Colorado River water gets divvied up is going to have to change. As we’ve noted in past writings, the lower basin states of Arizona and Nevada frequently push close to the limit of using the amount of water they are allocated use more water than they’re allowed to under the […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
L.A. activists try to stop woodlands from becoming sediment dumps
The list price was $1.125 million in August 2011, when Sotheby’s International Realty held the first open house for 1674 Highland Oaks Drive, in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia. Scented candles burned, classical music played and the air conditioner ran as potential buyers milled through the home’s three bedrooms, living room and combination den/dining […]
Posted inGoat
Friday news roundup: fires start, wildlife die
It’s Friday and that means it’s time for a roundup of some of the important Western news of the week. Our interns are all missing in action, one of the editors is in the Grand Canyon and another is in the canyons of New York City, and so I’m taking on this update. And then […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Retirees join environmentalists in fighting Arizona copper mine
Nestled as it is amid saguaro-studded hills, under a sky crisp blue by day and starry by night, you’d never guess Queen Valley, Ariz., is only 40 miles east of Phoenix. Its cozy homes surround a lush golf course, about four miles from a swath of state land perfect for four-wheeling, hunting and bird-watching. About […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t bury her deep in the cold, cold ground
As anyone who knows her will tell you, my mother is opinionated. She knows exactly what she wants in life, and — as I recently learned — in death as well. She and I have been discussing her funerary wishes off and on since her own mother passed away a year ago. It was an […]
Posted inRange
Make anglers allies for endangered species
The prism of clear river water can distort and magnify the size of a fish, an effect amplified by adrenaline and nostalgia. Still, I remember one fish big enough to shake my whole view of the world. I was of that tender age when one believes one’s father to be capable of anything except failure. […]
Posted inWotr
Rachel Carson’s redwood dreams, and 50 years of “Silent Spring”
As a child of the 1950s, I remember hot summer nights that were only relieved when a truck came by spraying a cool mist that would kill mosquitoes. We kids ran after that mist like it was the ice cream truck. Several years later, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962, parents […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
How to dispose of frozen cows
COLORADO Time has run out for the frozen cows of Conundrum Hot Springs, the immensely popular, 11,200-foot-high stopover for hikers in western Colorado’s White River National Forest. According to the Aspen Daily News, several cows jammed themselves into a Forest Service cabin this winter, apparently to get warm, though unfortunately they were unable to figure […]
Posted inGoat
The time for oysters
Next time you find yourself in the San Francisco Bay Area, which for your own sake will be soon, I hope, there are a few things you ought to do. Walk across the Golden Gate, go one of the Thursday “NightLife” events at the Academy of Sciences and drive north to Tomales Bay and feast […]
Posted inRange
Treaty tribes dedicate final replacement fishing site
DALLESPORT, Wash. – On April 25, 2012, representatives from four tribes, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Army Corps of Engineers all stood by the Columbia River to mark the end of a construction project both useful and symbolic. It was the completion of the 31st — and final — fishing access site on […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Western legislatures grab for control of public lands
In late April, Arizona’s Legislature approved a bill demanding that Washington, D.C., give the state control over most of its federal land. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a similar measure in March. These bills are, of course, highly unlikely to result in any actual transfer of land; most legal experts think they’ll prove unconstitutional, and […]
Posted inRange
Debate over what makes a road rages on in Utah
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House This spring, to fulfill a friend’s birthday wish, we traveled from Colorado into Utah, dropped south off of I-70 near Green River on Utah Highway 24, and drove about 30 miles before leaving the pavement. Our destination was the West Rim trailhead in the Horseshoe Canyon Unit of Canyonlands National Park. […]
Posted inGoat
The Colorado River and Big Daddy drought
It’s not news to any of us that most of the West is in drought, that we’re using more water each year than snowfall and rain replenish, that one of our biggest watersheds, the Colorado River Basin is overallocated and its reservoirs are slowly silting up. Now, Utah’s Deseret News has published a thorough, informative […]
Posted inGoat
From gust to gale
The Energy Integrity Project is one of a growing number of “grass-roots” groups around the country that aggressively lobby against regional wind development projects and renewable energy policies. And while most are small, NIMBY-type outfits, documents recently obtained by the Checks & Balances Project — a government and industry watchdog organization — suggest that these […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
Western legislative roundup
Western legislatures, except California‘s, have finished for 2012. Montana and Nevada didn’t have a lawmaking session this year, but elsewhere, election-year politics, not surprisingly, influenced what happened. In New Mexico, many Republican-favored bills were shot down by a Democrat-controlled Legislature, including a measure to repeal a 2003 law that allows undocumented immigrants to get drivers’ […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
The least — and most — American of places: A review of Rez Life
Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation LifeDavid Treuer368 pages, hardcover: $26.Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012. Accomplished novelist David Treuer turns to nonfiction in his latest book, which combines elements of his own life on “the rez” with a historical look at North American Indian life over the past several hundred years. Since “most people will […]
Posted inMay 14, 2012: The sediment dumps of L.A.
The delights of urban wilderness
I spent most of my awkward teenaged years sequestered in subdivisions among manicured lawns and black-topped cul-de-sacs. Fortunately, when after-school TV got too boring, I could leave the house and go exploring — wandering alone through the scruffy patches of woods and fields that edged our orderly neighborhood outside St. Louis, Mo. I remember the […]