Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

For years, environmentalists have been trying to get the BLM to rein in the rampant use of off-road vehicles on public lands (see our stories here, here and here). The latest attempt involves Congress — 93 representatives just sent a letter asking the agency to prohibit OHV use in fragile and remote parts of Utah.

But Utah rep. Chris Cannon, R, apparently thinks that his state should have complete control over what happens on these federally-owned public lands. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

“I don’t presume to set transportation policy for Chicago or New York,” said Rep. Cannon. “So I would appreciate my colleagues - none of whom are from Utah - not trying to protect Utah from Utahns.”

Come again, Rep. Cannon? “Transportation policy”?? We’re not talking about whether Salt Lake should build more highways or a bus system. We’re talking about whether a few off-roading yahoos should get to ride their destructive toys over every square inch of land that all Americans own.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

The Washington Post reports that homeowners who followed fire-preventive building and landscaping rules survived the recent fires in California, while nearby houses that paid less attention to those regulations went up in flames.

While one house survived in Rancho Del Rio, a next door neighbor’s house is “a heap of ash and twisted metal…the hubcaps of a car in the driveway had melted into streams of silver-colored lava.”
Building requirements included boxed eaves, fire sprinklers, spark arrestors on chimneys and noncombustible roofing materials rated Class A.

Landscaping required fire-resistant plants such as monkey flower and sage. And it required that homeowners cut down eucalyptus and pine trees, with their oily bark, dry leaves and needles. Palm trees act “like bombs in a fire, when those embers get up in them,” said Kurtis Anton, a builder.
Other fire-resistant flowering plants that grow well in California include California redbud, ceanothus “concha” (California lilac), common yarrow, and French lavender. Trees include coast live oak, California sycamore and toyon. For perennials and annuals, choose California fuchsia and beard tongue, and for groundcover, try wild strawberry.

“We wanted some prettier plants, but they said no,” said one homeowner. Her home, in a Rancho Sante Fe development named Crosby (after Bing), was undamaged.

There are more than 3 million homes in the state classified as being at “very high” or “extreme risk” of wildfire.

You can download a 50-page booklet developed by the Metropolitan Water District and The Family of Southern California Water Agencies, with more plants and advice on how to keep them pruned and maintained.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

By now, everyone knows that a good portion of southern California is aflame. 500,000 evacuated thus far, more than 1,000 homes burned, two killed. And the flames aren’t slowing down.

Some of the best coverage:

LA Times: They’re in the thick of it, and have spectacular images on the website, plus good Google maps showing the fires with regular updates.

Get the southern view with the San Diego Union Tribune.

Very cool satellite view from NASA — it shows how the Santa Ana winds, counterintuitively, are pushing the fires towards the ocean.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Paonia residents and former HCN interns are keeping some pretty illustrious company these days. The latest issue of Time Magazine lists the planet’s “environmental heroes” — and along with folks like Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert Redford and Al Gore, it includes Chip Giller (fall ‘94 intern), the founder of green news site Grist.org, and HCN’s hometown scientist, Theo Colborn, who studies endocrine disruptors.

Founded in 1999 by Giller, a journalist who saw an opening for a digital newsletter on the environment, the Seattle-based Grist is a one-stop shop for news, reports and opinion — all delivered with a welcome satiric twist. The punny headlines can be clever (URSINE OF THE TIMES, for a piece on, yes, the polar bear) or groan-worthy (TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE, for a story on honeybee deaths), but the lightheartedness chips away at the sanctimony that too often coats environmentalism. “The strategy is to use irreverence and humor as a way to get through the jadedness that people have around these issues,” says Giller, who has grown Grist from a tiny e-mail newsletter to an influential and comprehensive site with 750,000 daily readers. “We’re a beacon in the smog.”

Way to go, Chip. You do us proud.

And we’re happy to see more recognition of Theo, who also appears in DiCaprio’s recent eco-pic The 11th Hour:

Colborn’s tireless research resulted in the groundbreaking 1996 book Our Stolen Future, and over the past decade she’s won over many of the skeptics. “Endocrine disruption has become a distinct discipline of its own,” says Colborn, who retired from the World Wildlife Fund in 2003 and returned to her Colorado home to found the Endocrine Disruption Exchange www.endocrinedisruption.com, a clearinghouse for research and information on the topic. “The evidence is now overwhelming that prenatal exposure can lead to irreversible disorders,” Colborn asserts. This would explain “the pandemic of endocrine-related diseases we’re seeing, especially in the northern hemisphere,” she says. “One out of three children born today will develop diabetes — and it’s one out of two if you’re a minority. Thyroid problems are everywhere.”

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Native Americans may find they have more control over mining projects on their lands, thanks to Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. The House Natural Resources Committee, which is laboring to overhaul the obsolete 1872 Mining Law, adopted a provision sponsored by Grijalva to help tribes harmed by mining. H.R. 2262, the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007, had originally included language addressing tribal impacts, but it was later removed from the bill. (See our earlier stories on mining reform here and here.)

The reinstated amendment allows tribes to request that certain lands not be mined. According to the Indigenous Environmental Network, the amendment will:

“… enable Tribes to petition the Secretary of Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture to withdraw federal lands from mining activities that have cultural and religious values. A separate process will require the Secretaries to establish regulations in consultation with Tribes to determine the appropriate information needed for a Tribal petition requesting withdrawal on land important for cultural and religious reasons.”

Welcome news for all the Indians harmed by mining — the Hopi who fought to reclaim their groundwater from the Black Mesa coal mine, the Navajos sickened by uranium mining, and many more …

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Westerners know that water is our most vital resource and that after decades of drought and population growth, our rivers and reservoirs are drying up. HCN has covered the West’s water issues extensively (for a few examples, see our stories here, here, here and here).

Now even the historically lush South faces severe water shortages. Global warming is exacting a toll on water supplies across the country, especially in the arid West. The New York Times has an excellent overview of looming water crises in the western U.S. Much of the region relies on winter snowmelt to replenish reservoirs, but snowpack levels are steadily declining each year — and the problem is only getting worse:

Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas… Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

Read the Times story. And go dig up your bluegrass lawn, install a greywater system, and get ready for the Big Thirst.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

The Associated Press reports that the state of Nevada has petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ban Sandia National Laboratories from working on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project.

The state claims that one of Sandia’s managers, Geoff Freeze, indicated in a memo that meeting a deadline for paperwork was more important than ensuring that the facility will keep nuclear waste safe for at least ten thousand years.

If a June 2008 deadline for the application to the Department of Energy isn’t met, “we are all out of a job,” Freeze wrote, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Nevada. He also noted “three priorities – schedule, defensibility, credibility – in that order” must be satisfied. “Any slips in schedule must be recovered by cutting scope. There is no allowance for not meeting schedule.”

In the state’s petition to the NRC, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto retorted, “Common sense and experience teach that a plan which puts schedule ahead of defensibility and defensibility ahead of genuine scientific credibility is a recipe for disaster.”
(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Beware: If you click on this link to the Phoenix New Times, your personal information could be subpoenaed. Seriously.

Arizona has a reputation for wacky politics. But this one is a doozy: New Times editors, executives and reporters (including High Country News contributing editor John Dougherty) have been subpoenaed by a grand jury for, get this, publishing the address of Sheriff Joe Arpaio on the Web. Also sought in the subpoena is information about folks who have visited the New Times website. And then, because New Times allegedly revealed grand jury secrets, two of the paper’s executives were tossed in the can.

It’s a wild story that reveals the totally bizarre nature of Arizona politics, involves “America’s Toughest Sheriff” (known for his tent camps and making prisoners wear pink underwear) and would be pretty damned funny if it were made into a movie starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter.
You can read about it in the New York Times. But you really should read the New Times account.

UPDATE, 10/22: Following a barrage of public criticism, within Arizona and across the country, the case against New Times was dropped on Oct. 20.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Utne Magazine, a bimonthly that reprints the best of the alternative media, just nominated HCN for its 2007 Independent Press awards.

Last year we received Utne’s award for best local/regional coverage; this year we’re being considered in the in-depth/investigative reporting category. We’d like to think our stories are always “in-depth,” but we’re up against some pretty stiff competition: Mother Jones, the Village Voice, the Columbia Journalism Review. Tune in sometime in January for the results.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Looking for a unique holiday gift for that special someone? How about ten acres in the 11,000-acre Ameya Preserve of Montana’s Paradise Valley? For only $2.3 million, you can purchase the pristine property for your loved one, complete with a private gourmet dinner and even the dinner guests, including “artists, authors and scientists” and music by violinist Joshua Bell or conductor Peter Oundjian.

The most expensive item in the Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalog, the 10-acre parcel (shown with a male model in front of the gorgeous backdrop) is also the first real estate ever offered in Neiman Marcus’s “fantasy gift” line, which includes a $50,000 tree tent by Dre Wapenaar, a Triton submarine for $1.4 million and a “Swami Conversational Robot” for $75,000.

As for the Ameya Preserve, it (and the offering in Neiman Marcus) is the brainchild of developer Wade Dokken. Dokken is the former President and CEO of American Skandia, Inc., a financial service company purchased by Prudential in 2003 for $1.3 billion. Wade is also the author of “New Century, New Deal: How to Turn Your Wages into Wealth through Social Security Choice.”

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

HCN has covered the condor vs. lead bullet issue several times in the past, most recently in March with this compelling piece by Mitch Tobin. Basically, tens of millions of dollars have been spent to bring the California condor back from the brink of extinction. By most estimates, the program would be a success, except for lead bullets. When condors eat carrion killed by the bullets, they can get sick or die. That means wildlife officials must feed the birds.
Seems like a no brainer: Stop using lead bullets. Indeed, the California Legislature passed a ban on lead bullets this summer — capturing national attention. Now the ban is awaiting the governor’s signature. What’s surprising is, he may not sign it (he fired a Fish and Game commissioner who appeared to favor the ban).

For the Washington Post’s update, go here.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The federal National Landscape Conservation System has been around for seven years. Bruce Babbitt, then Interior secretary, founded it to protect the “crown jewels” of BLM land — 26 million acres of wilderness areas, national monuments and wild and scenic rivers. But under Bush, the program has been starved for funding, and next year’s budget includes another $9 million cut.

Now, Gannett reports (in the Tucson Citizen) that Babbitt, former Interior secretary Stewart Udall, actor Edward Norton and others have formed the National Conservation System Foundation to help raise both awareness and money to address the threats facing these public lands. Babbitt says:

The really important piece now . . . is getting public support to work with local communities. The West is urbanizing so fast. People see the changes, the demands on the land. They’re really now starting to think we could wind up destroying the very values that brought us here in the first place, that make this such a distinctive area.

For more information, go here. And think about asking your representative to sign onto the pending legislation that would give these BLM lands the same status as national parks or wildlife refuges.

With the Southwestern drought and Western growth continuing, the dry and arcane subject of water policy is suddenly … sexy. And the new new thing in Western water supply is the recycling of sewage plant effluent as drinking water.

After having effluent-recycling proposals shot down a couple of times by opponents calling them “toilet to tap” boondoggles, San Diego is once again studying effluent purification to supplement drinking water supplies, according to the brilliant online news site voiceofsandiego.org. If there’s one more winter of subnormal Sierra snowpack, it seems, San Diego will face mandatory water rationing.

And the south suburbs of Denver are looking at the possibility of cleaning wastewater sufficiently to put it into their drinking water supply. And why is that? Here’s how the Denver Post puts it:

The Water Supply Initiative estimated in 2005 that Colorado likely could add another 2.8 million people by 2030, raising the demand for water by another 202 million gallons of water a year.

The south metro region is being forced to look for new, costly water supplies. Most of the region relies on aquifers that are running dry.

A 2003 regional study by water providers found that shortages and higher costs would be commonplace for customers in as little as 20 years.

Of course, High Country News has, as usual, been an early trend-spotter on the toilet-to-tap issue, as evidenced by Peter Friederici’s sprightly and authoritative cover story on the phenomenon, “Facing the Yuck Factor.”