Environmental News

The plan released Thursday on developing oil-shale deposits on Bureau of Land Management lands in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah was a month late, and even though the BLM acknowledges it doesn't know what kind of technology will be used to pull the oil from its rocky bed, Congress is beginning to push to get production going.
Casper Star-Tribune (AP)

View Comments |

The Bureau of Land Management's proposed plan for oil shale development targets 1 million acres in Wyoming, 631,000 acres in Utah and 360,000 acres in western Colorado.
Grand Junction Sentinel

View Comments |

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society were allowed in as defendants in a federal lawsuit filed by Utah and Juab County against the Bureau of Land Management over who owns three roads in the Utah's Deep Creek Mountains.
Salt Lake Tribune

View Comments |

A new peer-reviewed study from the Bureau of Land Management, the University of Idaho, as well as other state and federal researchers, found that extreme temperatures and other weather factors made the 2007 Murphy Complex Fire the destructive force that it was, but it did say that while grazing or the lack of it wasn't a factor in that fire, grazing should remain in the federal agency's fire-management "toolbox."
Twin Falls Times-News

View Comments |

New Mexico Republicans said the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket will appeal to voters in their and other Western states because of the pair's experience with public lands and oil and gas development issues. You may have to view an ad to read this article.
Albuquerque Journal

View Comments |

View Comments |

Last month's wildfire that killed a woman in a Boise southeast neighborhood is the needed impetus for the Idaho city council to ban cedar-shake roofs on houses in neighborhoods that abut open space.
Idaho Statesman

View Comments |

Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced by a federal judge to spend four years in prison for corruption and tax offenses for bilking Indian tribes out of millions of dollars in an influence-peddling scheme that tainted some Republican leaders in Congress; Abramoff has already served about two years on unrelated fraud charges involving cruise ships.
New York Times

View Comments |

The Washington Department of Ecology was on the verge of issuing final discharge permits to Washington companies when the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced it had made a mistake in calculating phosphorus limits in permits for Idaho cities that discharge treated wastewater into the Spokane River, which means Washington state needs to start its process over again as its permitting process was tied to the federal limits for the Idaho cities.
Spokane Spokesman-Review

View Comments |

A 2005 state district court award of $4.8 million to 11 pipefitters who said they were fired after reporting safety concerns at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was upheld by the Washington Supreme Court.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

View Comments |

Under new regulations issued Thursday, small gasoline engines on lawn mowers, weed trimmers and boats will have to have catalytic converters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Washington Post

View Comments |

Now that both presidential candidates have indicated they support measures to put those in the United States illegally on a path to citizenship, the battle over illegal immigration has moved to the states, and in Oregon, an initiative to limit English as a Second Language classes is on November's ballot, and in California, there is a ballot initiative that would deny bail to illegal immigrants charged with violent crimes.
Santa Fe New Mexican (AP)

View Comments |

Kootenai County Republicans said John McCain's nomination as the GOP's presidential candidate was just what the Idaho party needed to get back on track.
Coeur d'Alene Press

View Comments |

The Nevadans who represented their state at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota said GOP presidential nominee John McCain's speech accomplished what it needed to do: appeal to those voters who had yet to make a decision on their pick in November.
Reno Gazette-Journal

View Comments |

Utah Republicans had hoped that Mitt Romney would be on stage Thursday night at the GOP national convention accepting their party's nomination for president, but last night they were standing together in their support for John McCain, who accepted the Republican Party's nomination for president last night.
Salt Lake Tribune

View Comments |

On Sept. 3, Republican presidential nominee John McCain announced the roster of leaders of the American Indians for McCain Coalition, which included former Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell a Northern Cheyenne.
Indian Country Today

View Comments |

During Gov. Sarah Palin's two years at the helm of Alaska, she raised taxes on oil companies' profits and returned the cash to consumers, led the charge for a licensing process to build a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline that the state's major oil companies opposed so much they refused to bid on the project, and is in a fight with oil companies over drilling rights to one of the state's richest natural gas deposits.
Toronto Globe and Mail

View Comments |

Wind-farm foe Frank VanderSloot's group, Natural Guardian Limited Partnership of Idaho Falls, asked a state court to review the process followed by Bingham County commissioners when they approved two wind farms in the Eastern Idaho county.
Twin Falls Times-News (Idaho State Journal)

View Comments |

Powder Mountain developers sued the Weber County Commission, alleging that the Utah county commission was illegally blocking the developers' choice of town leaders, but county officials said they believed all of the residents of the newly incorporated town should be represented by the board, not just the developers and the resort owners.
Salt Lake Tribune

View Comments |

Mike Wilson, a Tohono O'odham member, has been putting 55-gallon barrels of water at strategic points on the tribe's reservation in southern Arizona to cut down on the number of illegal border crossers who die in the desert, but the tribe has now ordered Wilson to stop doing that and has threatened him with banishment if he doesn't comply with the tribe's order.
Santa Fe New Mexican (AP)

View Comments |