Here in Paonia, Colo., the peaches and tomatoes are finally ripening and High Country News is still welcoming lots of summer visitors. Dale Benjamin and his son, Jordan, of Vancouver, Wash., dropped by the office with Dale’s cousin, Hal Brill, a Paonia local. A USDA consumer safety inspector back home, Dale said he was glad […]
A wedding, a story
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Lawless future
Hard times extra hard for state parks
Posted inGoat
Funding to fight domestic violence
In recent weeks, the Obama administration has made safety on Indian reservations a major priority, doling out a slew of grants to tribes all over the West. “The Department of Justice is well aware that Indian Country is struggling with complex law enforcement issues involving violent crime, violence against women and crimes against children, and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Suspicious habit
Can running from the cops become a lifestyle? That was the explanation in the Kitsap Sun from a 33-year-old man in Bremerton, Wash., who hightailed it to a roof as police searched his neighborhood for a suspect. After police got the man to climb down and asked him why he was hiding, the man explained: […]
Posted inRange
Still Trout Fishing in America
I catch fish with my hands. In the Wyoming Rockies, where I have spent my best summers, the high meadow streams are thick with brookies, cutthroats and rainbows. I hide behind willows and boulders, spying, greedy to catch, kill and eat them. The fish hang suspended in liquid moments then shear off like startled birds, crowding […]
Posted inGoat
Down and out
Joe Griego hasn’t worked in nine months. He hasn’t been able to do much since a bull crushed his ribs and damaged his spinal cord while he was on the clock at a New Mexico dairy. He hasn’t been sitting around milking workers’ compensation checks while he recovers, either. In fact, Griego’s had little help […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Solar salvation?
Timber companies and unemployed workers look to renewable energy for a boost.
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Dairy injuries and deaths 2003-2009
At least 18 people died working in Western dairies between 2003 and 2009; many more were injured. This list of deaths and injuries, compiled from state and federal safety agency reports, is certainly incomplete, thanks to loopholes and differences in state and federal reporting requirements as well as underreporting by workers. When possible, supplementary information […]
Posted inGoat
Milk: It doesn’t always do a body good
If you haven’t read Rebecca Clarren’s excellent HCN cover story on the West’s immigrant dairy workers and the on-the-job dangers they face, do it now! If you have read it and want to learn more, you should check out the story’s hefty (and heavy) sidebar: A comprehensive list of deaths and injuries in the West’s […]
Posted inGoat
Fighting the fire
“A healthy, fit firefighter is a safe firefighter.” This is what Stan Palmer, a member of the Northwest Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Safety and Health Working Team tells me when I ask about firefighter fatalities (See the related infographic on the top five causes of firefighter deaths since 1910). Over the years, firefighters in the West […]
Posted inGoat
Pot season in the parks
High Country News reported this phenomenon four years ago, in a piece by Adam Burke called The Public Lands’ Big Cash Crop. But this year the story is making big headlines around the West as huge gardens of marijuana are discovered and destroyed on public land from California to Colorado. The Denver Post reported today […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Extinguished
Wildfires have intensified in the last 10 years, says Michelle Ryerson, chair of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Safety and Health Working Team. More extreme fires require more complex methods of firefighting, leading not only to higher costs but a change over time in the risks that firefighters face. In 1987, Ryerson’s team began keeping […]
Posted inWotr
My home on a glacier
I spent the summers of 2007 and 2008 on a glacier in southeast Alaska, with 12 people and 200 huskies. I was working as a dogsled guide, and each morning I’d pull myself from my sleeping bag, slip on my raincoat and boots, and step from my tent into the pale light of the Northern […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
The new Third World
People are desperate for medical care in the West’s inner cities and rural areas.
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Go ahead, make my EPA”
Usually, the EPA isn’t the kind of agency that shoots it out with polluters, but there’s always that first time. Consider the owner of a truck-wash company in Utah who told friends he’d “go down in a blaze of glory” before facing federal charges of illegally disposing of hazardous chemicals. Larkin Baggett, 54, wasn’t kidding; […]
Posted inWotr
Parks for the people — not profit
The fog that often hangs over Drakes Estero, an estuary in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, tends to obscure the natural features that make this small body of water one of the treasures of our national park system. This estuary, which has been designated a wetland of international importance, hosts one of the largest breeding […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
From Tuscany to the Mohave
A war bride’s journey West
Posted inGoat
Classroom innovation
In eastern Idaho, one small rural school recently gained international fame. In late July, the Teton Valley Community School of Victor, Idaho, was recognized as one of eight finalists in the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom. The competition, sponsored by Architecture for Humanity, received 400 submissions from 65 countries. Finalists included two other U.S. teams […]
Posted inGoat
Nestle water plan approved
Last week, Nestle received approval to tap mountain spring water and haul it to Denver for bottling and distribution under its Arrowhead label. The approval came from a unanimous board of Chaffee County Commissioners, following months of deliberations and lengthy hearings. Chaffee County, with about 15,000 residents, sits along the Arkansas River in […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Enlightened llama
The other day, while reading the Recorder Herald, a venerable community weekly established in Salmon, Idaho, 123 years ago, we came upon the curious story of a llama that had apparently lost weight to a fatal degree. Or, as the headline put it: “Llama killed by lightening.” The animal was found on its back, “with […]