Rachel Walker’s story “Go Sell it On the Mountain” about Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s proposed expansion onto Snodgrass Mountain totally missed the point (HCN, 4/13/09). Colorado’s ski areas have gained approval for dozens of terrain expansions by claiming that more terrain would attract more skiers who would spend more money and boost local economies. However, […]
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
Swindle-ition vistas
Proposing “smart growth” for a city as bloated as Phoenix makes no more sense than a doctor prescribing smart weight gain for a morbidly obese patient (HCN, 4/27/09). One might as well advocate socially conscious prostitution or ethical money laundering. Oxymoronic or not, a shuck is a shuck. The cabal of promoters, land agents, politicians, […]
Posted inWotr
To fight fire, fight forest development
Spring is here, and the forest fire season will soon be upon us. Every year,the cost of fighting forest fires increases so that now, firefighting accounts for close to half the Forest Service’s budget. The cost to tax payers has risen to the billions of dollars. How do federal agencies handle this burden? The Forest […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
The Growth Machine is Broken
On Phoenix’s fringe, a huge piece of state land could become a smart-growth playground, or the same old sprawl.
Posted inGoat
After the crash
The housing/growth boom of the last decade was a wild ride for the West, feeling a bit like a euphoric all-night meth binge. Only the drug in this case was easy credit and an unshakable belief that the good times could never end. Nearly three years after the housing bubble reached its bursting point — […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
Conservation before compromise
Jonathan Parkinson’s “Compromise is better than nothing” is long on provocation and short on facts (HCN, 4/13/09). He writes, “You can’t conserve your way out of a drought.” A good sound bite, but it’s flat wrong. In fact, Southern California did conserve its way out of a drought in the late ’80s and early ’90s. […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Go Sell It On The Mountain
Will the down economy help Crested Butte’s owners end a 30-some year controversy and expand the ski resort?
Posted inGoat
The whites are back in town
Whites are moving back into the city of Denver, and people of color are sprawling into suburbia, according to a case study in the Sunday edition of The Denver Post. Hey, that’s the same story in Washington, D.C. Dubbed “Chocolate City,” D.C. is due to transition from majority black to majority white in 2014, according […]
Posted inGoat
Slums and tent cities
Urban planners love the fact that slums are “walkable, high-density, and mixed-use,” as The Boston Globe recently reported about Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums. In the article, reporter Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow says many governments are beginning to “mitigate the problems with slums rather than eliminate the slums themselves.” The general consensus is that informal communities (read: […]
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
Scattered to the winds
I am one of the residents of the San Miguel valley in New Mexico where the company Invenergy is looking into locating industrial-size turbines (HCN, 2/16/09). My neighbors and I have been researching the impact of the wind industry, and many of us are concluding that in the push for renewables, it is preferable to […]
Posted inMarch 2, 2009: How low will it go?
Closing in
Western military bases are getting squeezed by sprawl
Posted inWotr
The very worst thing about hard times
Studs Terkel died as last year drew to a close. He was one of the great chroniclers of life in the 20th century, gathering the oral histories of hundreds of Americans. Most were the people historians don’t trouble themselves with — people who pay the price when the historical figures bungle the task of running […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
A macabre measure of the human footprint
I’m a student of roadkill. I keep an informal tally of the carcasses I spot on the roadside — what kind, how many and where — and I note the splatters that accumulate on our car wi”ndshield. They’re an indication of the diversity and abundance of animal and insect lives along the unnatural transects we […]
Posted inGoat
TBD stands for…
…Texas Billionaire Developer. Ray Ring’s January essay told the tale of one Texas billionaire you shouldn’t trust. Well, here’s another to watch out for. His name is Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, and he might try to develop a place that’s near and dear to you! McCombs is the founder of one of the world’s largest […]
Posted inGoat
An even more unlikely Shangri-la
Chalk up one for public input — the Utah Supreme Court has ordered that before a ritzy new ski resort can proceed, Beaver County must put the project to a vote. Locals have been angered by the Jenson brothers’ attempts to turn a popular fishing and backcountry recreation spot into an exclusive enclave with golf […]
Posted inGoat
Wolverine devours Chaco
Inhabitants of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico left the region between 1130 and 1180 as the climate changed and drought set in. Today, a migration is occurring as a result of another climate change – the globalizing economy. Chaco Inc., a footwear company based in Paonia, Colo., has been sold to Wolverine World Wide, Inc., […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
All Aboard
A classic American transit system seems poised for a comeback
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Of an environmental hero and the need for reform
The Bush administration’s most enduring mark on the American West may well be the tens of millions of acres of public lands it has handed over to the oil and gas industry — and the belated backlash the giveaway has spawned. As if to punctuate this legacy, the Bureau of Land Management — which oversees […]
Posted inWotr
Forest Service skips a chance to do things right
If you’re like me and can’t keep up with the Bush administration’s last-minute policy changes, you might have failed to notice a recent announcement by the U.S. Forest Service. In its rush to tie up loose ends, the Forest Service is hammering out new internal agency guidance documents, called “directives.” These directives guide the management […]