CALIFORNIA Aerospace and defense company GenCorp has big plans for a former rocket-testing site east of Sacramento: Turn part of it into a subdivision. The company wants to build offices, stores, and 3,800 houses and apartments in the 1,400-acre Easton development. The new development will cover more than a tenth of a 13,000-acre site where […]
Defense company turns from rockets to real estate
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Follow-up
Interior Department employees, check your in-boxes for a new message: In February, the nonprofit Campaign to Protect America’s Lands sent e-mails to almost 60,000 of the department’s 70,000 employees, asking them to call a confidential hotline — 1-866-LANDTIP — and report proposed anti-environmental regulations (HCN, 1/19/04: Coming Soon to a Wilderness Near You). Next November, […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Heard Around the West
IDAHO Wilderness areas were not created equal. In order to pacify locals and win votes in Congress, most include more than a few reminders of both the old and developed West. The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho, for example, grandfathered in outfitters’ cabins and backcountry plane access. Now, the Forest […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The charm of a dying place
I grew up in South Dakota, but spent my summers in Portland, Ore., with my mom. As an adolescent, I enjoyed how my city experience pushed me ahead of the curve when I got back home for school. I had my classmates beat by at least a year on the overalls-with-one-strap thing. It wasn’t all […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
President Bush should consider a “land grab” of his own
I flew into the sprawling city of Phoenix recently not expecting a nature experience or a political revelation. My colleague and I rented a car and, after an appointment in the city, fought through an hour of bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic on our way north to Flagstaff. What a relief it was to finally see the […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The great Central Arizona Project funding switcheroo
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The New Water Czars.“ Spend enough time in Phoenix, and it’s easy to forget the city sits in a sweltering desert valley that receives less than eight inches of rain a year. Cool misters spray shoppers on the sidewalks of Scottsdale, the ritzy enclave […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Tribe defeated a dam and won back its water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The New Water Czars.“ Unlike the Pima Indians of the Gila River Indian Community, the Yavapai were not traditionally farmers. Instead, they migrated up and down the Verde River, hunting, fishing and gathering. But in 1903, the government settled them on Fort McDowell, a […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Persistence frees the Mokelumne: River advocate Pete Bell
California’s Mokelumne River flows from a high mountain lake in the Sierra Nevada, plunging down in a series of cascading waterfalls through a steep forest canyon in the foothills. Dams and diversions have reduced the once free-flowing river to a relative trickle. But that is changing, thanks in large part to the efforts of a […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The de-icer that tames Western roads
Dumping magnesium chloride on winter roads keeps the traffic moving — but how safe is the stuff?
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Ranching’s worst enemy? It’s not greens
Jury finds a meatpacker has taken ranchers to the cleaner
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Dear friends
Gunning for the big screen Adam Jackaway is a man who likes to make big statements with small tools. Last winter, with war looming in Iraq, he shouldered his snow shovel and tromped out into a Boulder, Colo., park. There, he sculpted a massive peace sign in a blank field, recruiting others to help, and […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
A tempered victory
For once, it seems that the West’s Indian tribes stand to win big. Armed with a century-old legal doctrine which holds that Indians’ water rights supersede those of practically everyone else, tribes are claiming their place at the top of the Western water rights hierarchy. In this issue’s feature story, Daniel Kraker writes about the […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The New Water Czars
A historic water deal could give an impoverished Indian community a path back to its roots — and turn it into one of the West’s next big power brokers
Posted inWotr
The Passion of the Christ in Butte, Montana
I won’t be going to see Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of The Christ.” Not because of any religious controversy, it’s just that I’m not sado-masochistic by nature. Besides, nothing can match my imagination when it comes to terror. The most violent scene I’ve seen in any film is when Marlon Brando gets beaten to […]
Posted inWotr
Straight talk about Mad Cow from a mad rancher
Let’s get this straight. The cows aren’t mad. But you should be. “Mad cow disease” (BSE) develops in animals — or humans — when they eat parts of infected animals. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy can occur when cattle are forced to become cannibals. Cows in their natural habitat may butt heads, but they don’t eat each […]
Posted inWotr
I can’t figure out what gays have to do with my marriage
I gave up fish for Lent. But then, I give up fish for Lent every year, and every year my good Christian wife rolls her eyes at me. Apparently there are no points to be made by foregoing something I had absolutely no intention of doing in the first place. I never eat fish. I’m […]
Posted inWotr
The high cost of low prices
“We Sell for Less.” Every few miles of a long drive down the length of California, I passed another Wal-Mart big-rig with those words across the back. The hypnotic monotony of the interstate made the slogan a mantra for the open road, for the featureless landscape that was the only America I could see through […]
Posted inWotr
For Western myths, see newcomers on horseback
If you’ve heard about the man who kicked off his campaign for governor by swinging a medieval battle sword on horseback in the middle of downtown Billings, you probably thought, “Only in Montana.” Glenn Schaffer posed at the offices of the local paper in February on a stallion named Big Dog Thunder Horse, and said […]
Posted inWotr
A monumental shift for public lands
I flew into the sprawling city of Phoenix the other day not expecting a nature experience or a political revelation. My colleague and I rented a car and, after an appointment in the city, fought through an hour of bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic on our way north to Flagstaff. What a relief it was to finally […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Ski areas get greener
Western ski areas got their best grades yet in the 2003-2004 Ski Area Environmental Scorecard — but they weren’t spectacular. The median score for the 76 ski areas, graded by the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition, was a C+. Tops were Colorado’s Aspen (93.9) and Buttermilk (93.3), which earned high marks for being environmentally conscious. Vail […]