With fast-growing lawns in the West sucking down immense amounts of water, Andrew McKean of Helena, Mont., passes on two apropos comments. The first is from University of Utah political scientist Daniel McCool: “Utah doesn’t have a water problem; Utah has a Kentucky bluegrass problem.” The second comes from the side of a bus spotted […]
Heard around the West
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
The greening of the Nevada Test Site
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Deep inside the Nevada Test Site, in a moonscape of craters and radioactive ruin left by nearly 1,000 nuclear bombs, Stephen Zitzer lies face down, his hands plunged into a creosote bush. Stark, white upright pipes encircle him like soldiers. Each pipe silently puffs […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
A bitter valley waits
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. – “Yea, though we live in the shadows of Death Valley and Yucca Mountain, we will not fear,” it said on the T-shirt of the man in front of me as I checked into the Longstreet Inn and Casino in Amargosa […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
A maverick mayor takes on sprawl
Salt Lake’s Rocky Anderson fights the ‘highways first’ establishment
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Tribes fight to clear the roads for salmon
Washington fears lawsuit could give tribes sweeping control of salmon habitat
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Varmint hunters sidelined in Wyoming
The Forest Service takes a stand for prairie dogs
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Rancher goes down kicking
Montana’s fight over game farms isn’t over yet
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Luxury homes torched in Tucson
The fires follow a string of similar arsons in Phoenix
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
An activist to the end
As a writer in San Francisco in the 1970s, Tary Mocabee was one of the first to explain the inner workings of automatic teller machines, a technological advancement that she jokingly equated with psychoanalysis: Both involve pressing crucial buttons. Ironically, Mocabee pushed a lot of political buttons over the past 20 years as a Montana […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Dear Friends
Summer break Don’t search your mailbox for a July 16 issue of the paper – it won’t be there. Each summer HCNskips an issue to give our readers and staffers a small break. We’ll be back on July 30. The changing of the guard For the first time in 17 years, High Country News has […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Nevada’s quest to lose its reputation as a wasteland didn’t begin auspiciously in the new millennium. In fact, it looked as if the state was politically doomed to become the home for a nuclear waste repository that would remain dangerously radioactive for many millennia. At the start of 2001, with Republicans in control of the […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Futile firefighting
Dear HCN, Louise Wagenknecht’s essay on the futility of firefighting (HCN, 5/7/01: The year it rained money) confirmed my family’s observations during a nearby fire last year. We watched in horror as 250 firefighters set pointless backfires, bulldozed miles of roads, and sawed down huge, rare trees that would not have burned. We saw dozens […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Smokey’s secret is out
Dear HCN, With veiled amusement I read Louise Wagenknecht’s essay, “The year it rained money,” (HCN, 5/7/01: The year it rained money). You did it now, Louise. The cat’s out of the bag. Heaven forbid the American public should understand what those of us in the fire-suppression game have known forever, but do not like […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Soul food on the range
Researchers at Northern Arizona University’s Center for Sustainable Environments have some bad news about the average American diet: A typical meal’s ingredients travel 2,000 miles from farm to fork, amassing huge environmental and economic costs along the way. The costs are cultural, too, says NAU professor and noted author Gary Nabhan. While Westerners can instantly […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Banging the drum for change
Janet Robideau hates being told “no,” thanks to a Catholic boarding-school education where strict obedience was doctrine. Now, all those years of keeping silent and following rules have inspired her to do exactly the opposite: give voice to Montana’s urban Indians and change the rules that have restricted them for years. Robideau, a member of […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
‘Alternative to Madness’
Anti-nuclear activists have a new way to spread the word about the dangers of weapons testing and radioactive waste – documentary film. In 1998, with borrowed equipment, no budget and little experience, John Brooner of Susanville, Calif., and Sandi Rizzo of Reno, Nev., began filming Shundahai Network’s annual spring gathering at the Nevada Test Site. […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Birds for a feather
Eagle feathers have been important cultural and spiritual symbols for members of the Pueblo of Zuni. “They symbolize strength, courage and vision,” explains Edward Wemytewa, cultural liaison for the tribe. Until recently, however, tribal members had to put their names on a 5,000-person waiting list to receive a carcass from the National Eagle Repository. With […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Politics sink growth management
COLORADO After a failed ballot initiative, a dozen legislative bills and a special session that burnt the midnight oil, Colorado is no closer to managing its growth. Gov. Bill Owens, R, had promised citizens a solution by summer, but the Legislature couldn’t overcome a partisan impasse. Republicans opposed mandatory impact fees that would have forced […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Indian rock art under the drill?
MONTANA Crow Indian historian Howard Boggess believes the rock art that graces the sandstone cliffs of Weatherman Draw marks the historic “Valley of the Shields” as a “place of peace” where chiefs and warriors retreated for vision quests. The art likely represents a multitude of ethnic groups who traveled through this historic migratory corridor in […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Tribe tussles over target range
MONTANA The Fort Belknap Indian Community in north-central Montana, home to the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes, is split on a proposal that would allow the Montana Air National Guard to drop dummy bombs and fire dummy bullets on tribal trust land. The one-mile-square target area would be in the center of a 15-square-mile buffer […]