The back-page essay on May 24, “Walking Woman,” had a striking design, but it took some literary license with facts that are obvious to those of us who live in the eastern Sierra. The first sentence grates on grammatical nerves: The Sierra Nevada range is singular, not plural. The Sierras, plural, is correct if you […]
A wrinkle in space?
Posted inRange
A new chapter in Klamath River Water Wars
Two years ago High Country News’ cover boldly proclaimed Peace on the Klamath. The reference was to the Klamath River, where a collection of federal and state agencies, irrigators, fishing organizations and environmental groups had announced an agreement which the article claimed would end the river’s water wars and result in a future characterized by […]
Posted inGoat
He who buys the most names wins
It wasn’t a lack of public support that killed the Fair Mining Tax Initiative in Nevada (see our cover story, “Nevada’s Golden Child”): to the end, the measure to impose a 5 percent severance tax on hardrock mining’s gross earnings had the support of 40 percent of the state, with a roughly a quarter still […]
Posted inWotr
Energy exporters: Stay out of the San Luis Valley
Before utility executives and solar-energy prospectors discovered the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, it was mostly known for its potatoes, Buddhist hermitages and scrappy water wars. Now our high-desert rift valley is home to a clash between two competing visions for Colorado’s renewable energy future. As utilities and their regulators argue over who is […]
Posted inGoat
Should Salazar resign?
In the wake of a major disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, resignations like the recent departure of Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, are a de facto form of political appeasement. Environmental groups aren’t satisfied with Birnbaum’s head, though, and a group of them, led by WildEarth Guardians, are circulating a letter […]
Posted inArticles
Why not fees on Fourteeners?
Proposal might result in fewer tourists — who spend more
Posted inBlog
What about Watt?
Whenever the national media turns its attention to the Interior Department, I can’t help but think of James Watt. Since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the ensuing gush of undersea oil, the agency has certainly been in the spotlight. As the Interior Secretary under the Reagan administration, Watt’s brash quips, unabashed partisan […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not forget the hidden costs of uranium mining
Here in the West, uranium mining continues its wobbly resurgence. In recent years, it has sputtered through the peaks and valleys of pricing to once again climb in importance and output. The graph-line of this revival seems to correspond with the vicissitudes of our love-hate relationship with fossil fuels. In 2003, a time of cheap […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Bloody Mystery Lingers in the Desert
An unsolved murder increases fears along the Mexican border
Posted inWotr
“We’ve seen this movie before”
“The task is great. So is the need. And there is no time to lose,” said Exxon executives in their infamous “White Paper” of 1980. Those bombastic words came at the conclusion of Exxon’s plan to help solve the nation’s energy crisis of the 1970s. Long lines at the pump and oil embargoes had prompted […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A little taste of … something
COLORADOPot dispensaries may be proliferating on Main Streets across the West, but a new sign that weed is going mainstream can be seen in Durango, a college town in southern Colorado that attracts lots of hikers, climbers and mountain bikers. Just turn on Durango’s public-access television channel, and you can watch pot-inspired recipes come to […]
Posted inGoat
The great Colorado non-scandal
Last week, I talked to one of my daughters in Oregon, and she asked me about “the Romanoff scandal,” adding that it was much in the news out there and so it must be a really big deal in Colorado. It hasn’t been getting that much play in Colorado — I don’t recall anyone bringing […]
Posted inJune 21, 2010: Immersed in the Wild
Health studies gas up
Colorado launches one of the nation’s first health assessments of gas-drilling impacts
Posted inWotr
Fighting fire and memories
It’s been almost 16 years since a firestorm ignited on Storm King Mountain in western Colorado, killing 14 firefighters, including my friend, Roger Roth. A lot can happen in 16 years. I’ve married and divorced. I’ve moved three times. My knees have turned cranky, my hair gone grayer. Now I swing a pulaski beside men […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
New world, new canvas
Ex-priest reconstructs a working-class history from Basque arborglyphs
Posted inGoat
Cheap grass
Grazing fees aren’t exactly bringing home the bacon … er, beef … for the feds. As we pointed out earlier this year, in the past 40-plus years the fee to graze a cow and calf on public land has gone up a measly 12 cents: from $1.23 to $1.35. That increase hasn’t even come close […]
Posted inWotr
Springtime in the Rockies
The Mancos Valley reverberates with the gush of its namesake river in an annual rite of spring runoff. These waters are a perfect metaphor for starting a new life — allowing winter’s rigidity to melt and wash away. In this high mountain ranching valley of Colorado, the first water flows through irrigation spigots and onto […]