The Magazine

Inheritance taxes negate the rise in farmland value and consume some farms that would otherwise pass on to the farmers’ heirs, prompting efforts to reform tax laws.

In part one of a two-part series, a geologist from Colorado examines the future of oil shale in the Rocky Mountain region, exploring the properties of the oil-rich rock and the jockeying of energy companies for a piece of the action.

Recent reports of grizzly bears in Colorado may end the blanket denial of the grizzly’s presence there by state and federal officials.

The Center for Political Economy and Natural Resources, based in Bozeman, Montana, advocates for applying free market economic approaches to managing natural resources, including those on public lands.

The Colorado Department of Health has warned residents of Irondale, Colo., that their wells are contaminated with DBCP, a pesticide known to cause male sterility and possibly cancer.

Because of outdated tax assessment methods, the state of Wyoming has lost about $10 million in uranium severance tax payments since 1977.

A congressional investigation has found that there may be serious undiscovered drinking water problems on the Navajo Indian Reservation.

The author reflects on work “jugging” — seismographic exploration for oil and gas. “I had reservations about the work, but that $100 a day talked louder.”

In Jeffrey City, Wyo., a 25-year-old boom town that lies in one of the most hostile environments in the country, the local union struggles to hold the town together amid layoffs caused by a downturn in the uranium industry.

Now that the Sagebrush Rebels have a president and half a dozen conservative senators sympathetic to their cause, their goal of turning over federally managed lands to the states looks more tangible than ever.

Environmental regulators are perplexed as they grapple with what they’re calling the most pressing environmental problem of the 1980s — hazardous waste.

Citing antiquated equipment, pollution control problems and foreign competition, Atlantic Richfield Co. announced recently that it will not reopen its Anaconda, Montana, copper smelter, which employs nearly 1,000 people.

Requirements that energy companies inventory archeological sites when they disturb public lands are creating plenty of good-paying jobs for archeologists.

Increasing pressure for resource extraction in the West would suggest that the 1980 election would hinge on natural resource issues. Yet in most political races, natural resource issues are not at the forefront.

The issue of who is legally responsible if something goes awry when cloud seeders and other weather changers are at work is unresolved in Colorado and elsewhere.

The Bureau of Land Management says that energy conservation and renewable energy sources could produce twice as much power as the Allen-Warner power plants proposed for Utah and Nevada.

Millworkers helped produce uranium for the nation’s nuclear defense program in the 1950s and ’60s. Now many are ill from exposure to radiation, but getting compensation is difficult.

A special issue on the solar technology movement, with articles on do-it-yourself builders, making photovoltaic panels economically competitive, greenhouses and more.

The author reflects on childhood visits to Utah, the history of the Mormons and the National Miners Union, and the state’s perhaps bleak future.

Even as strip mines multiply throughout the Rocky Mountain states, the federal agency responsible for overseeing reclamation of mined lands — the Office of Surface Mining — is reeling under a series of blows.