IDAHO Residents of Idaho’s Silver Valley want five former mining companies to pay for a medical monitoring program that would detect health effects from lead and arsenic contamination for up to 100,000 people in the Coeur d’Alene Basin. Filed in January in state court, the residents’ class action suit alleges that five mining companies in […]
Silver Valley residents sue for damages
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
The Latest Bounce
The U.S. Forest Service revoked its approval of the Rock Creek Mine in Montana’s Cabinet Mountains Wilderness – at least temporarily (HCN, 2/18/02: Battle brews over a wilderness mother lode). The agency’s decision came a day after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, facing a lawsuit and intense criticism from local activists, withdrew a biological […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Evicted terns get new habitat
OREGON Caspian terns, much maligned for feasting on declining salmon runs on the Columbia River, just got a wing up. Displaced by development along the Pacific Coast, the world’s largest tern colony settled several years ago on an island composed of dredging material disposed of by the Army Corps of Engineers. There, near the mouth […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
The oldest living thing is a quiet survivor
The oldest living thing in the world is hard to find, and soon I’m lost. I drive out a rutted dirt road south of Barstow, Calif., in search of “King Clone,” a creosote bush identified as the oldest living thing on Earth. Said to be 11,700 years old, that makes it centuries older than the […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Heard around the West
Here’s some good news: So many people turned out to work for free at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City that the Games will turn a profit. That’s a rare event, reports the Wall Street Journal, and it’s all due to the “kindness and good cheer” of 20,000 volunteers. They took on jobs as […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
‘Big for the sake of big is not good’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bill Stoltzfus owns a small registered Holstein dairy in Buhl, Idaho. He moved to the Magic Valley from Pennsylvania in 1992. Bill Stoltzfus: “(We have) about 85 milk cows. Everybody has a name and they are all individuals. A few of them are actually […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
‘The odors were beyond description’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Until recently, Sena McKnight lived in the middle of several dairy farms outside Twin Falls, Idaho. Sena McKnight: “We moved here six years ago, and at the time there was not much development. Two years ago, Hank Hafliger’s dairy started up, a mile to […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
‘You start over new’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Dean Swager moved his dairy farm from Southern California’s Chino Valley to Idaho’s Magic Valley in October of 2000. Dean Swager: “My father started in the dairy business in 1943 in the Bellflower area (in Southern California). He moved several times in that area […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Developers push revisionist history
In March 2000, the people of Flagstaff, Ariz., won a big one. Development of a treasured crater and wetland known as Dry Lake into a gated, high-end golf-course subdivision was stopped dead. This is especially significant because the property was private and already zoned for a planned community. The four-year battle was complicated, including a […]
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Habitat protection takes a critical hit
Developers’ lawsuits force government to revise critical-habitat designations
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Water threat inspires a rare alliance
Proposed power plants could draw down aWashington/Idaho aquifer
Posted inApril 15, 2002: Raising a stink
Dear Friends
Mixing our media Centuries from now, when historians dig through HCN’s fossil record, they may discover that this week’s cover story was a metamorphic moment in the paper’s evolution into a multimedia endeavor. The genesis for the story was a recent board meeting, where board member, rancher and Idaho state senator Brad Little told staff […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Evans a liberal Republican
Dear HCN, Andy Stahl writes that William Dwyer was nominated for the federal bench “by liberal Democrat Dan Evans and conservative Republican Slade Gorton” (HCN, 3/4/02: ‘His courtroom was a classroom’). Actually, Evans is also a Republican. Stahl is probably confused because, in 1985, a liberal Republican like Evans would be more liberal than most […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
NRA: Get the lead out, and lead
Dear HCN, There is no need for condors to be dying of lead poisoning (HCN, 2/18/02: Condor program laden with lead). There are already several alternatives to lead bullets on the market. For more than a decade, solid copper bullets have proven effective on all game. Though currently expensive for shooters who do a lot […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Emery County’s late-lamented heritage
Dear HCN, The issues of tourism and formal designation of special status for the San Rafael Swell have once again surfaced. As I remember, the last time the people of Emery County had this much debate about development issues was in the early 1970s. At that time there was a very tiny minority who spoke […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
How to handle the big cats
It’s a typical, sunny Western day, and you’re outside gardening when you notice a big cat eyeing you intently and slinking slowly towards you. What should you do? Don’t act defenseless, says Jon Rachael, regional wildlife manager in Idaho. “Almost invariably, mountain lions attack for food, so if you play dead, that only makes the […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
A blueprint for better communities
Westerners who are fed up with polluted water and air, strip malls that eat up open space, and automobile-dependent lifestyles can look to a new book by the Natural Resources Defense Council for guidance on how to counter the poorly planned patterns of growth we now know as urban sprawl. In a series of 35 […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Letting their lights shine
They have stayed quietly in the background for decades, watching as their men vainly tried to pound the round peg of European governmental tradition into the square hole of tribal culture. But no longer: The women of Indian Country are speaking up, taking charge, and making things happen, according to a recent series by Montana’s […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Protests from the (tree)top down
During the late ’90s, dozens of activists camped out in the treetops of Northern California’s Headwaters Forest, protesting clear-cutting by Pacific Lumber. Their months – and even years – above the ground didn’t save the entire forest, but they managed to protect a few of the oldest groves. The tree-sits also drew intense media attention […]
Posted inApril 1, 2002: Move over! Will snowmobile tourism relax its grip on a gateway town?
Snowy plover predators become prey
OREGON Many creatures that forage along the sand dunes of the Oregon Coast consider the snowy plover’s cream-colored eggs a savory delicacy, and all those stolen eggs add up. Since 1993, the shy shorebird has been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Despite federal and state wildlife agencies’ recovery efforts, such as fencing […]