Innholdsfortegnelse for July Vol. 56, No. 07 i High Country News

IF YOU DRIVE EAST on Highway 95 through the Idaho Panhandle, the Clearwater River will be on your right, winding its way slowly and surely toward Lapwai, Idaho, on the Nez Perce Reservation. The river, which is the largest tributary to the Snake River, is typically dynamic, though on the days when it’s glassy and still, it clearly reflects the clouds as well as the emission plumes from the paper mill on its banks. Just past the reservation’s border, a billboard greets the driver with an admonition, urging you to “Honor the Treaty of 1855 with the Nez Perce — Breach the Snake River Dams.” The billboard is the tribe’s response to the four hydropower dams on the Snake River. The Lower Snake River dams have long been controversial for…

IN 1953, the Anaconda Minerals Company leased nearly 8,000 acres of land in central New Mexico from the Pueblo of Laguna to mine uranium for nuclear weapons. The company gouged and blasted away at the earth, constructing the three massive holes known as the Jackpile-Paguate Mine. The Jackpile-Paguate became the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, producing some 24 million tons of ore. It employed hundreds of Laguna Pueblo members and transformed the community’s economy. But mining companies and regulators gave little thought to the safety of miners and nearby residents. Miners were exposed to radioactive and toxic heavy metals daily, even spending their lunch breaks sitting on piles of radioactive ore. Blasting sent tremors through the pueblo’s adobe homes, and a cloud of poisonous dust drifted into the village of…

Mention the James Beard Foundation, and folks think of chic restaurants, white chef’s hats and hand-plated hors d'oeuvres. My favorite James Beard Award-winner is much more down-home. Los Hernandez is a humble eatery housed in a whitewashed, cinder-block edifice in tiny Union Gap, in central Washington. Family members dish up handmade tamales packed with dense masa and a spicy core of chicken, pork or (if you drop by at the right time in spring) asparagus. The foundation — named for the proto-celebrity chef and Portland, Oregon, native — also honors culinary and food industry leaders, and even food writing. And now, for the second time, High Country News has won a James Beard Award — this time for work by Laureli Ivanoff, an Inupiaq writer and journalist based in Uŋalaqłiq…

WE NAMED HIM LINCOLN, after the Lincoln Monument off I-80 near the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. One, because he was the color of a new penny, and two, because the day we met him, he wore the same serious expression of our 16th president. Earlier in the summer, I had answered an online ad from a young woman who wanted to re-home her dog, a floppy-eared spaniel mix. My husband, Michael, is not on any social media, but he wanted a dog. I messaged with the woman, and then she wrote to say she had changed her mind. I forgot about the ad and the little face in the pictures. But months later, she messaged again: Did we still want a dog? She couldn’t keep him. She had her first…

WHEN COAL MINERS NORTH of Fernie, British Columbia, blast into the mountains, the piles of rocks left behind leach selenium into the Elk River, which flows south into the Kootenai River. In small quantities, selenium is an essential nutrient, but larger amounts are toxic to humans and other species. The Kootenai’s levels are so high that some local tribal members are wary of fishing in Lake Koocanusa, a reservoir on the U.S.-Canada border. “People are very cautious about what they put in their bellies up there,” said Rich Janssen (Qlispe), head of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Natural Resources Department. Any selenium that doesn’t settle in the lake flows into Montana, then Idaho, then back into British Columbia. For decades, downstream residents, advocates and members of the transboundary Ktunaxa…

TYLER MATLOCK (HE/HIM) Third-generation Coloradan, health-care professional and outdoor athlete Denver, Colorado Being a multigenerational Coloradan means that I’m a staple here. My mom and my grandparents walked the same streets that I walk in Park Hill. We had a son two years ago, born in the same hospital I was. As he grows, I want him to experience walking the same streets that have been a part of our family for generations. There has been so much change in Colorado, but just because you change the environment doesn’t mean you have to change the people. In “cleaning up the streets and making things better,” do you have to displace the people? Since I was young, I’ve pondered this. Being in Colorado for generations is being here when it’s not…

WHEN THE SANTIAM FIRE RIPPED through Gates, Oregon, on Labor Day 2020, Sam Drevo escaped with his life, his puppy, Eddy, and not much else. The house he and his mother lived in, a triplex and the restored historic building that housed his kayak school and rafting business all burned to the ground. Drevo, a photographer and river guide, lost 15,000 slides representing decades of work; his mother, a weaver, lost all her looms and textiles. Facing that much loss after fleeing flames just a quarter mile away was traumatic. As rumors spread throughout the neighborhood that the fire was sparked by downed power lines, Drevo wanted to know what caused the destruction, and who was responsible. So he joined a class action lawsuit against the utility company PacifiCorp. The…

WHEN YAKAMA NATION leaders learned in 2017 of a plan to tunnel through some of their ancestral land for a green energy development, they were caught off guard. While the tribal nation had come out in favor of climate-friendly projects, this one appeared poised to damage Pushpum, a privately owned ridgeline overlooking the Columbia River in Washington. The nation holds treaty rights to gather traditional foods there, and tribal officials knew they had to stop the project. Problems arose when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency in charge of permitting hydro energy projects, offered the Yakama Nation what tribal leaders considered an impossible choice: disclose confidential ceremonial, archaeological and cultural knowledge, or waive the right to consult on whether and how the site is developed. This put the Yakama…

IN THE WESTERN U. S. TODAY, water is increasingly scarce and valuable; it’s basically liquid gold. The combination of a “first in time, first in right” system for managing water rights — meaning senior water rights always have priority — with increasingly dry conditions has triggered a rush to buy up land and its water, drying up farms. Ben Knight’s Mirasol: Looking at the Sun, a short documentary that premiered April 25, tells a familiar story: Communities across the West are languishing and disappearing as they lose access to water. Through painting an intimate portrait of Pueblo, Colorado’s agricultural community, the film shows how water is integral to human connection, nourishment, culture and life. I grew up on the Front Range, watching drought scar the landscape as Colorado became hotter…

CALIFORNIA A Monterey County resident found a clever — and creative — way to respond to a rarely enforced regulation, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Etienne Constable, who’d parked his boat in his driveway for four years without any complaints, was ordered to install a fence concealing it from public view or else face a $100 fine. Seaside’s municipal code says that oversized vehicles, including boats parked in driveways, must be accompanied by a fence. So, like any good law-abiding citizen, Constable erected a 6-foot-high fence — but added a mischievous twist: He commissioned his neighbor, artist Hanif Panni, to paint a trompe l’oeil image of his vessel — the aptly named Might as Well — on it. The optical illusion has since attracted, well, boatloads of attention, and photos…