My opposition to the Holcim Company’s proposal to burn more than one million tires every year at a cement plant at the headwaters of the Missouri River started as a no-brainer. I have three children growing up downwind of that plant. I float those rivers. Several friends work with the advocacy group, Montanans Against Toxic […]
Some issues are uncomfortably gray
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
It’s time for some solidarity
Our cover story focuses on farm fields and orchards in Washington state, where the plentiful harvest has an ugly, hidden cost, with workers often dangerously exposed to toxic pesticides. It’s an outrageous situation that nonetheless is typical around the nation. Between the lines, freelance writer Rebecca Clarren, who is a former HCN editor, finds larger […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
What child labor laws?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Harvesting Poison.” WENATCHEE, Wash. — José and Luis are only 10 and 11 years old, but they are already expert cherry-pickers. With three summers of experience working in the orchards with their father, they know how to pluck the cherries without harming the tree […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Harvesting Poison
In the little-seen world of immigrant farmworkers, pesticides are a constant threat — and for the workers, the only options are shutting up or getting out.
Posted inWotr
Guts and grit will still get you to America
The most recent illegal migrant I’ve met was named Marvín Leonel Contreras. I spotted the 22-year-old during an early morning hike in the Santa Cruz River valley below my home in Rio Rico, Ariz. He was limping up the center of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. When he spotted me, he waved and smiled. He […]
Posted inWotr
How to dis-credit yourself without really trying
I made my first telephone call in the 1950s by turning a crank on a wooden telephone box. Some neighbors on the party line always listened; in that small ranching community of rural South Dakota, everybody knew everybody’s business. Perhaps for that reason, most of us dealt honestly with each other. We paid cash for […]
Posted inWotr
Western patriots are rebelling against the Patriot Act
A quick opinion poll: The mass murders of Sept.11, 2001, were allowed to occur because: A. Letting airline passengers carry potentially deadly weapons such as box-cutters was a bad idea. B. Airport security is a job too important to delegate to corporations. C. Cockpit doors were either unlocked or missing. D. Americans enjoy so much […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Living in two worlds
Like many American Indian children, Viola Martinez — a Paiute Indian from California’s Owens Valley — was taken from her family and sent to a government boarding school in the early 20th century. There, she was to be “civilized” and trained as a maid. But instead of giving in to the system, she decided to […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Water law for dummies
There’s nothing worse than being stumped during a dinner conversation while attorneys and professors quarrel over the intricacies of water law. Now, Coloradoans can dive right into those debates, thanks to a new booklet that translates state water law into plain English. The Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Water Law, by the nonprofit Colorado Foundation for […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Calendar
The 12th annual Symposium of the California Exotic Pest Plant Council runs Oct. 2-4 in Kings Beach, Calif. Land managers and researchers will speak on “Planning Weed Management for Ecosystem Recovery.” Call 510-525-1502 or visit www.caleppc.org. The University of Montana is sponsoring the 27th Annual Public Land Law Conference and Plum Creek Lecture Series in […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
City at the end of its rope
Anyone who has lived in Albuquerque, and sworn a curse upon the city and all its planners, visitors and inhabitants while broiling in traffic, and then eaten chile rellenos at sunset while watching the Sandia Mountains turn pink, knows that love and hate, beauty and grit, stand shoulder to shoulder in this desert city. Longtime […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Too little land, too many people
Although I think it is useful to consider the environmental impacts of rock climbing (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the rock jocks), I have to wonder about the story’s lack of context. Of course, there are fewer plants and animals on a cliff face that climbers frequent. That seems quite obvious. However, out of all the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Enough partisan divisiveness
Tweeti Blancett’s article on fighting the gas drilling was timely, after just hearing Alan Greenspan expound on the need for increased drilling to improve our economy (HCN, 6/9/03: Why I fight: The coming gas explosion in the West). I appreciate her clarification that this is not a partisan issue. Nearly all issues these days seem […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Keep fire wild
Ray Ring’s wonderful story on fire in the West (HCN, 5/26/03: A losing battle) catches the deep tension we still have between a wild and tame West. Fire, just like grizzlies, drought, pine beetles and volcanoes, is a powerful force that has shaped Western ecosystems for millennia. One side of our Western culture has struggled […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Good gear or good luck
Gail Binkly is one lucky girl to have survived camping for nearly 20 years in a $19.95 tent (HCN, 8/4/03: When did we become such gear-toting wimps?). She joins countless others having copious amounts of good luck who climb to the summits of the 14,000-foot mountains around us wearing shorts and a T-shirt and without […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Follow-up
Environmentalists aren’t the only ones opposed to mining in the wilderness. Citing “quality of life” concerns, more than 50 business owners in Sandpoint, Idaho, officially opposed the Forest Service’s plan to allow a copper mine beneath Montana’s Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area (HCN, 2/18/02: Battle brews over a wilderness mother lode). The downstream businesses include an […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Dear Friends
THE WRITE STUFF The season’s beginning to change here in Paonia, and with crisper days we’ve also got fresh editorial blood for the fall. Hailing from tropical Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, new HCN intern Pua Mench moved to Hawaii’s “polar” opposite to attend Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., where the temperatures dipped to minus-40 degrees. Eventually, she […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Heard Around the West
NEVADA The satirical newspaper The Onion spoofed the Burning Man celebration in the Black Rock Desert, reporting that everybody was too spaced out to bother going. But in fact, some 30,000 people turned out in late August to “burn the man” — a 77 foot-high neon-colored effigy made of wood. Flames shot 150 feet in […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Extinction – by the clock
It isn’t easy being a cheerleader for a bottom-feeder, but I’m feeling up for the task. Montana’s two varieties of sturgeon — a miraculous, prehistoric fish that feeds at the bottom of lakes and rivers —have recently been given an expiration date, an official prediction of when they’ll become extinct. A doomsday clock all their […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Hell’s fires burn in the Northern Rockies
If hell has mountains, they must look like the Northern Rockies. As my fire spotter and I fly an insignificantly small airplane over our territory in western Montana, we weave through brown tendrils of wind-shredded smoke that curl around granite peaks. Sudden explosions of dark ash rise into the air above stands of trees as […]