Alberton, Mont. – When sirens pierced the air before dawn last April 11, Lucinda Hodges awoke to find workers in Haz-Mat suits scrambling through the streets in a thick, white fog. Then it hit her. “I’ll never forget that feeling,” she says. “You breathe and there’s no air. You felt like you were suffocating.” In […]
Climate change
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Cars kill trees
Scientists in California say the evidence is compelling: Air pollution from the fast-growing San Joaquin Valley is responsible for killing thousands of trees in the nearby Sierra Nevadas. The chief culprit is ozone, a pollutant created when exhaust from power plants or cars mixes with hydrocarbons in the presence of sunlight, say federal researchers and […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Burning for a buck
It sounds like an easy way to make a few dollars: Gather up coils of old industrial-gauge wire, pile it in the desert, douse it with diesel and burn off the rubber and lead insulation. The raw copper left behind brings 80 cents to a dollar per pound. The trouble is, it’s illegal and a […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
No nagging or preaching here
Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning, Northwest Environment Watch, 1997. 86 pages, illus. $9.95 paperback. When was the last time you heard an environmentalist complain that we’re recycling too much? No street-corner shouter or mealymouthed apologist, John Ryan is the sober, credentialed research director of Seattle-based Northwest […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
When it’s 25 below and dropping
I was playing poker the other day with a bunch of guys, mostly middle-aged and older, mostly native Montanans like myself. Every so often somebody would put on an extra coat, go outside and start the car, come back to play a few hands, then bundle up and turn the engine off. Nobody found this […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Utah takes waste that Arizona rejected
Chalk one up for the little guy. After four months of pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency and garbage giant Waste Management Inc., environmentalists in Arizona and California have scored a major victory. Trainloads of DDT-contaminated mud from a San Francisco Bay Superfund site are no longer headed to Waste Management’s landfill in Mobile, Ariz., a […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
The West awakes to ‘weird’ weather
Christmas brought some of the strangest weather Westerners can remember. First came snow and ice in Idaho so heavy that power poles snapped like twigs and a gymnasium roof collapsed. Then the “pineapple express’ arrived, a blast of warm air from Hawaii that sent temperatures soaring into the 70s. That sent melting snow crashing into […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
County trashes waste plan
Elmore County, Idaho, residents voted overwhelmingly this past election to allow the continued shipment of out-of-state nuclear wastes to a site 200 miles to the east of them. But they are putting their foot down on a plan to place the state’s largest landfill in their backyard. The planning and zoning commission decided to deny […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Clean air for a price
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 […]
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
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 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 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 […]