Environmentalists, Coeur d’Alene Tribe members and government attorneys are doing victory jigs over a federal court ruling regarding a north Idaho Superfund site. Even the mining companies seem fairly pleased with the outcome this time. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the federal government have wrangled in court with two mining companies for over a decade, […]
Mining companies slapped with half the bill for Superfund mess
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
West Coast states tackle global warming
While the Bush administration takes a light-handed approach to curbing global warming, West Coast governors are determined to give the cause some regulatory punch. In September, outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis, in collaboration with Gov. Gary Locke, D-Wash., and Gov. Ted Kulongoski, D-Ore., announced a new, region-wide approach to slowing greenhouse gas emissions. The governors […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
A bright spot for illegal workers
About a half-million undocumented immigrant farmworkers may earn legal residency under a bill introduced in Congress in September. Unlike a host of similar efforts in the past, this bill appears likely to pass. “This is very historic,” says Will Hart, a spokesman for Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, R, who co-sponsored the Agricultural Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
National monuments are here to stay
President Clinton’s national monuments have survived a legal assault by two conservative groups that sought to strip the areas of protection. On Oct. 6, the Supreme Court declined to hear arguments against six Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service-managed monuments created in 2000 and 2001. The monuments, including Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona and Giant […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Follow-up
While the oil and gas industry is rubbing its hands in anticipation of a coalbed methane bonanza, Wall Street is counseling discretion (HCN, 5/26/03: A green light for gas drilling). On Oct. 2, a group of 13 “socially responsible” institutional investors — including the Calvert Group, U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray and Domini Social Investments — […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Heard Around The West
COLORADO The little racehorse that could — Seabiscuit — is adjusting to a life of luxury on a guest ranch in the mountains above Telluride, Colo. The 4-year-old horse who starred in the movie Seabiscuit “is really a sweetheart,” says Dave Farny, who runs Skyline Guest Ranch. “He’s got a good rein — he’ll spin, […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
In the Northwest, salmon go swoosh
“The mammalian (mind) spreads continent-wide beneath (the conscious mind), mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And (it) makes us buy things.” —William Gibson, Pattern Recognition It was Saturday, and we had shopping to do. The errands had piled up for two weeks; the groceries, the eyeglasses, the yard tools, they all needed to be […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
My Sensitive Man meets culture shock on the range
When the movie Open Range came to my western Colorado town, my sweetie and I made a beeline for the theater. We waited in line for popcorn with a good number of other folks: old-timers and Forest Service employees and their spouses. They apparently hadn’t had enough open range by the end of the long […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Gas industry gets cracking
There’s no mistaking the moment when the coal deposits crack. The earth shakes, windows rattle and cupboard doors swing open, says Carl Weston, a landowner who lives outside Durango, Colo. “A few years back, I started getting calls from people in the San Juan Basin, saying, ‘My house shook and my (well) water turned black,’” […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Bill would redraw the boundaries of national monument
But some Montana ranchers want to stay where they are
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
California strikes a water truce
A landmark water deal could bring peace on the Colorado River — and money for the Salton Sea
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Dear Friends
CHARGE ON The High Country News board and staff couldn’t have wished for a better weekend — or a better location — for the fall ’03 board meeting. Fifteen board members, eight staffers, and HCN founder Tom Bell all gathered at the Murie Ranch, just inside Grand Teton National Park, near Moose, Wyo., to talk […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Pieces of the economic puzzle
Whenever I feel the need for a strong dose of opinion, I drive up the street to Reedy’s Service Station. There, any time between 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., I’ll find three generations of the Reedy family and their friends, drinking coffee and swapping stories. They’re always happy to tell you what they think about […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
The Gear Biz
The West has become the nation’s playground, but is there a future here for the folks who make our outdoor toys?
Posted inWotr
A corporation’s deadly legacy lives on
“It was a Superfund site,” my friend Nina told me, joking about a house she and her husband nearly bought in the crunched real estate market of the greater Yellowstone area. At first they loved the house and its affordable price. Then an inspector informed them that the building was full of asbestos-laden vermiculite from […]
Posted inWotr
Teddy Roosevelt would have put his foot down
When the young Theodore Roosevelt went West to become a cattle rancher in the late 1800s, he was impressed by the flint of the Western character. In his travels through South Dakota and the Rocky Mountains, he met mountain men and cowboys and Indians so independent and strong-willed that even the robuster-than-robust Roosevelt confessed he […]
Posted inWotr
Culture shock on the Range
When the movie Open Range came to my western Colorado town, my sweetie and I made a beeline for the theater. We waited in line for popcorn with a good number of other folks: old-timers and Forest Service employees and their spouses. They apparently hadn’t had enough open range by the end of the long […]
Posted inWotr
A grizzly attack that was bound to happen
One of the most egotistical notions humans have is that we can “commune” with unpredictable wild animals. News headlines over the last couple of weeks have revealed the depth of our folly. During Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas nightclub act, a tiger turned on trainer Roy Horn. Doctors still don’t know if he will survive. […]
Posted inWotr
Colorado’s thirsty suburbs get the state into trouble
Denver’s southern suburbs have a rich, new-car smell. Emboldened by information-technology employers, Douglas County during the ‘90s was the nation’s fastest-growing county. It also ranked among the nation’s elite in per capita income, education and other measures of affluence. In short, this region of sleek and slinky subdivisions looks and feels an awful lot like […]
Posted inWotr
A South Dakota hero has a great fall
I was probably the only 3-year-old in South Dakota to own a “Janklow Sucks” t-shirt during Bill Janklow’s second of four terms as governor. Janklow served two terms from 1978 to 1986 and two more from 1994 to 2002; in 2002 we elected him to represent our state — which has fewer people than metro […]