Owners of the Centralia Coal Plant in Washington want as much as $80 million in state tax breaks to stop polluting the air over Mount Rainier National Park and Mount Saint Helens National Monument. Although the Clean Air Act requires the coal plant to install state-of-the-art scrubbers worth $300 million, officials at PacifiCorp, the primary […]
Climate change
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Recycling gets rapped
Is recycling really a stupid idea driven by people too willing to believe that their minute actions can change a culture built on conspicuous consumption? Writing in the New York Times Magazine June 30, John Tierney answers “yes.” In fact, he says, “Recycling is garbage.” Citing studies by conservative think tanks such as the Cato […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
The filthy West
Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Top 20 polluters
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Rank | Company | Location | Air/Water/Land Total lbs. released 1 Magnesium Corp. of America Rowley, Utah 55.7 million 2 ASARCO Inc. East Helena, MT 43.6 million 3 Courtaulds Fibers Inc. Axis, AL 33.4 million 4 IMC-Agrico Co. Mulberry, FL 25.7 million 5 Lenzing Fibers […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
An off-the-books polluter
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. If the mining industry, which has produced at least 40 Superfund sites nationwide, becomes a part of TRI, it will make a lot of other polluters look like they were spitting in the ocean. “I don’t think there’s any ‘perhaps’ about it,” says Phelps Dodge […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
The Toxic West
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. (Text adapted from a graphic available in the print version of this issue.) MONTANA Population 856,000 Total Facilities 24 National Rank for Air/Water/Land Releases 18 Transfers into State/Rank 16 Transfers out of State/Rank 42 Top Ten Facilities for Air/Water/Land Releases Facility County Total Releases/lbs. ASARCO […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
For more information
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. The TRI is available in several formats. Many public libraries have the report. Individuals can access it using on-line computer databases or purchase it on CD-ROM or on computer diskettes. For data-use assistance, call 202/260-1531 or fax to 202/260-4659. EPA also maintains a national technical […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Junkyard Rancher: Automotive wrangler scraps for a living
“Well buddy when I die, throw my body in the back, and drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac.” – Bruce Springsteen CARBONDALE, Colo. – Three phones are ringing in the office of the J-Y Ranch. A woman follows me in the door. “Have you got a window motor for a Jeep Cherokee?” she’s […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Recyclers challenge Big Steel
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Junkyard Rancher: Automotive wrangler scraps for a living “Minimills” that recycle steel are an environmentalist’s dream. A fraction of the size of conventional steel mills, the first mills started disassembling discarded Chryslers and Cuisinarts 25 years ago. Arriving cars and appliances get beaten […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Drought cuts to the bone on Southwest range
RESERVE, N.M. – To hear Ed Werheim tell it, 1993 was a lifetime ago. That’s when he took out a mortgage on a ranch in the mountains of southern New Mexico. The range was wet, cattle prices were high and the 57-year-old cabinet maker was looking forward to running cattle on the Gila National Forest […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
The art of control
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Drought cuts to the bone on Southwest range Jim Winder ranches near Hatch, N.M. He rotates his cattle through 62 fenced pastures on an 18,300-acre BLM allotment. When the customary winter rains didn’t fall in January, he started looking for lusher pastures for […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Droughts come, droughts go
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Drought cuts to the bone on Southwest range Quentin Hulse moved onto his ranch on Canyon Creek in the Gila National Forest in 1933, when he was 7 years old. He still lives there. We asked him how his cattle did in the […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Clean air victory in Colorado
The operators of the polluting, coal-fired Hayden Power Plant in northwestern Colorado have agreed to reform. The pressure began in 1995, when the Sierra Club won a lawsuit holding the plant accountable for more than 17,000 clean air violations (HCN, 11/27/95). The EPA followed this year with a notice of 10,234 additional violations. Rather than […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Pact promises cleaner canyon air
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK – As thunder rumbled in the distance and a hawk wheeled overhead, Grand Canyon Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger stood on the canyon’s rim and stared into a bank of television cameras. He said what a year ago he doubted he would ever get to tell the world: “Today we are saying […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Here’s a chance to speak up for clean air
Nineteen years ago Congress directed the EPA to clean up “any existing impairment of visibility” in the nation’s cleanest areas, called Class 1, and prevent further degradation caused by pollution from man-made sources such as coal-fired power plants and vehicles. The Environmental Protection Agency failed to act. It will be 1999 before any improvement takes […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Erasing the Southwest’s grandest vista
It was Barry Lopez who said that one of the dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret. Until the 1970s, when air pollution from California, Mexico and coal-fired power plants in the region began to limit visibility, the […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Farmers feel burned by clean air regs
Eastern Washington, with its rolling hills and mid-size cities, seems like a place where farmers and urbanites should easily coexist. But not in late summer, when farmers burn bluegrass fields to clear stubble and stimulate seed production. The conflict is most intense in Spokane, where clean air activists have long claimed that the clouds of […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Clearing the air on the Colorado Plateau
CLEARING THE AIR ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU It’s decision time for the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission, the group charged with restoring clean air to the five-state Colorado Plateau. Congress established the commission, which includes five Western governors and industry and environmental representatives, in 1991, allowing it five years to develop a plan to reduce […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
A wet winter misses the Southwest
Refreshed by last year’s drought-ending weather, most Westerners will wallow in water again this spring. Except in parts of the Southwest, where the fire season has already started, it should be a wet spring. Federal weather forecasters say reservoirs are full across most of the West and snowpacks are extremely high in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Flooding: Whose fault?
It’s been a tough winter in the Pacific Northwest. After enduring widespread flooding and landslides in November (HCN, 1/22/96), the region was slammed even harder in early February by a combination of heavy rains and melting snow. The recent landslides were the worst in three decades, say experts; repair costs could exceed $40 million. While […]