Los Promotores Amid California’S Toxic Dumps, Local Activists Go It Alone | Ruxandra Guidi August 7, 2017 | $5 | Vol

PUBLIC-LANDS PRIORITIES | SOLAR ECLIPSE | WATER WRANGLES

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West

Editor’s note Our invisible immigrant activists California’s distinctive character and its wealth are closely tied to its immigrants. From the early Gold Rush and railroad days, to the Central Valley’s farms and Silicon Valley’s high-tech boom, immigrants have helped make the state the sixth-largest economy in the world. California’s estimated 2.5 million undocumented immigrants make up about 10 percent of its workforce, contributing $130 billion a year to its gross domestic product — which is more than the annual GDP of 133 other countries. The highest concentration of California’s immigrant labor is in agriculture, where nine out of 10 workers are foreign-born and more than half are undocumented. Their backbreaking toil fills produce aisles and wine racks across the state and throughout the West, as workers accept low wages, long hours and cramped living conditions in hope of bettering their lives. And yet they remain invisible and largely unwelcome. Despite the importance of A hand-written sign warns Duroville mobile home park residents in Thermal, California, to stay away from a multiculturalism to California’s success, non-whites waste pond on the neighboring property. On the far side of the pond is Lawson Dump, now closed by the EPA are increasingly under attack. Hate crimes in the because it contained dangerous amounts of arsenic, PCBs, asbestos, dioxin and other toxic materials. (2010) r oberto Guerra state spiked to double-digit growth in both 2016 and 2015. Of 931 hate crimes committed there last year, 519 — more than half — targeted race or ethnicity. On the cover FEATURE The vast majority involved attacks on non-whites. Eduardo Guevara That intolerance coincides with President stands at the entrance 12 Los Promotores Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Arrests of to the Duroville immigrants without criminal records have doubled, Amid California’s toxic dumps, local activists go it alone mobile home park leaving farms without the workers they need — and in 2010. He and his By Ruxandra Guidi generally adding to America’s growing reputation as family lived in a dilapidated trailer a hate-filled place. Meanwhile, Trump’s beleaguered here for about a CURRENTS attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has announced year, leading him to renewed efforts to withhold federal funding from become an activist 5 Drilling threatens Dinosaur National Monument Old public-lands so-called sanctuary cities. That makes undocumented and environmental immigrants increasingly hesitant to report crimes or justice advocate, and battles are rekindled as Interior prioritizes oil and gas founder of Promotores 5 The Latest: Owens Valley moves to reclaim water show up to court for misdemeanors, for fear of being Comunitarios del deported. It also makes policing harder, as people Desierto. (2010) 6 Get in line Soon, hordes will flock to the West for the solar eclipse become more distrustful of beat cops and local Ro berto Guerra 7 Rights and releases Idaho water case highlights difficulty investigators. All of this is making these communities of dam management under climate change even less visible to the rest of the world. 8 Cross-country The discovery, and probable disappearance, This issue’s cover story aims to bring the members of North America’s newest bird species of these communities out of the shadows. It is the product of a new initiative at High Country News, 8 The Latest: Long-running pueblo water-rights case settled the Diverse Western Voices Award, which recognizes journalists of color who investigate the hidden DEPARTMENTS corners of our region. This story, by the first recipient Complete access of the award, Los Angeles-based Contributing Editor to subscriber-only 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG Ruxandra Guidi, highlights the work of grassroots content activists in the farmworker towns and crowded trailer HCN’s website 4 LETTERS parks of Southern California. As Ruxandra notes, these hcn.org 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends activists come from a long tradition of education and Digital edition community service. They address exploitation and hcne.ws/digi-4913 12 MARKETPLACE intolerance as bravely as any environmental activist, 25 WRITERS ON THE RANGE What a way to go By Rob Pudim quietly and patiently moving house to house and field Follow us to field, to improve the lives of their compatriots one 26 BOOKS American Eclipse By David Baron Reviewed by Ben Goldfarb small step at a time. I find their work inspiring and  7 2 ESSAY Flirting with extinction By Maya L. Kapoor worthy of attention, and I hope you will, too. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief

2 High Country News August 7, 2017 From our website: HCN.ORG

A bipartisan win for Trending cap and trade Female In July, the California state Legislature farmworkers narrowly voted to extend the state’s landmark cap-and-trade legislation by a decade. The speak out program, which has been in effect since The campesinas of 2013, requires businesses to buy credits California are groups to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions. of female farmworkers It is the only such program in the United who take on issues States, and it has been touted as a potential unique to their job, model for other states and countries. The varying from pesticide Legislature also passed a companion bill to drift to sexual strengthen air-quality rules. The cap-and-trade assault. Through bill’s passage was a victory for California organizations like Gov. Jerry Brown, D, who has emerged as a Líderes Campesinas, de facto climate leader following President undocumented Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from workers can fight the Paris climate agreement. The bill, which for better working received unusual bipartisan support, also conditions. Under the revealed a split within the environmental Trump administration, community. Groups working nationally largely though, the supported the extension, while groups more campesinas are concerned with local pollution opposed it on facing a new set of the grounds that the concessions to industry issues with hardened Downtown Los Angeles with an inversion of smog. In July, the state Legislature extended went too far. Rebecca Worby immigration policies. California’s cap-and-trade rules, which require businesses to buy credits to pay for greenhouse gas More: hcne.ws/california-industry They are worried that emissions. Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images reporting crimes or workplace violations could cost them their jobs and family stability. But they’ll The quieter find a way forward, $9.9 million monument says Executive Director Amount of tribal climate resilience award money battles to watch Suguet López. “We left proposed to be cut in President Donald our countries and have Trump’s budget Though the Interior Department ended started new lives over the public-comment before, so we know we Number of Alaska Native villages are resilient.” t31hreatened by coastal erosion. Several already period for its national Ruxandra Guidi have been forced to relocate. monument review, these Cascade- lesser-known places Siskiyou After Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris await their fate: National climate agreement, tribal nations persisted Cascade-Siskiyou Monument You say in their own plans to prioritize climate National Monument in Oregon. Michael Stiehl: “Hold change adaptation. In the West, many tribal in Oregon is known employers accountable communities are on the frontlines of climate for its biodiversity. The and provide permits change, uniquely impacted by drought, rising Obama administration for workers instead sea levels and wildfire. But U.S. tribes cannot nearly doubled its size, of making them directly enter into treaties with the United and its inclusion in criminals. In other Nations, so they are instead working with the review has raised words, make the Indigenous populations from around the world, concerns that the systems on the books like the United League of Indigenous Nations, expansion could be work, and enforce the to become leaders in the climate conversation. reversed. laws.” Still, the government’s lack of interest is likely to Officials in Nye be an obstacle, as renewable energy and climate County, Nevada, home Pta rick Netherly: resilient infrastructure often requires federal of Basin and Range Basin and “Undocumented folks investment. Lyndsey Gilpin National Monument, Range should not be here in opposed its designation More: hcne.ws/tribes-climate National the first place.” in 2015, and some have Monument lent their support to in Nevada. Dan Born: “Someone Interior’s review. who is willing to work Montana Sen. Jon that hard should be Tester, D-Mont., and provided with a faster Gov. Steve Bullock, D, path to citizenship.” have come out firmly in defense of the $1B Upper Missouri River More: hcne.ws/ california-campesinas Estimated value of the “Indian-made” jewelry Breaks National and Facebook.com/ sold every year, 80 percent of which could be Monument. Rescinding Upper highcountrynews counterfeit, according to New Mexico Sen. Tom it would be a “job-killing Missouri Udall, D. Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, step backwards in our Breaks it is illegal to market or sell fake Indian art as responsibility” to protect National the real thing. But out of some 1,700 complaints public lands, Tester says. Monument since 1996, only 22 have been prosecuted. Rebecca Worby in Montana. Frances Madeson Bureau More: hcne.ws/ of Land More: hcne.ws/counterfeit-art monument-battles Management

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The following comments were Tourism can’t replace oil High Country News posted on our website, hcn.org. Executive director/Publisher Replacing the economic ben- Paul Larmer efits of oil production with trail Editor-in-Chief No empathy Brian Calvert tourism is a nice idea, but the SENIOR EDITOR In the story “Death Threats” economic reality is staggering Jodi Peterson (HCN, 7/24/17), Jessica Lefevre, (“Trail Blazing,” HCN, 6/26/17). Art director an attorney for the Alaska The current Trans-Alaska Cindy Wehling Eskimo Whaling Commission, Pipeline carrying rate is about Deputy editor, digital says, “The NGOs we deal with Kate Schimel 500,000 barrels per day. At are ideologically driven; this is about $43 per barrel, the value Associate EDITORs Tay Wiles, Maya L. Kapoor what they do, they save stuff. of that resource is $21.5 million. Assistant EDITORS The collateral damage to com- Per day. All year long. Paige Blankenbuehler, munities doesn’t factor into Until the recent oil-price Anna V. Smith their thinking.” D.C. Correspondent crash, the state took in billions Elizabeth Shogren The same could be said per year in royalties and produc- WRITERS ON THE RANGE for dozens of hard-line animal tion taxes. Alaska has no income editor Betsy Marston rights and environmental tax, but the economic benefits Associate designer outfits across our country. Real, of tens of thousands of industry Brooke Warren effective conservation includes employees, most of them mak- Copy editOR Diane Sylvain hunting as a wildlife manage- ing six-figure salaries, kept the Contributing editorS ment tool as well as a cul- entire economy alive. Tristan Ahtone, Cally tural and subsistence tradition, Assuming trail users want to Carswell, Sarah Gilman, Graham Harrop /Artizans.com Glenn Nelson, Ruxandra hinges on science-based wildlife travel from Valdez to the North Guidi, Michelle Nijhuis, management, and — most Slope, a length of 800 miles, that Jonathan Thompson importantly — works collaboratively with Distributing trail use could require about 80 huts (for hikers) CorrespondentS locals to advance healthy wildlife and or 20 huts (for bikers). With bigger huts Krista Langlois, Sarah The trail numbers seem off in your story wild places alongside thriving, healthy that could accommodate 10 people, that’s Tory, Joshua Zaffos “Trail Blazing” (HCN, 6/26/17). The Editorial FellowS communities. Sea Shepherd, Paul Wat- 200 to 800 visitors per night, and at $200 American Hiking Society’s 2015 report Emily Benson, son, their followers and similar uncom- per bed, that’s $40,000 to $160,000 per Rebecca Worby listed 103,000 miles of trails in 1965 on promising groups should be ashamed of day. While that sounds like a lot, it looks Development Director federal and state land, and 236,000 miles themselves. Their approach is neither tiny compared to the dollars the state Laurie Milford in 2015, not 326,000. (Editor’s note: Craig Philanthropy Advisor empathetic nor effective. government, and the state workforce, is correct; we’ve updated our story.) The Alyssa Pinkerton have enjoyed in the past. Of course, build- Chase Gunnell lack of numbers in between those two Development Assistant ing the huts and associated infrastruc- Christine List Seattle, Washington years leaves me wondering how much of ture would require millions of dollars. Marketing & Promotions that trail growth is recent. The greatest So a tourist economy is better than Manager JoAnn Kalenak number of overnight stays in the Yosem- nothing, but the scope is limited and WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel Tough questions ite backcountry was in the mid-1970s; often seasonal, and most of the jobs pay D atabase/IT administrator numbers today still haven’t reached that Alan Wells At a superficial level, this story reveals little. plateau. Elsewhere in the Sierra, many DIRECTOR OF ENGAGEMENT the contradictions of people who claim backcountry trails that were present in Robert Krantz Gretchen King to be sympathetic to both environmental A ccounts Receivable 1965 are now gone or in the process of Durango, Colorado preservation and Indigenous people liv- Jan Hoffman going: In Kings Canyon, the Baxter Pass ing in traditional ways (“Death Threats,” Customer Service Manager Trail, Sawmill Pass Trail and Kennedy Christie Cantrell HCN, 7/24/17). But a little deeper down, Pass trail are now unmaintained while Tourism is nothing new C irculation Systems admin. we face some real human dilemmas. Be- the Gardiner Basin trail, Cartridge Pass Kathy Martinez yond “managing” wildlife populations and Alaska’s economy isn’t in need of salvage C irculation Trail and the old Muir Trail over Junc- limiting hunting to sustainable levels, (“Trail Blazing,” HCN, 6/26/17). There is Pam Peters, Doris Teel, tion Pass no longer appear on park maps. Tammy York many people do feel distress about har- already a multibillion dollar tourist econ- So I’d argue that this article is actu- GrantWriter Janet Reasoner vesting certain species. And the restric- omy in the state. There are glacier tours, ally identifying a somewhat different tions of hunting rights to Native groups whale-watching tours, dog-sledding [email protected] trend: the growth of charismatic and and subsistence lifestyles opens a range tours, bear-watching tours and hiking [email protected] amenity-oriented trails at the expense of of uncertainty: Just who is a Native, and tours, in addition to fishing and hunt- [email protected] less desirable trails. Wilderness rangers what is subsistence living? On the other ing tours. Alaska actually has too many [email protected] along the Muir Trail all mention how [email protected] hand, people with cultural traditions tours. We are selling off our wilderness heavy the use is on that trail and how certainly have a claim to maintain their as a commodity. Some trails are almost FOUNDER Tom Bell empty things are on what were once way of life, especially in resisting distant unusable because guided tours block your mainstream trails. This risks a feedback Bao rd of Directors critics. Finally, many of these issues way as you hike. I hope the Tongass and John Belkin, Colo. loop, where even more secondary-trail seem significant in a world with several the Chugach national forests build more Chad Brown, Ore. mileage is dropped to focus on serving the billion people. Wind back the clock — and trails, but don’t try to pretend that tour- Beth Conover, Colo. multitudes on the Muir Trail and Pacific Jay Dean, Calif. the collective global impact — and the ism is new or that one project is going to Crest Trail. For the health of wilderness, Bob Fulkerson, Nev. ethics might seem easier. “save” Alaska. Wayne Hare, Colo. finding a way of better distributing that Laura Helmuth, Md. John Heyneman, Wyo. Robert Krantz usage would be wise. Carl Reese Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico Durango, Colorado Juneau, Alaska Samaria Jaffe, Calif. Craig Jones Nicole Lampe, Ore. Boulder, Colorado Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, D.C. Dan Stonington, Wash. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. recycled paper. Luis Torres, N.M. issues that define the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News August 7, 2017 CURRENTS

mental analyses and get public comment. Drilling threatens Dinosaur Proposed rollbacks will likely prompt lawsuits from states and environmental National Monument groups, creating delays and uncertainty for all involved. Old public-lands battles are rekindled Nonetheless, the oil industry is opti- mistic. “Without the political will to move Owens Lake in Inyo as Interior prioritizes oil and gas forward during the Obama administration, County, California. we saw activity slow or even grind to a halt NASA By Elizabeth Shogren in some areas,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, a trade group. “Just the wherewithal to or several years, Dinosaur National on industry and Trump. “I would predict a clear some bureaucratic hurdles and not F Monument enjoyed a respite from the great increase in litigation, as an attempt throw up new obstacles should help en- oil and gas leasing that previously threat- to slow it all down. That’s what (President courage energy development.” THE LATEST ened this natural wonder straddling the George W.) Bush found out,” said John Meanwhile, Zinke is trying to speed Utah-Colorado border. People visit not Freemuth, a professor of public policy at up the work of BLM field offices. In early Backstory just to behold its extraordinary fossils but Boise State University. July, Zinke ordered them to hold quarter- In the early 1900s, also to take in the deep canyons carved by ly lease sales and reduce response times the burgeoning city the Yampa and Green rivers, high desert s a first order of business, Trump’s to 30 days for drilling permit applications. of Los Angeles plateaus and distant mountain peaks. Interior Department launched an as- “Oil and gas production on federal lands sent agents posing A as ranchers and The Obama administration declined to sault on Obama-era regulations designed is an important source of revenue and job farmers to purchase lease parcels near the monument until it to heighten environmental protections growth in rural America, but it is hard to property and water could consider competing priorities in a and drilling safety. Targets include the envision increased investment on federal rights in California’s public process. BLM’s methane and hydraulic fracturing lands when a federal permit can take the Inyo County. Water Now, under President Donald Trump, rules, protections for drilling inside na- better part of a year,” Zinke said. In 2016, from the Owens Valley the Bureau of Land Management has tional parks and national wildlife refuges, processing an application took an average was diverted to the proposed offering one lease abutting and an Environmental Protection Agency of 257 days, according to Interior, in part city via an aqueduct, the monument and several more within methane rule. because complex modern projects require drying up agricultural view of its visitors’ center. Monument The Trump administration has al- more sophisticated analysis. land and draining Owens Lake. Since Superintendent Mark Foust has asked ready asked the GOP-controlled Con- But Democrats and environmentalists then, LA’s Department the BLM to remove two of these parcels gress to open the Arctic National Wildlife counter that industry has plenty of federal of Water and Power from a lease sale scheduled for Decem- Refuge to drilling. It also plans more off- land to drill. During this time of low oil has spent more than ber, fearing that drilling will damage the shore leasing in the Arctic and Atlantic and gas prices, companies have yet to drill $1ibillion to mitigate pristine air quality, dark night skies and Oceans and may reject a rule designed to on nearly 8,000 leases where they already the carcinogenic nearly limitless views. “These vistas are prevent disasters like the 2010 BP spill in have permits, according to the BLM. dust that blows off fundamental to the visitor experience at the Gulf of Mexico. Still, Zinke has asked for $16 million the dry lakebed the Monument,” Foust wrote in a May But rolling back such rules takes extra from Congress to accelerate leasing (“Keeping the dust letter. Utah’s Gov. Gary Herbert, a Re- months or years, because the administra- and permitting. Katharine MacGregor, down in California’s Owens Valley,” HCN, publican, echoed these sentiments in a tion is legally required to conduct environ- Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for 3/2/15). July letter, expressing concerns about the BLM leasing the three parcels closest to the monument. Followup Dinosaur National Monument’s new Inyo County has drilling threat provides a preview of how begun eminent the Trump administration’s approach domain proceedings to reclaim lands to fossil fuel development on public land lost to LA, after the and in federal waters may impact beloved city turned down and fragile Western places. In executive its offer to buy orders in March and April, Trump called them. A hearing for expanding and expediting drilling in set for August is federal lands and waters, and Interior the first step in Secretary Ryan Zinke fleshed out the pro- acquiring about drilling strategies in secretarial orders in 200 acres of land March and July. and water rights This determination to ramp up drill- along Highway 395. LA officials appear ing likely will revive old conflicts, spark- wary, telling the LA ing more protests and lawsuits. Already Times that the use of the Trump team is backtracking from eminent domain could Obama administration efforts to head off be a “slippery slope.” litigation by getting earlier public input Anna V. Smith on which areas are appropriate for drilling and which others are better left for recreation, wildlife, grazing or other uses. If these struggles end up in court, they could snarl energy projects for years, backfiring

Correspondent Elizabeth Shogren writes HCN’s Storm clouds build up over Dinosaur National Monument. The Bureau of Land Management DC Dispatches from Washington.  @ShogrenE has proposed an oil and gas lease bordering the monument. Mark Byzewski/Flickr

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 land and minerals management, told a controversy. In recent years, the BLM had yet sparked major litigation by opening House committee in June that the BLM is automatically deferred parcels in Utah important areas to drilling, and there are relocating staff, filling vacancies in offices known to have a high density of prehis- places even Trump won’t drill. The BLM with serious backlogs. toric dwellings or other archaeological re- backed off offering leases near Rocky As it prioritizes drilling, the mains, according to Lisa Bryant, a BLM Mountain National Park in April and new administration has put on the spokeswoman in Utah. Zion National Park in June, after protests “In 20 years, backburner a time-consuming process In 2015, the BLM yanked 36 of 54 from Herbert and local communities and initiated by its predecessor. Master leas- parcels from a sale because of public out- businesses. (an oil) well will ing plans were designed to reduce con- cry about the archaeological resources at As for Dinosaur National Monument, be dry, but if a flicts by doing early assessments of what risk. One was Alkali Ridge in southeast- the BLM says it isn’t ignoring the Park places might be appropriate for leases in ern Utah, a national historic landmark Service’s concerns. The agency has asked 1,000-year-old landscapes that are important for rec- since 1985 that contains complex struc- for additional requirements on leases, site is destroyed, reation, wildlife, or cultural or scenic tures used by ancient Puebloan people such as hiding oil and gas equipment with values. If a master plan was pending more than 1,000 years ago. In 1991, the rugged topography or camouflaging paint, it is destroyed for a certain area, the BLM temporar- BLM designated it an area of critical en- and turning off lights and equipment at forever.” ily deferred most leases. In Utah alone, vironmental concern, “significant in the night. “BLM is working closely with (the —Kevin Jones, that kept millions of acres off the auction history and archaeology of the south- Park Service) to determine if appropriate Utah’s former block for several years — including near western U.S.” Now the agency is consid- resource protection measures exist or can state archaeologist Dinosaur National Monument. Now the ering offering leases there and in other be developed to address their concerns be- new administration has stopped auto- rich archaeological areas of southeastern fore making any final leasing decisions,” matically excluding those parcels. “We Utah. Bryant said. are aligning our available resources to The BLM will consult with local tribes Conservation groups warn that leas- support the administration’s America and other experts to see if it can both ing special landscapes like those near First Energy Plan,” said Kent Hoffman, protect cultural resources and allow de- Dinosaur will just stall energy develop- BLM-Utah deputy state director for velopment, Bryant says. But archaeolo- ment. That happened before: “People went lands and minerals. gists are skeptical. “In 20 years, (an oil) to court and protested and dragged stuff The Trump team also ditched an- well will be dry, but if a 1,000-year-old out and created a big stink,” said Nicho- other new BLM process called Planning site is destroyed, it is destroyed forever,’’ las Lund of the National Parks Conserva- 2.0 that was created to get more upfront said Kevin Jones, Utah’s former state tion Association. “It’s exactly what master public input. And it’s scuttling another archaeologist. leasing plans and cooperative processes informal practice that helped minimize So far, the new administration has not were designed to avoid.”

Snapshot Boise County, Idaho WA Population 6,824 MT Get in line Total eclipse starts 11:28 AM The Sawtooth Lodge began planning two years ago. Now, all its Soon, hordes of travelers cabins and campsites are booked. Owner Garland Dennett says they’re going to water down the gravel roads to keep dust down, will flock to the West and discourage driving before 10 a.m. to preserve visibility. for the solar eclipse They’ll also be stockpiling food for the lodge’s restaurant, since OR they’re an hour from the closest town “on the edge of the Sawtooth Wilderness at the dead end of a 6-mile road.” he four Western states within the path of T Aug. 21’s total solar eclipse are getting ready WY as if they’re expecting a natural disaster. Towns have set up task forces and hotlines and are rerouting police to the path of totality to prepare for the crush of visitors. Services are likely to be overwhelmed, so locals plan to stock up on food, Mount Vernon, Oregon ID water and gas. Population 506 With an estimated 1 million people coming to Oregon alone, the state’s Department of Total eclipse starts 10:22CA AM NV Transportation is warning of a “cosmic traffic Dan Curry, owner of the Blue Mountain Lodge Motel, jam.” Oregon’s 1,300 campsites near the path hasn’t had a vacancy since he first started taking UT CO reservations for the eclipse last August. Mount Vernon has Casper, Wyoming of totality were reserved within an hour of Population 55,316 becoming available online in November. The just one restaurant, the Silver Spur Café, and no grocery state added an additional 1,000 “eclipse” stores. But since the eclipse will last just a few minutes, Total eclipse starts 11:42 AM he expects visitors (most from California) to leave soon campsites in April. Some hotels have cancelled Jason Laird, proprietor of the Sterling Hotel after. “We’re just a small town with a few hundred people, old reservations and tripled their rates, — which was struck by lightning last year — mostly made up of ranchers,” Curry says. “We’re not started taking reservations in February 2016. A provoking lawsuits from angry patrons. In equipped for a lot of people to show up here.” Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park is multi-generational Wyoming resident, he sees the eclipse as a boon for the state’s struggling anticipating its “busiest day ever,” according oil- and gas-based economy. Laird says he’s heard to its website, as backpackers descend on of neighborsAZ renting out their yards for $500NM a the park’s first-come-first-serve campsites and night. “It’s the biggest deal that’s ever happened permits. Idaho is expecting up to several to this town since the Wild West days.” hundred thousand visitors, with totality passing primarily over its five national forests. Anna V. Smith

6 High Country News August 7, 2017 Rights and releases Idaho water case highlights difficulty of dam management under climate change

By Emily Benson

n a sunny day in late April, the U.S. O Army Corps of Engineers released hundreds of millions of gallons of water from Idaho’s Lucky Peak Dam, a dozen miles upstream of Boise. The dam operators call it a “rooster tail” display; thousands of observers took in the spectacle. The water, roaring out of a dam gate, arced high above the Boise River, rain- bows shimmering in its spray. Rooster tails are one way the Corps releases excess water to reduce the risk of flooding — a partially empty reservoir can capture spring runoff before it can race downstream and inundate Boise. he Department of Water Resources theoretical, says Mathew Weaver, Idaho Water being released Releases are necessary about seven years T contends that water counts toward Department of Water Resources deputy from Lucky Peak out of every 10, including this year, when storage rights upon entering the reservoir. director. With no rights attached to the Dam creates a basin flows were among the highest re- That means flood-control releases could refill, future demands could take water rooster tail flowing corded. Lucky Peak and two associated include already-allotted water. But irriga- that current users have come to rely upon. into the Boise River. David R. Frazier reservoirs also store water for irrigation. tors say those releases arrive too early in Extremely wet years could, paradoxically, Photolibrary, Inc. / In snow-heavy years, that means dam op- the season to be useful, sometimes while leave fields and lawns parched if big flood- Alamy Stock erators must strike a balance between let- snow still covers their fields. They claim control releases happen and the refill wa- ting enough water go early in the spring they are entitled to the water that subse- ter has been claimed for other uses. A sim- and retaining sufficient water for the hot, quently refills the reservoir, which is dis- ilar case occurred in Idaho’s Upper Snake dry days to come. tributed later in the summer when they River Basin, where large diversions for Getting releases right is crucial for the need it most. groundwater recharge spurred a 2015 set- farmers who depend on the Boise River to While the department does dole out tlement in which irrigators gained legal irrigate crops like sugar beets and seed refill water, it considers it to be excess rights to refill water. Those rights, howev- corn. The river also waters lawns and and unappropriated water that doesn’t er, date to 2014, meaning they have lower parks, and supplies about 30 percent of fulfill any reservoir storage rights. In priority than older water rights. Boise’s drinking water. As in other West- September 2016, District Court Judge Adding to the complexity of the situ- ern states, water users with older rights Eric Wildman ruled partially in favor of ation, refilling reservoirs may be getting get first dibs. But since 2013, several ir- the department, writing that water enter- more difficult, thanks in part to shifting rigation companies and the Idaho De- ing the reservoir satisfies users’ rights. precipitation patterns caused by climate partment of Water Resources have been However, he also pronounced the depart- change. Greater extremes — wetter wet fighting over administrative details that ment’s practice of allocating refill unlaw- years and drier dry years — and earlier determine which water Lucky Peak ir- ful, leaving the refill water distribution spring thaws could make it harder to man- rigators are entitled to use during a wet in limbo. The Supreme Court is expected age dams, says Doug Kenney, the director year: flood-control releases, or the “refill” to make a decision by year’s end. “For of the Western Water Policy Program at water that collects after releases are done. anybody to say that (releases) should be the University of Colorado. “All these op- The case is now before the Idaho Supreme counted against our storage rights, as wa- erating guidelines that you built up based Court. Its outcome will determine how the ter that we’re actually using — it’s ridicu- on data from the last century just don’t water in the Boise River system is doled lous,” says Roger Batt, executive director work very well anymore,” he says. out — no small consequence for the people of the Treasure Valley Water Users As- Whether next year is wet enough to and fish that depend on it. The fight itself, sociation, the irrigation companies’ lobby- warrant a rooster tail display at Lucky however, highlights a larger challenge ing group. Peak depends on nature; exactly how water managers across the West are con- Regardless of its legality, the depart- flood-control releases will be accounted fronting: How do you operate dams effec- ment’s method has largely kept water for, however, is up to the Idaho Supreme tively as climate change alters the histori- flowing to the irrigators. Since its imple- Court. Whatever the decision, climate cal patterns used to predict runoff timing mentation in 1986, there’s only been a change will continue to impact water and volume? single year in which there were flood- in the West. “We really need to use our control releases but users didn’t get their reservoirs more skillfully than we have Emily Benson is an HCN editorial fellow. full amount. in the past,” Kenney says. “And it’s a  @erbenson1 But the problem isn’t purely challenge.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 THE LATEST Backstory In 1966, the state of New Mexico filed a lawsuit to untangle water rights in the Pojoaque River Basin north of Santa Fe. Four tribal communities and hundreds of Hispanic and Anglo landowners were caught in a confusing web of Native, state and federal rules. The Aamodt case — named for the first of the more than 1,000 defendants — churned through the courts for decades (“Pueblo water battle nears its end,” HCN, 10/30/06). Followup In mid-July, a federal judge finally brought the 51-year adjudication to an end. The settlement A male Cassia crossbill is extracted from a net. The birds’ red, orange and yellow hues come from carotenoids in their diet, agreement gives but no one knows the exact source. Nick Neely high-priority water rights to the Nambe, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso and the seed, which it husks using a special Tesuque pueblos. groove on its upper palate. Crossbills per- It also calls for a form this sequence a thousand or more $260 million regional Cross-country times a day. system that will send But the red crossbill, one of North Rio Grande water The discovery, and probable disappearance, America’s two long-recognized crossbill to the pueblos and species, is unusual in another way: Un- non-Indian users. of North America’s newest bird species like most birds, it comes in a range of Opponents who sizes, from relatively delicate to bulky. As dispute tribal rights By Nick Neely may still appeal, but it turns out, each average size has its own Arianne Singer, one kip call note. Ten red crossbill “call types” have been identified, and each type seems of the state’s lawyers, t 6:30 one July morning, Craig through the lodgepole pine forest with to mate and flock within itself. Benkman told the Albuquerque Benkman, a University of Wyoming a fleece pullover in his hand. Slowly, he Journal, “We worked A made his name, in part, when he helped il- ecologist, began to stalk red crossbills in raised his arm — and then the coat took together with all luminate this complexity with a now-clas- the South Hills of Idaho. He and a few stu- flight, a polyester goshawk, flushing three the other major sic Darwinian experiment: In aviaries, he dents had strung a diaphanous mist-net crossbills like flares into the net. He and players and other measured red crossbill types’ feeding rates between two poles. Several of these san- his students rushed forward and began to governments to solve on the Northwest’s “key conifers.” Each a problem.” guine birds — a large finch with a beak untangle them. But the birds hanging in type in the region just about matched the Jodi Peterson that looks curiously off-kilter, one man- the net were in limbo in more ways than perfect bill depth for exploiting one coni- dible overlapping the other — were rest- one: Benkman and his colleagues believed fer. Large bills are ideal for ample, bony ing in the grass by a salt lick. Crossbills that they should be named a new species, cones like ponderosa pine; lesser bills for feed exclusively on conifer seeds, and so the first bird discovered in the continen- tiny, soft cones like hemlock. As Benk- must supplement their diet with sodium. tal United States since the Gunnison sage man later put it, “Their bills are as finely “It’s like how, in the Sierra, marmots grouse in 2000, and only the second since adapted to a cone as a key is to a lock.” chew on your sweaty boots,” Benkman ex- 1939. They had also discovered that it is This revelation has encouraged ornitholo- plained. For more than 30 years, he has likely to disappear. gists to speculate that the call types might followed crossbills across North America, be “cryptic” species hidden in our midst, and for the past 20 summers, he has vis- ross your index finger over the knuck- each filling a different coniferous niche. ited this remote mountain range at the le of your thumb, and you shape this C It’s long been one of ornithology’s most Great Basin’s edge to study this unique bird’s signature cleft, which it jams be- tantalizing mysteries. population. tween two scaly bracts. As it bites down, Crossbills are notoriously hard to Benkman crept hunched in an arc the curved tips press in opposite direc- study, because their only loyalty is to Pojoaque Valley. tions, prying a cone’s scales apart. Next Pojoaque Valley hearty cone crops. Thus they don’t migrate School District Nick Neely is the author of a new book of natural it flexes its lower mandible (your thumb) north to south like the typical songbird, history essays, Coast Range: A Collection from the sideways, using a hyper-developed mus- Pacific Edge, and a former HCN intern. cle. Its long tongue slips in to extract Please see Crossbills, page 24 8 High Country News August 7, 2017 THE HCN COMMUNITY

RESEARCH FUND Thank you, Research Fund donors, for helping us celebrate public lands

Since 1971, reader contributions to the Re- Matt Brennan | San Francisco, CA search Fund have made it possible for HCN Donna Carlson | New York, NY to investigate and report on important issues that are unique to the American West. Your John Carron | Boulder, CO tax-deductible gift directly funds thought- Carol Cooke | Reno, NV provoking, independent journalism. Jeffrey S. Dean, Tree-Ring Lab - West Stadium | Tucson, AZ Thank you for supporting our hardworking journalists. Spencer Denison & Kara Horner | Edwards, CO Jonathan Gibson & Eliza Mabry | Shrewsbury, VT Don & Roberta Hall | Corvallis, OR Joan & Bruce Hamilton | Berkeley, CA Independent media guardian Laura Holder-Mills, Holder Family Foundation | Anonymous (2) Elk, CA The BF Foundation Mike Hrachovec | Seattle, WA David Bonderman | Woody Creek, CO Gayle & Fritz Jandrey | Tucson, AZ Ray & Linda Kogovsek | Pueblo, CO Steward Robert & Kay Moline | St. Peter, MN Anonymous (2) Ti Piper | Sandia Park, NM In honor of Kevin Jackson | Winters, CA Susan Raymond | Boulder, CO The B Bar Ranch | Emigrant, MT Peter & Linda Rhines | Seattle, WA Paul & Annie Hudnut | Loveland, CO Bill Roach & Julie Bryant | Summer Lake, OR The Kirsch-Reynolds Family Fund, The Denver Susan D. Woolf | Seattle, WA Jeremiah Hutchens Foundation Felix Magowan | Boulder, CO Sponsor Letter To Congress: a WILD sanity Walter & Sally Miller | Salem, OR Becky Beasley, in honor of Standing Rock Directed by Deborah Colley Elizabeth & Philip Nicholson | Boulder, CO protestors Performance Aug. 25 and 26 at 7 p.m. George Sells, Omnibus Gallery | Aspen, CO John Blaustein | Berkeley, CA at Sustainable Settings, Carbondale, Colorado Tickets can be reserved at www.danceinitiative.org. Donald Sias | Albuquerque, NM Kathleen Brennan | Denver, CO Louise & Dave Stonington | Seattle, WA Melvin & Doris Carpenter | Reno, NV Inspired by Wallace Stegner’s 1960 Wilderness Letter, a group of artists in Kenneth & Kathy Cook | Casa Grande, AZ Carbondale, Colorado, will celebrate public lands in music and dance in a unique GUArantor Ken Cramer & Carol Bilbrough | Laramie, WY outdoor film and performance this summer. Stegner concluded his letter by arguing Anonymous (2) Michael Dederer | Seattle, WA that wild country can reassure us of “our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography In memory of my brother, Philip Prindle | Curt Fransen | Garden City, ID of hope.” Letter To Congress: a WILD sanity is an attempt to advocate for that hope. Albuquerque, NM Claire Goodis-Baker | Denver, CO According to the artists, “This letter will be danced, spoken and sung into some of Colorado Gives, Community First Foundation | the most inspiring public lands found in the Rocky Mountains.” It’s a way of bringing the Emily Greenwald | Missoula, MT Arvada, CO experience of those lands to lawmakers who may not have time to visit them. In addition Sandy & Dave Doubleday | Fountain Hills, AZ Waldo Griffin | Los Altos, CA to the film, the dancers and musicians are adapting the work into a live performance in Gary Eastman & Katherine Reid | Harper Hall & Seth Cothrun | Tucson, AZ Carbondale. Rebecca Worby Fort Collins, CO Linda Killion Healow | Billings, MT Kongsgaard-Goldman Fund at Seattle Patricia M. Lennberg | Salt Lake City, UT Foundation | Seattle, WA Bonnie Mercer-Cohn | Hermosa Beach, CA Mr. & Mrs. Edwin D. Leonard | Poughquag, NY Rex & Sally Miller | Fountain, CO In memory of Anne Stonington | Denver, CO Michael & Sandra Flood | Angel Fire, NM Kevin & Katie Reily | Chapel Hill, NC David C. Moir & Ruth J. Tatter | John Akers | Longview, WA Sara Flynn | San Francisco, CA Lester Rowntree | Berkeley, CA Los Alamos, NM Charles Ash | Hagerman, ID Charles Max Fry & Jo Anne Fry | Parker, CO Randy Slaughter, Fresh Pond Trust | Sheafe Satterthwaite, McNish Brick House | Robert E. Benson | Missoula, MT Peter Gorman | Sitka, AK Cambridge, MA Salem, NY Nancy J. Bishop | The Dalles, OR Susan Green | Laramie, WY Philip S. & Mary Stern | Allenspark, CO P.B. Schechter | Denver, CO Harvey Boatright | Buena Vista, CO Karen & Tom Guter | Fort Collins, CO Stephen C. Sykes | Port Townsend, WA Marge & Dan Schlitt | Lincoln, NE Tina Castanares | Hood River, OR Erik Hagstrom | Woodinville, WA James Theiler & Bette Korber | Santa Fe, NM Marc A. Sylvester | Sonoma, CA Robbin & Dan Clark | Delphos, OH Joan Hansen | Seattle, WA Peter & MarySue Waseer | Portal, AZ Hal & Rosanne Cochrane | Ketchum, ID Steve Hely | Los Angeles, CA Benefactor Zack Winestine | New York, NY C. Lewis Cocke | Manhattan, KS Andrew Henrichs | Carbondale, CO In honor of U.S. Sen. John McCain | Diane Coker | Broomfield, OC Sharon Heywood | Redding, CA Phoenix, AZ Patron Ramona Colwell | Carlsbad, CA Ernest Hyde | Pocatello, ID In memory of Chapman S. & Susan S. Root Anonymous (7) Glen & Carol Cushman | Boulder, CO Charlie Jancic | Escondido, CA A Mexican reader | Baja California, Mexico In memory of Tom Bell Bernard Dare | Dayton, NV Robert Jaworski | San Jose, CA Dan Bean | Grand Junction, CO In memory of Charles Bruce Clark | Los Altos, CA Michael DeMarco | Bloomsburg, PA Brian & Betsey Kanes | Olympia, WA Barbra & Scott Berry | Salt Lake City, UT In memory of Booth Gallett | Santa Fe, NM David & Penny Eckert | Orleans, CA Dick & Marianne Kipper | Woody Creek, CO Lucy Blake | Palo Alto, CA In memory of Aldo Leopold Tersh Boasberg | Washington, DC Elizabeth Erickson | Butte, MT In memory of Charlene Sefcik | Georgetown, TX Continued on next page Charles & Marjorie Bolles | Boise, ID James Faris | Santa Fe, NM

www.hcn.org High Country News 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY

10 High Country News August 7, 2017 DEAR FRIENDS

Heat, summer visitors and goodbyes It’s been a hot July at High at National Elk Refuge near Country News headquarters Jackson. here in Paonia, Colorado. Post- Logan Strenchock of Buda- work dips in the North Fork pest, Hungary, and Tom Figel of the Gunnison and weekend of Denver visited on a sunny trips to cooler, higher ground Friday. Tom, who works for have kept us sane — as have a solar nonprofit, was giving visits from our friends. Logan a whirlwind tour of Liz Cohen and Randy Sclar Colorado before Logan headed came from Evergreen, Colo- to the University of California, rado, on a road trip. Liz writes Irvine, to spend the summer as grants for Colorado Parks and a sustainability fellow. Recreation, and Randy co-owns Erik Moeller from Pueblo, a primary care clinic. They’re Colorado, stopped in while he ns e

h first-time HCN readers, so we and his wife were roaming the c sent them home with a stack of western side of the state. They Hut

h recent issues to dive into. crossed Independence Pass for a

mi Subscribers Lauren and Mike the first time and were headed e r Amundson (and Tessa, their toward Crested Butte. Erik’s Je adorable dog) stopped by while been reading HCN since 1984, taking the scenic route home and he even wrote a few stories Hugh Nichols | Lewiston, ID T.H. Steele | Ogden, UT to Flagstaff, Arizona. Lauren is for us in the early 1990s. Once Dennis Niebuhr | Ashland, OR Sari H. Stein | Grants, NM an archivist at Lowell Observa- a reporter for the Durango Phil Notz | Fort Collins, CO Sherman Stephens & Martha Taylor | Flagstaff, AZ tory, and Mike uses HCN in his Herald, he became an attorney. David J. Nowak | Broomfield, OC Karen Aspevig Stevenson | Miles City, MT history classroom at Northern Now he’s closed his practice Kathryn Oliver-Garnett | Portland, OR Sara Stewart | Albuquerque, NM Arizona University. Thanks for in Pueblo and hopes to write Margery & Mac Palmer | Missoula, MT Robert Stoffregen | Moraga, CA letting us pepper you with ques- again. We look forward to seeing Edroy Parker | Twisp, WA Corinne Stover | Costa Mesa, CA tions, Mike! We love hearing his work! Reno & Barbara Parker | Butte, MT Bruce Strasinger | Rifle, OC about students working with Our annual photo contest is Jared Pearce | Seattle, WA Jim Stubblefield | Hamilton, MT our stories. now underway, with the theme Rachael Pendell | Sitka, AK Paula Swedeen | Olympia, WA Gail Peters from Clarkdale, “Show us your backyard!” Send Lou Perez | Peralta, NM Andrew Taylor | Chubbuck, ID Arizona, came through on us images of the people, crea- Sarah Perkins & Pamela Kaye | Marina, CA Rae Marie Taylor | Quebec, Canada day three of a two-and-a-half- tures and landscapes outside John Peterson | Portland, OR Robert & Diane Thompson | Enumclaw, WA month wander. Gail founded your back door, wherever you Kirk Peterson | Oakland, CA Paul Thomson | Vancouver, WA Friends of Arizona Rivers back live. See www.hcn.org/photos17 Susan B. Peterson | Salt Lake City, UT Doug B. Toole | Henefer, UT in the 1980s and appreciated for details. our circulation crew’s friendly Lastly, we’ve said a couple Susanna Phillips | Missoula, MT Marc Trimmer | Denver, CO reminder to renew her subscrip- of bittersweet goodbyes. Our Dave Pines | Nederland, CO Ella May Trussell | Santa Rosa, CA tion. (Hint, hint!) finance manager, Beckie Avera, William & Nancy Powell | Eagle, CO Pat Tucker & Bruce Weide | Hamilton, MT Don Cushman dropped by found a job closer to her home Dan Quinn | Portola Valley, CA Cynthia Tuell | Upland, CA on his way to a music camp in in Grand Junction, and we wish Paul Rana | Bigfork, MT James Turner | Portland, OR Breckenridge, Colorado, from her the best of luck. Circulation Debbie Rathbun | Kalispell, MT Susanne Twight Alexander | Eugene, OR Jackson, Wyoming. An avid assistant Kati Johnson, whom Jan Reelitz | Cedarville, MI Amy S. Unthank | Canyon City, OR musician who plays baritone many of you know from her Luke & Nina Rice | Bozeman, MT Julie Vargo | Bishop, CA sax, trombone and trumpet, friendly voice on the phone, has Joanne Richter | Bend, OR Bill L. Voigt | Laramie, WY Don started a community band moved to Nebraska to be near Richard Ridgway | Cody, WY Wendy Ward | Marine on St. Croix, MN in Jackson 28 years ago. He’s family. Kati was with HCN Mike Riley | Bend, OR Meg Weesner | Tucson, AZ now retired, but his day jobs for half a decade, and she’ll be Bill Roach & Julie Bryant | Summer Lake, OR Kevin Weitemier | Corvallis, OR included work as a naturalist greatly missed. Andy Robinson & Jan Waterman | Plainfield, VT Bob Wemple | Jackson, WY at Grand Teton National Park —Rebecca Worby, Peter Romanelli | Truro, MA Ann & Decker Westerberg | Littleton, CO and outdoor recreation planner for the staff Eric Schott | Baltimore, MD James L. Wilkinson | Boulder, CO Cynthia Scott | Boulder, CO Althea Williams | Green River, WY Dillon S. | Irvine, CA Julien Williamson | Yakima, WA Kirsten Severud | Boise, ID Don & Judy Willott | Bainbridge Island, WA Elisha Shephard | Bremen, GA Penelope P. Wilson | Malvern, PA George Sibley | Gunnison, CO Sharon L. Wilson | Aurora, CO Kirk Smith | Arvada, CO Mark Winne | Santa Fe, NM Michael Smith | Eugene, OR Ron Wolf | Palo Alto, CA Edward Sones | Cedar Park, TX Richard Worm | Bellevue, IA Greg & Gail Speer | Fort Collins, CO Tony Wright | Manistique, MI John A. Sproul | El Paso, TX Nancy Wrona | Phoenix, AZ Robert & Darlea Stack | Salt Lake City, UT Thomas C. Wylie | Centennial, CO Bobbie Stadler | Manokin, MD George Zaboji | Golden, CO Paul Staub | Portland, OR Kenilynn Zanetti | Rock Springs, WY Liz and Randy Cohen, left, and Erik Moeller, right, were just some of our Joel Steed | Ukiah, CA Linda C. Zeigenfuss | Carson, WA visitors this month. Brooke Warren; Gretchen King

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 FEATURE | By Name

Cover HeadlineLos Promotores Two Deks Subhead goes here, two deks flush left different length than big head

Activist Eduardo Guevara takes a picture inside Lawson Dump as smoke rises from a fire smoldering belowground. Although it was ordered closed in 2006, underground fires continued to burn for years afterward, and residents of nearby mobile home parks continued to complain about noxious odors and possible contamination. (2010)

12 High Country News Date,August 2014 7, 2017 FEATURE By Ruxandra Guidi | Photographs by Roberto Guerra Los Promotores

Amid California’s toxic dumps, local activists go it alone

ne warm spring day a year ago, Grisel- how she had to drive for 30 minutes to get to da Barrera, a Mexican-born mother of the nearest hospital; and to Rita Galindo, who O three, went to a middle school auditori- told the room: “The agricultural companies out um in Thermal, California, an unincorporated here act like they own the place. They don’t community in the desert east of Los Angeles, tell us anything about the impact of their Pullout goes to square off against a panel of regulators. pesticides.” here quay Barrera, who is just 5 feet tall, wore a black After the two-hour meeting ended, Barrera pencil skirt and platform pumps, the kind of was visibly frustrated by the lack of concrete sans me- shoes she favors now that she no longer works action. She strode across the room, shak- dium 14/18 in the fields. She was flanked by mothers like ing hands and making plans with the other herself, there to give public comment to the women, all Mexican former farmworkers in aligned to- South Coast Air Quality Management District. their 30s and 40s. “I’m tired of the agencies ward spine At issue was persistent air pollution. Since that come here asking us to bring people from 2010, the agency had responded to over 215 the community as an audience for their pre- —Tag complaints about unpleasant odors in the sentations,” Barrera told me as she made her nearby community of Mecca — smells that way out of the auditorium. “We have no idea at times were so sickening that teachers and what they do with the information we give students called paramedics. Barrera waited them. Nothing changes.” patiently, microphone in hand, as regulators In 1994, Barrera came to the U.S. from laid out their plans to help the school dis- Mexico with her family and moved into one tricts replace their old diesel school buses and of the most derelict mobile home parks in the install air filtration systems in the classrooms. Eastern Coachella Valley, a collection of unin- When her turn came, she addressed the panel corporated towns amid desert and agricultural confidently in Spanish through an interpreter. fields. Like most migrants, Barrera got her “There are so many needs in this communi- first job picking grapes. Then she graduated to ty, it’s hard to know where to even begin,” she harvesting chiles and doing temporary sea- said. “Kids out here have to play on the street sonal farm work up and down the state. because there aren’t enough playgrounds. We Even as she worked long days in the field, have working-class families paying as much as Barrera hoped to one day become a promotora $650 a month for water, gas and garbage pick- in the Mexican tradition: A self-taught com- up because we have no municipal services.” munity advocate who goes door-to-door to dish Instead of investing in cleaner school buses, out basic health and environmental education said Barrera, the county and state regulators — and a good dose of activist know-how — to should be doing more for local communities her neighbors. right where they live, too. Eastern Coachella Valley migrants like Riverside County Supervisor John J. Benoit Barrera power a highly profitable agricultural replied that he was invested in cleaning up region, but they live at the center of environ- air pollution for the entire Eastern Coachella mental ruin. Workers deal with an unrelenting Valley, as well as protecting the local economy list of health threats, from substandard hous- and jobs. “It is not always the county’s fault,” ing to pesticide pollution, hazardous waste he said, expecting the kind of criticism he had and water contamination. Promotoras have gotten at public hearings before. become increasingly involved in dealing with Barrera then passed her microphone to urgent local issues on this side of the border — Noemí Castellanos, who was evicted from the unending problems that endanger migrant her trailer after she complained about living communities. But in the Coachella Valley, the conditions; to Emma García, who described promotoras and their allies are starting to see her granddaughter’s first asthma attack and their efforts bear fruit.

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 The most notorious monument to located on Torres Martinez land. Like the valley’s environmental injustices many others before them, they moved is still visible: Lawson Dump, once a to California’s Eastern Coachella Valley 50-foot-high man-made mesa, the size of in search of seasonal work. They heard a five-story building, considered “the larg- about Duroville by word of mouth: Hous- est toxic dump in California.” The illegal ing there was available and cheap, $200 a dump is a 30-minute drive from Palm month, and close to the fields. Springs and a short walk from the middle Without paved roads or garbage school in Thermal. I’ve been reporting pickup, the trailer park was in a deplor- on it since 2010, when I made my first able state. And it was overcrowded — at trip out there, to meet another promo- one point, up to 4,000 people occupied tor named Eduardo Guevara. At that some 500 trailers across the 40-acre site. time, a federal judge had already ordered The residents knew little of the health the dump’s closure, alongside a pending risks the dump presented. “This is where cleanup with a huge $42.8 million price nearby farms disposed of grape stakes tag to be paid by the dump operators. covered in pesticides — where people dis- Guevara and I headed out there on carded their old cellphones and comput- a spring afternoon, under a punishing ers,” Guevara told me as we drove away desert sun. We parked a short walk away, from the dump. “We knew people burned hoping to avoid drawing attention. The trash here, but we didn’t know it was dump, which sits on the Torres Martinez that bad.” Indian Reservation, was supposed to Guevara was a church-going fam- be off-limits. “STAY OUT,” proclaimed ily man, stocky, with a wary smile. He a handwritten sign in bold red letters. worked two administrative jobs to sup- “Call 397-6318 if you smell odor.” When I port his wife and teenage boy. When the dialed, my call was forwarded to the an- sun went down, he drove to the nearby swering machine at the reservation office. College of the Desert to attend classes The stench was overwhelming, coat- toward a bachelor’s degree in business. “Maybe ing our nostrils and throats and making Once he learned about the environmen- it difficult to breathe. Feeling nauseated, tal conditions in the mobile park and researchers I could almost taste each particle in the beyond, Guevara did what most people in couldn’t link toxic mix: Wood ash, incinerated house- his situation would do. First, he reached hold trash, and otherwise-recyclable cans, out to the tribal members running the the asthma plastics and electronic waste — spread trailer park office, but there was no re- across a massive dump site that had sponse. Then he tried to join a local group directly to been building up since sometime in the demanding better conditions. (He ended the dumps, 1990s, when the tribe began to lease land up having to create his own, Promotores to waste companies eager to cut down Comunitarios del Desierto.) Finally, he but it’s a big on disposal costs. Since tribal lands are contacted a couple of county officials, who exempt from county code enforcement, told him they were “working on it.” Before coincidence the problem grew — grew, literally, long, he realized that not only had there upwards and aboveground — and went been no research on the possible health for a comm- undetected for years. According to the En- impacts of Lawson Dump and the living unity that has vironmental Protection Agency, the site conditions at Duroville; there seemed to contained dangerous amounts of arsenic, be little interest in remediating the prob- been living PCBs, asbestos, dioxin and other toxic lems — no outrage beyond his own. materials. It sits only three miles from Over the years, local activists like next to a the middle school in Thermal; in fact, Guevara have tried to draw attention burning open- Lawson Dump and its harmful emissions to their plight. They knew they weren’t were among the myriad environmental the only low-income Latino farmworking air dump for problems that prompted the meeting community in California that suffered Barrera and other worried mothers at- disproportionately from environmental years, don’t tended last year. hazards. North of Coachella, in the San As we walked along the “ground” — fill Joaquin Valley town of Kettleman City, you think?” dirt covering the trash — smoke rose out people began noticing an unusual num- —Eduardo Guevara, of long cracks, as if from the smoldering ber of birth defects among babies born to Eastern Coachella flanks of a volcano. The dump, though, was local women. Greenaction for Health and enough evidence to blame the waste facil- Valley activist a man-made disaster, and a stubborn one. Environmental Justice, a San Francisco- ity for the birth defects; the afflictions The site was shut in 2006, and it is still based nonprofit, surveyed about 200 could have been caused by a complicated technically closed, though it has remained residents and found a high incidence of combination of factors. for years a major source of air pollution. abnormalities that they linked to emis- “We were surrounded by people with Since its closure, more than 20 fires have sions from Chemical Waste Management respiratory problems,” Guevara told me. spontaneously ignited, and nine firefight- Inc., a nearby industrial hazardous waste His wife had suffered from severe asthma ers have been injured putting them out. facility. Years would pass before quali- since their arrival at Duroville. “Maybe We stood there in the heat, gazing across fied medical experts and state agencies researchers couldn’t link the asthma the massive earthen and garbage mesa, addressed Kettleman City. Even then, directly to the dumps, but it’s a big coin- noxious smoke rising from below. Then we they couldn’t pin down the culprit: The cidence for a community that has been felt the dirt shift and start to give under evidence collected in the town of 1,500 living next to a burning open-air dump our feet, and we got out of there. people wasn’t extensive enough to sup- for years, don’t you think?” For two years, Guevara had little port epidemiological statistics, and there The investigation of disease clusters choice but to live next door to the dump. was no reliable scientific method that — such as the higher incidence of respira- When he came to the U.S. from northern enabled researchers to identify the health tory problems found throughout much of Mexico, he and his family shared a trailer impacts of a particular mix of substances. the Eastern Coachella Valley — remains in Duroville, a mobile home park also In other words, there simply wasn’t controversial in public health circles. Up

14 High Country News August 7, 2017 until now, very little basic research has from Mexico and Central America, put likely to take home 10 cents. That adds Guard dogs look been done in these communities, and down roots in the Eastern Coachella up to about $15,000 to $17,000 per year, out from within the there is no scientific evidence to link the Valley. After all, this was an area where per worker. fence that stands plant to the area’s health problems. they could find steady work. But their That’s why so many farmworkers between Duroville Consequently, remote places like Du- decision to stay and raise children here endure substandard, environmentally mobile park and roville, two hours from the nearest city, meant that they would have to take on unsafe living conditions in mobile home Lawson Dump, both now closed. (2010) and the wider unincorporated region of a uniquely long fight for environmental parks like Duroville. Or why, at the the Eastern Coachella Valley suffer great- justice. height of the harvest, four men some- ly from poor policy and general neglect. The work these men and women times share a single room for months, or, And that means people like Guevara and do powers the agricultural industry, worse still, live out of their cars. Barrera have had to learn how to advo- but the industry pays meager wages in Low wages also take a toll on the cate for their communities. In doing this, return. Philip Martin, a labor economist health of migrants. In 2010, county health they have followed and improved upon at the University of California at Davis, records indicate only one primary care a long tradition in California and other estimates about 30 percent of the money physician per every 8,400 residents in the states along the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Americans pay for produce goes to the Eastern Coachella Valley, coupled with a grower, while 10 percent goes to the 30 percent uninsured rate among patients. It was not by chance that local resi- farmworker. In other words, for every Local clinics report higher rates of diabe- dents like Guevara, who mostly came $1 you spend at the market, a worker is tes and asthma, particularly among young

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 An old billboard children. Guevara’s own family epitomizes follow in Huerta’s footsteps. After the mobile home development, a $28 million stands at the edge of this, with his sister’s kidney disease, his meeting at Toro Canyon Middle School public-private development, as a refuge the Torres Martinez wife’s asthma and his own diabetes. in Thermal, I asked her if I could speak for the hundreds of people pushed out of Indian Reservation, “Be angry about injustice!” activist with her family. Barrera feels a strong the old, crowded site. discouraging people Dolores Huerta famously said. Huerta, sense of responsibility for her community Barrera took me inside one of the new from dumping a major role model for U.S. farmworkers, and its problems. “First, please promise homes, this one belonging to her former trash there. The grew up poor in California’s San Joaquín me one thing,” she said. “Please tell me husband, Samuel. From the outside, surrounding Valley. She became an activist during you won’t write a story about how poor Southern California the mobile trailer looked like any other desert is a patchwork the civil rights era, setting up voter we are, how we can’t help ourselves.” The single-family home — a white picket of tribal, private registration drives and lobbying politi- last time she saw the Eastern Coachella fence, a small front yard, a carport over agricultural and cians to improve the economic conditions Valley featured on the TV news, it carried on the side. Samuel was out working in public lands. (2010) of farmworkers. As the founders of the the headline “The Face of Poverty,” she the lettuce fields, but his daughter-in- United Farm Workers, Huerta and César said. People were upset by the label and law, Mary Marroquín, sat on the couch Chávez organized a successful strike of vowed not to speak to journalists again. holding her newborn child, Sammary, and Coachella Valley grape growers in 1965, We agreed to meet at 9 a.m. in Mecca, keeping an eye on 1-year-old Sofia, who with Huerta negotiating the contracts. where, on May Day, it was already 105 ran around the living room, trying to get Within five years, the United Farm Work- degrees outside. I climbed in her car, and her attention. ers would sign a historic agreement with Barrera drove us past light-green lettuce “I was 15 when my dad brought our 26 area farms that reduced pesticide fields, where workers had been hunched family here from El Salvador, and I found exposure and introduced basic unemploy- over since 4 that morning, and past the Duroville so depressing,” Marroquín, who ment and health benefits for workers. Coachella Canal, which brings water looks barely older than 20, told me. “What But now, more than half a century from the Colorado River to irrigate the we have here is totally different. We don’t later, Huerta’s work has faltered. Wage desert. have to deal with raw sewage or burning theft and child labor are illegal, yet com- “I’m taking you to the new Duroville,” trash.” But rent is high: A two-bedroom mon: Nine in 10 farmworkers report not Barrera told me. We pulled into a brand- trailer rents for $800 in an area where being paid for overtime, and an estimated new housing development only six miles the average family income is just over 400,000 children under 18 work in the away from the old ramshackle mobile $25,000 a year. fields. And farming has become one of park. Mountain View Estates had brand- Marroquín had married Samuel Jr., the deadliest jobs in America: According new homes and an athletic field, green Barrera’s son, in 2015. Now, the couple to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, spaces, paved roads, a community center, and their two kids shared a room in the farmworkers die on the job twice as often and basic water and electricity infra- trailer. They pay $250 a month, and they as police officers. structure. In 2009, Duroville was ordered hope to save enough money to eventually shut down by a U.S. district judge. As a get a trailer of their own. Samuel works As a former laborer no longer afraid result of resident complaints and promo- in construction, and until she had Sam- to speak up, Griselda Barrera chose to tora activism, the county created the new mary, Marroquín worked in housekeeping

16 High Country News August 7, 2017 or harvesting chiles. drives.” The Coachella region has long de- last year we headed out to tour a few of That’s the easiest job you can get pended on outside organizations to try to the mobile parks he has been visiting out here, she said. It’s typical for young solve local problems, but Barrera would over the past few years. people to finish high school and head like to change this. “Now is as good a time Guard dogs barked incessantly from straight to the fields. “The first time I as any other for people to start owning up behind fences as we made our way into worked in a farm, I cried all night,” she to this place.” the compound, home to around 50 people. said. “By the third day, I’d gotten the A couple of trailers sat abandoned, and hang of it. People can only last so long, Real change, of course, takes time. And between them, Sinclair found a spot because the work is horrible: You’re when it comes to environmental injustice, where the previous tenants had built constantly running around and crouching it requires credible data, typically gath- a makeshift cesspool, now covered by a over in the suffocating heat. I suffered ered by government agencies or academic moldy plank of wood. The dirt around it from blurry eyes and diarrhea all the institutions. An hour away at Loma Lin- had turned into mud since the last time it time.” da University, Ryan Sinclair, an assistant overflowed, he said, as he put on surgical For young people like her, there professor at the School of Public Health, gloves to take a sample for the lab. are few options in the Coachella Valley has helped lead that effort, supporting “Typically, mobile park residents will beyond informal labor. Barrera’s 20-year- the promotoras with data collection. old son, Miguel, who sat with us in the A tall and slender man, Sinclair can trailer, was a sophomore in a nearby often be seen wearing his signature white community college. He’d recently taken lab coat. He grew up in nearby Desert a part-time job at a fast food restaurant Hot Springs, where he occasionally heard and had told his mother he was consid- about the farmworker communities a ering dropping out. Barrera, wearing few miles east of his home. His mom’s a wine-colored sleeveless shirt and her job as a foreclosure inspector took her signature high heels, listened stoically to properties where she sometimes met on the other side of the living room. “My the people who were being evicted from mom had told us not to do the same thing them. The towns of Thermal and Mecca, as she did,” Miguel said, avoiding her in particular, she told Sinclair, were “not gaze. “She told us to go to college. But a place you’d want to go.” Thinking back, here we are. We did the same thing she Sinclair said he believes this was due to did.” the fact that whites feared the largely Her children did not seem to real- misunderstood, working-class Mexican ize that Barrera had moved on from her farmworking towns a short drive away. past in more ways than just the obvious “I remember playing outside in the heat ones — going back to school and ending and having a swamp cooler and a septic her marriage. “The reason I got divorced tank,” he said. “It turns out we lived a lot was because I stopped thinking of myself like them. But we didn’t visit those com- only as a mother,” she told me later, back munities; we had no clue that’s where all in her car. “I left the house more and our food came from.” got out of the fields. I wanted to learn, Alongside promotoras, including Bar- so I talked to as many people as I could, rera, Sinclair has contributed data to an build their own cesspools, like this one, The Coachella asking them questions about what they ongoing assessment of the quality-of-life going down 8 feet into the ground,” he Canal, an offshoot were experiencing in our community.” issues affecting farmworkers — from air said. “But no one ever takes the sewage of the All-American The more Barrera uncovered about the quality to electrical infrastructure, waste out, so it is bound to overflow.” And when Canal, is a concrete- environmental and health conditions in disposal and water management. it does, it is of course a major health haz- lined irrigation the Coachella Valley — the high rates of “There’s so much going out there,” ard for the residents, their neighbors and channel bringing water for agriculture asthma, hunger and diabetes — the more he told me. “How is the local population the underground water that ends up in to the entire she realized that her family suffered supposed to prioritize? The odors, the nearby irrigation systems and beyond. Coachella Valley. from similar burdens, too. She couldn’t particulates in the air, or the arsenic in A couple of trailers down, María (2016) be complacent, she said, and she knew the water? Or should it be the organic Beltrán stood outside her trailer with a she couldn’t just stay at home with her smell from the electric generation plant? toddler propped on her hip. She invited kids. “Now I am conscious of what goes on The heat?” us in, showing us the tank next to her around me,” she said, her voice a mixture Sinclair believes there is one under- home and the system her husband rigged, of self-assurance and regret. reported issue that needs to be first with pipes coming out from an opening As a promotora, Barrera often goes on the list: sewage. The extent of the on the floor and snaking around the back door-to-door on behalf of researchers at problem is not fully known, but Sinclair of her house. one of the handful of academic institu- said every single one of the seven major “I spray it with fresh water every day tions working in the area. The research mobile home parks he has visited deals and then take the extra sewage out with work doesn’t pay much, around minimum with wastewater contamination. the pump. I can’t afford to let the cesspool wage, but it brings her into family homes “Wastewater flowing in open trenches fill up — there are five of us living here.” where she gets to discuss everything from of the Eastern Coachella Valley is equiva- The sewage that Beltrán pumps out from immigrants’ mental health to how local lent to a public health standard common under her trailer ends up on the edge of moms deliver their babies. Ultimately, the in the early 1900s,” Sinclair wrote in a a large agricultural field next door, or experience motivated Barrera to start her recent paper, referring to a time when on the dirt road in front of the complex. own community health nonprofit — the poor sanitation made typhoid and cholera “What else are we supposed to do?” she first such promotora-led and staffed effort relatively common. There have been no said. “We have no municipal services in the Eastern Coachella Valley. It would recent outbreaks in the Coachella area, here.” It would cost Rancho García $2.75 allow her to raise money directly from Sinclair told me, but that doesn’t mean million to connect the mobile homes to foundations, and she has already started the conditions for disease don’t exist. county sewage and water lines. to recruit a board of directors. Duroville had notoriously bad sewage In an ideal world, Riverside County “I’d like it to be made up entirely of problems. Just down the road in Thermal, or the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla other promotoras, like myself,” she said, at the Rancho García Mobile Home Park, Indians would maintain the water “by women who are out there already, sewage contamination was a common oc- management infrastructure on the resi- signing up their neighbors for Medicaid, currence, too. Sinclair agreed to take me dents’ homes. Since 2010, I have tried, or volunteering during get-out-the-vote on a research trip there, so in September unsuccessfully, to speak to tribal leaders

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Caption. Credit

A Mexican flag regarding these allegations — running $40 million in public funding managed ing of tires in Mecca: Avenue 64 and Dale waves in front of a unregulated housing or waste disposal to cover only half of the cost of getting Kiler, about 100-200 tires,” reads one eye- home at the Rancho businesses on their reservation. But the trailer parks up to code. In 2012, witness report. These reports, which are García Mobile Home the story is complicated: Unlike other, California’s Redevelopment Program was shared with the promotoras, are a topic Park in Thermal, wealthier Southern California tribes, the terminated, leaving the county without of discussion and action at the monthly California. In 2012, Torres Martinez have no shopping outlets the money it needed to rehabilitate farm- community meetings held at a couple of residents of the park or luxury hotels to profit from. But they worker housing across the Valley. the trailer parks. “We are trusted in our sued the owner for do have land — 24,000 acres. As the Rather than wait for the county, the communities because we are from here neglecting sewage and electrical area’s need for housing and industry has tribes or the employing farms to respond, and we are always educating ourselves problems for grown, some tribal members saw econom- Barrera, Sinclair and others have cham- on what people need and want,” Barrera years — and won. ic opportunity in managing mobile home pioned homegrown answers, such as the said, addressing the need for more tech- In the Eastern and trash disposal ventures. According Eastern Coachella Valley Environmental savvy advocates. “Promotoras want to Coachella Valley, to the EPA’s Office of Inspector General, Justice Taskforce. The task force is made change the system.” there are some there were 600 illegal dumps across Cali- up of community-based groups, including 400 unregistered fornia, Nevada and Arizona in 1994. Now Guevara’s Promotores Comunitarios del The promotoras are slowly doing just mobile home parks, there are an estimated 1,000. Desierto, alongside academic partners that. But with so many challenges to tack- mostly inhabited by “Illegal waste dumping is bigger than and government representatives, like Cal/ le and so little outside help, improvements low-income, often the tribe; we need to get this monster EPA and the state Office of Environmen- come in increments. One small success undocumented, laborers working under control,” Torres Martinez Tribal tal Health Hazard Assessment. It meets story is the San Antonio del Desierto mo- in agriculture and Chairman Raymond Torres told the EPA, on the third Wednesday of each month, bile home park on Grapefruit Boulevard construction. (2016) which in 2003 sued the tribe and or- welcoming questions or complaints in in Mecca, next door to the lettuce fields dered it to pay for the cleanup of Lawson an effort to generate a lot of the missing where most of its residents work. From Dump. Since the EPA lawsuit, the tribe data they will ultimately need to find the outside, the trailer park looks like all has made an effort to close other smaller solutions. the others: Chain-link fences demarcate dumps on its land and conducted public As a first step, the group is crowd- the edge, a few citrus trees provide much- education programs on the impacts of sourcing citizen science by training local needed shade. What isn’t immediately dumping. high school students to use smartphones noticeable is its reverse osmosis water The county of Riverside and the state to document and map their communities’ filtration system, designed to lower arse- of California finally turned their atten- environmental health risks. The reports nic levels in drinking water, or the new tion to housing conditions in 2000, recom- — on everything from illegal dump fires sewer-lift station, which can handle 4,600 mending an infusion of money to upgrade to sewage spills and odor alerts — appear gallons of wastewater per day. the unlicensed mobile home parks. But online almost in real time. “Illegal dump- It would have cost the mobile home

18 High Country News August 7, 2017 Pullout goes here quay sans medium 14/18 aligned toward spine —Tag

park $3 million to connect to a pipeline invested in their living conditions, despite implement the necessary changes. The Roberto Méndez, for sewage and another $2.5 million working numerous low-paying jobs and difference is that now some of the resi- left, is San Antonio to hook up to the main water pipeline having little time or energy to volunteer dents are becoming watchdogs.” del Desierto’s from the municipal system. Instead, the for the collective good. “We needed to Roberto Méndez, San Antonio del De- handyman. He and park’s current manager, Pueblo Unido build capacity among the members of sierto’s handyman, is one of those unsung his family moved Community Development Corporation, these communities,” he told me as we watchdogs. Wearing a sweaty T-shirt and here in 1988, back when he harvested or PUCDC, raised $300,000 from founda- drove into San Antonio del Desierto, wav- a wide-brimmed straw hat, he’d spent the grapes and paid only tions and state grants to drill its own well ing hello to residents gathered on their morning on the roof of the mobile park $85 a month for his and develop a pilot filtration system. stoops. “The government agencies don’t office, helping technicians with a solar trailer. Maria Garcia, “It makes sense to invest in projects care about people being involved or not; installation. He has also helped install above, has been to beautify — I’m all for that, and we do they’re not there to organize.” the water filtration system and taught living in the same it when we can,” says Sergio Carranza, Since taking over management of the himself — and many of his neighbors — trailer home in San PUCDC’s executive director. Carranza is trailer park in 2012, PUCDC has made how to hook up to the new sewer-lift sta- Antonio del Desierto a Salvadoran immigrant with a back- community organizing an important part tion. “I was interested in this job because since 1968. With ground in community organizing in his of life inside San Antonio del Desierto. it allowed me to become more involved in the help of Pueblo Unido Community native country. “But you also can’t forget Once a week, residents and promotoras the place I call home,” he said. He and his Development about these kinds of projects that the eye are given technical assistance on basic family moved here in 1988, back when Corporation, or can’t see.” Two decades ago, Carranza fled infrastructure: sewage treatment, water he harvested grapes and paid only $85 PUCDC, she’s the gang violence that followed El Salva- filtration, domestic water distribution a month for his trailer. In those days, applying for a dor’s civil war and landed in Indio, a city and electricity. Everyone is encouraged to the mobile home park functioned pre- government grant near Mecca. During the day, he worked speak up on environmental issues beyond cariously: Sewage overflowed constantly; to fix her leaky roof. in manufacturing, while on weekends, conditions at home, and they are asked to the lights would go out throughout the (2016) he attended Mass with other Spanish- pitch in with labor and knowhow in other day; the water was a cloudy brown color speakers in the Eastern Coachella Valley. projects, too. Working alongside Sinclair straight out of the faucet. That’s how he became something of a and his team of student researchers, Conditions were so bad that the county promotor: going door to door on behalf of PUCDC is also collecting data related threatened to shut down the park. Almost his church, trying to get people to vote or to their infrastructure improvements, 100 residents faced a fate similar to organizing for better working conditions which, in turn, has proven useful when Duroville’s back in 2009. Back then, amid in the fields. trying to engage their residents. the slum-like conditions at home and the An outsider to daily life in the trailer “We’re not organizers,” Carranza said. unaddressed reports of toxic emissions be- parks, Carranza soon realized that the “But we can help the community figure yond, Méndez thought there wasn’t much residents themselves had to become fully out what it needs so we find ways to he could do, other than complain. So he

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 did, time and time again, to no avail. But then, perhaps five or six years ago, Méndez noticed a shift. He saw how his neighbor, Guadalupe Rosales, formed a homegrown residents’ association she called “La Unión Hace la Fuerza” (Unity Is Strength), a group that would later join the Eastern Coachella Valley Environmental Justice Taskforce. At the nearby Rancho García trailer park, he heard that 34 current and former residents had sued the private park manager in 2012 over poor infrastructure and maintenance — and won. Méndez himself got more involved, evangelizing to his fellow residents about the importance of pitching in to labor for San Antonio del Desierto’s small, and often invisible, water and sewage infrastructure projects. Most recently, he has seen something people thought would never happen even though they’d fought for it for many years: paved roads, connecting a total Two decades ago, Sergio Carranza fled gang violence in El Salvador and landed in the Eastern 39 local trailer parks. In their Duroville Coachella Valley. Now he directs Pueblo Unido Community Development Corporation, and years, residents like Guevara and Barrera works to improve rural infrastructure where farmworkers live, increase their access to clean water, and organize them to take action against negligent mobile home park owners. (2016) Contributing Editor had to breathe in clouds of dust when Ruxandra Guidi writes cars drove by. On rainy days, their own from Los Angeles, vehicles got stuck in the mud, and their “You wouldn’t think that a newly paved ago. “Some people may still complain California. children played outside near overflowing road is good for health,” Méndez said, about life here because they want things  @homelandsprod cesspools. The $5 million infrastructure chuckling. “But now I see my neighbors to happen from one day to another,” he Reporting for this project finally materialized earlier this walking and exercising outside like I’d says, as he makes his way to a neighbor’s story was supported year by way of air-quality mitigation fees never seen them before.” trailer to help her fix her swamp cooler. by the HCN/PLAYA from a nearby natural gas-powered elec- As a maintenance man, Méndez is “Maybe they don’t realize how far we’ve Diverse Western Voices tricity generation plant — funds that the always fielding calls from residents, come — that we’re just at the beginning Award. residents demanded be used to that end. though not as often as he did a decade of a long process.”

20 High Country News August 7, 2017 MARKETPLACE

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www.hcn.org High Country News 23 Crossbills continued from page 8 this rolling range near Twin Falls, he dis- three to five years that are warmer than covered that crossbills were everywhere. 90 degrees Fahrenheit. To access seeds, but suddenly traverse the continent, “ir- “And they sounded a little different,” Ben- the birds need a crevice to form naturally rupting” great distances in any direction kman remembers, more “burry.” It was between a cone’s scales as its serotiny in search of better cones. There was one another sedentary red crossbill, the ninth degrades, but across the forest, it must spot in North America, however, where a call type in North America, and it had the happen gradually, so that fresh seed is resident, or sedentary, red crossbill popu- third-largest bill among them. always available. Benkman performed a lation lived: Newfoundland. Benkman Squirrels typically dictate the shape simple experiment to illustrate how heat visited in 1988, but this large-billed bird, of conifer cones by harvesting those easi- waves could disrupt this economy: He call type 8, had become scarce. Later, he est to open, with lots of seeds. Gradually, gathered South Hills cones and put them had an epiphany: Maybe squirrels were to the forest’s average cone shifts in size — in a drying oven, setting it to 104 degrees blame. They didn’t exist in Newfoundland for lodgepole, cones become smaller and Fahrenheit and slowly raising the tem- until 1963, when humans released them. denser, the harder to gnaw. But when perature. Then he measured the surface Benkman arrived in the South Hills, he temperatures on one live tree’s cones. On noticed the lodgepole cones were elephan- a 90 degree day, a cone’s plated surface tine compared to other places, and he sus- reaches 138 degrees in places. At this pected that only coevolution with cross- temperature in his glorified Easy-Bake, bills could explain it. Since the birds pry nearly all the cones popped open. open a cone’s tip, those upper scales had Overnight, the Cassia crossbill has become thicker and larger in defense. become officially one of the most endan- Another major ecological force — fire gered birds in America. “I don’t think it — also helps explain this rare sedentary will go extinct in my lifetime,” Benkman population. Nearly all of the lodgepole in said, speculating that 300 or 400 birds the South Hills is serotinous: Their cones’ could be a viable population. “But who scales are held shut by a resin that releas- knows, if there’s a catastrophic fire, or a es only in extreme heat. This strategy has combination of things.” One conservation its advantages in the blaze-prone West. measure Benkman imagines is to harvest But where squirrels exist, it’s a handicap, unopened cones from the South Hills’ hot- because the zealous rodents have more test groves. You could plant those seeds opportunity to harvest cones. In the Rock- in polar-opposite areas — shady north- ies, only a third of the lodgepole pines are facing slopes — to create islands of hardy serotinous, but in the South Hills, most lodgepole for future crossbills. More and cones remain closed for a decade, and this more, species will rely on islands within vast seedbank is the reason these cross- islands. But the harsh fact is that lodge- bills never leave. No type 9 has been con- pole is forecast to disappear from south- firmed anywhere but the South Hills and ern Idaho by 2080. the neighboring Albion Mountains — just Benkman is sad, but philosophical 27 square miles of lodgepole forest — and, about this prognosis. By their very nature, importantly, they seldom interbreed with species are ephemeral. “They wink in, and nomadic red crossbills. wink out,” Benkman told me. “If an ice age Based on these observations, in 2009 were to occur, as was supposed to happen Benkman argued that the South Hills before climate change, the Cassia crossbill bird should be named Loxia sinesciurus, would also go extinct.” In truth, a creature or “the crossbill without squirrels,” and like the red crossbill is not one entity, the American Ornithologists Union spe- but myriad populations always breaking cies committee considered the question: apart and coming back together — partic- Does the type 9 crossbill belong in our field ularly over the course of interglacial peri- guides? The bird fell one vote short that ods — even if something tips the scale, as year. But in a study in Molecular Ecology it has, for now, in the South Hills, and a published last September, Benkman and new name is warranted. This is evolution several colleagues finally showed that the unfolding: a vast “kaleidoscope,” as Benk- crossbill deserves to be christened Loxia man has called it, of intricate interactions sinesciurus. They sequenced the DNA of — of crossbills, pines, squirrels, fire, cli- 219 red crossbills from all of the call types mate and more — across time and land- except the rare Newfoundland bird and scape. And it’s always shifting. found that only the South Hills bird is I drove up Pike Mountain, the heights Craig Benkman below Because Newfoundland’s spruce had a discrete evolutionary branch. The spe- of the South Hills, with Benkman one eve- a large lodgepole evolved no defenses against the rodents, cies was finally approved this spring and ning. In all directions, stands of spiry pine pine, the Cassia they feasted unchecked to the detriment officially announced in July: the Cassia clung to the hills’ sage suede. We had this crossbill’s seed source of the island’s endemic crossbill, chewing crossbill (pronounced “Cash-uh”), after its imbricated, somehow pastoral view to our- and coevolutionary off scales and dropping them like shingles partner, on which it home county. A new bird for your life list. selves, until there came a familiar whine from a torn-up roof. entirely depends. and a trailing plume. “OK, good,” Benk- As Benkman’s pursuit of crossbills Nick Neely ut the origin of this species is not man said. “There’s finally an ATV. It just continued, he kept an eye out for other only the tale of lodgepole, squirrels wasn’t right.” You could imagine those places without squirrels, including iso- B and fire: It is also the story of climate. fumes warming our atmosphere, and you lated mountain ranges, those “islands in Benkman has found that the strongest could imagine the Cassia crossbills flit- the sky.” He explored the Interior West correlation to the Cassia crossbill’s fluc- ting through their lodgepole kingdom and until, in 1996, he came to the South Hills, tuating numbers — about 6,000 birds hanging from cones with bands around a volcanic plateau with a patchwork of currently, but as low as 1,700 in 2011 their legs: specks of flame-colored dust, lodgepole pine. When Benkman drove into — is clusters of days over the previous swept up for a moment.

24 High Country News August 7, 2017 WRITERS ON THE RANGE

What a way to go

The West seems to have a different at- titude about life and death than other parts of the country. Of the five states that allow medical aid in dying, known as MAID, four are west of the Mississippi — Oregon, Washington, California and Colo- rado. The fifth is Vermont and, although it is not a state, the District of Columbia. Other states have come close. Mon- tana courts have found that there is no OPINION BY public policy against assisted death, and Rob Pudim New Mexico briefly allowed it in 2014 In this 2001 photo, before overturning it in 2015. In Arizona, breast cancer patient Mary Hall hugs her the Legislature will not let the bill out of son, Paul, before committee even though most Arizonans taking a lethal are said to favor it. dose of sleeping Most Westerners, I think, believe that pills in Santa Rosa, allowing people to obtain medical aid California. It would to die is simply a matter of choice that be 15 more years should not be a decision made by the before physicians state, a state legislature, a medical as- could legally assist sociation, a religion or any other person. with a patient’s death in California. Maybe it has to do with the independent Lonny Shavelson/ nature of the people or our geographical ZUMAPRESS.com distance from each other, or the knowl- edge that we sometimes have only our- A dear friend I have known for more for medical aid in dying in Colorado, selves to depend on. A lot of us believe than 50 years has an incurable, progres- 10 prescriptions have been filled so far, that each person has the right to decide sive disease that will kill him. He is but it is not known how many have ever about our life or death, and whether life educated, alert and rational, and right been used. Advocates say about one in is worth living when a condition is incur- now feels no pain or anxiety because a three patients who receive the drugs able and the future filled with pain. hospice manages his discomfort. Yet he fails to take them. They may have just Granted, we all have the ability to does not like being tethered to an oxygen wanted the option available. commit suicide but generally that choice line while he slowly suffocates. He wants My old and dear friend has been facing is not pleasant — jumping off the Golden his life to be over but is too incapacitated this. He could move to another state and Gate Bridge, using guns, death by police to do anything about it. At one point he establish residency. But that could take at or an auto crash. asked me if I could get him a gun. least six months, or is it a year? He does If you assist or encourage someone According to the Colorado referen- not have the time or ability to do this, — and there was a recent controversial dum, two physicians have to agree that though paradoxically he has a lot of time case of a young woman encouraging a a person’s medical condition is incurable, — to lie in bed and think about his future. boyfriend to commit suicide — you can and the drug cocktail has to be self- In Colorado, lawmakers put $44,000 be charged with being an accessory to administered. It sounds simple. into the budget in May to help doctors murder. Medical help in dying, however, Nothing is simple. with patients who might ask about is neither suicide nor murder, and most What if your doctor has religious be- receiving aid in dying. Republican State cases of a loved one helping another to liefs that preclude assisted dying, or has Sen. Kevin Lundberg says taxpayers die are dismissed. a literal interpretation of the Hippocratic should not support the practice: “This is In 1996, the 9th Circuit Court of Ap- Oath, which states that before anything not the job of a doctor, it’s certainly not peals ruled: “Those who believe strongly else, do no harm? What if your doctor’s the job of the government.” that death must come without physician beliefs require you to live out whatever Well, whose job is it when you’re assistance should be allowed to follow life has dealt you? What if the pharma- stuck in a bed with tubes and wires that creed, whether they be doctors or cist thinks the same way and refuses to attached to you? And what if this hap- patients. But they should not be free to issue the prescription? pened to you? force their views, their religious convic- What if the hospital does not have tions or their philosophies on all other the correct protocols in place or the legal Rob Pudim, a writer in Colorado, says members of a democratic society, nor boilerplate necessary to allow a patient his friend died while in hospice care on should they be free to compel those to die by choice? What if the hospital is June 16. whose values differ from theirs to die a run by a church? What if you are physi- WEB EXTRA painful, protracted and agonizing death.” cally unable to take the drugs you need Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of To see all the current Briefly stated, it’s your life. It’s your to end your life? High Country News, providing three opinion col- Writers on the Range umns each week to more than 200 media outlets columns, and archives, death. It ought to be a personal and According to Compassion & Choices, around the West. For more information, contact visit hcn.org private choice. a national organization that advocated Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898.

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BOOKS

Throwing shade

On Aug. 21, 2017, the moon will ride its as “Old Probabilities,” who persists in limbo: civilized enough that you could elliptical orbit precisely between Earth eclipse-watching at Pikes Peak despite journey to Wyoming in a railcar hung and sun, plunging the land below into a near-fatal case of high-altitude cere- with chandeliers, wild enough that your the crepuscule of a total solar eclipse. bral edema. And then there’s a young train stood a considerable risk of being Beginning at around 10 a.m. Pacific inventor named Thomas Edison, eager boarded and cleaned out by bandits. The Time, the dark path of totality will “to demonstrate that he was a scientist citizens of burgeoning Denver — a town sweep northwest to southeast across the and no mere tinkerer” by measuring the that “aspired to elegance, even enlighten- United States, casting its eerie gloom heat of the sun’s corona with a zany (and ment” — were particularly desperate to upon Western towns such as Madras, ultimately failed) invention called the prove their city’s worth to snooty East Oregon; Rexburg, Idaho; and Casper, tasimeter. Coast scientists. As one local boasted to a Wyoming. The sky will turn violet; Amid all this scientific machismo, visiting Englishman, “Sir, Colorado can shadows will sharpen; pigeons will roost the book’s most sympathetic character beat the world in eclipses as in every- and owls take wing. Millions of umbra- is Maria Mitchell, an astronomer and thing else.” philes — eclipse chasers — will crane suffragette intent on demonstrating the While modern astronomers no longer their necks to witness more than two equal abilities of women. At the time, require eclipses to study the heavens, minutes of lunar ecstasy, transfixed by certain pseudo-academics posited that this year’s event will still inspire epic an occluded sun that science writer Da- “higher education caused a girl’s body Westward pilgrimage. An eclipse festival vid Baron describes as “an ebony pupil — especially her reproductive organs — in Oregon expects 30,000 visitors, and surrounded by a pearly iris … the eye of to atrophy.” To debunk this repugnant some Jackson hotels have been booked the cosmos.” theory, Mitchell dispatched a cohort of for three years. We live with our eyes Although partial solar eclipses and “lady astronomers” to Colorado to study cast downward, fixed upon hand-sized lunar eclipses are relatively common, the eclipse and provide “a kind of politi- screens; this year’s American eclipse total solar eclipses are rarer beasts: cal theater, promoting social change.” offers a chance to lift our gaze to a uni- When totality last traversed the entire Mitchell’s mission succeeded — one verse far grander and stranger than the width of the continental U.S., Woodrow newspaper called her squad “a conspicu- circumscribed worlds we cradle in our Wilson was struggling to negotiate an ous example of the power and grasp palms. “These rare and unearthly events end to World War I. Baron, himself a of the feminine intellect” — though … suspend human affairs and draw devoted umbraphile — you might call the sexual harassment scandals that people out of their quotidian existence,” him a lunatic — has pursued the phe- roil modern astronomy prove that true Baron writes. We may comprehend our nomenon to Germany, Australia and the equality still eludes the field. solar system vastly better than we did in Faroe Islands. His new book, American American Eclipse’s most vivid char- 1878, but our capacity for awe remains, Eclipse, chronicles an instance much acter, though, is the fledgling West itself. fortunately, undiminished. closer to home: the shadow that sped In 1878, the region lingered in a kind of By Ben Goldfarb from Montana to Texas in 1878, perhaps the most significant total solar eclipse in the country’s history. American Eclipse For much of the 19th century, the David Baron young United States was a second-rate 330 pages, nation, scientifically speaking, shrouded hardcover: $27.95. by what one astronomer deemed a “period of apparent intellectual darkness.” W. W. Norton & Company, The 1878 eclipse promised to lift that 2017. metaphorical blackness by supplying literal dusk: Under the moon-dimmed Rocky Mountain sky, American scientists would have the opportunity to seek new planets, study the sun’s outer atmosphere, and even deduce its chemical composition. Researchers leapt at the chance to help America “fulfill its respon-

ns sibility as an enlightened member of the o global scientific community” — and, in mm the process, gain personal glory. a Co

di Westerners know Baron from his first e

im book, The Beast in the Garden, which k i documented — some would say sensa- a W i tionalized — a series of cougar attacks in

e/v Colorado. In American Eclipse, the fierc- ss a

l est beasts are the scientists competing oo

c to document the astronomical anomaly. : S

n Baron introduces us to James Craig Wat- o ti

a son, an astronomer with a Jupiter-sized ego who’s convinced that the eclipse will

llustr help him discover an unseen hypothetical o I t planet called Vulcan. We meet Cleveland o h

P Abbe, a meteorologist, known charmingly

26 High Country News August 7, 2017 Flirting with

Conifer Wanderer Devils Hole Date Night Just a quiet guy who enjoys cool misty Hi, I’m one of fewer than 100 Devils Hole extinction mornings on the edge of a giant collapsed pupfish, and I’m proud of our small Nevada Essay By Maya L. Kapoor extinct volcano. I’m trekking through the oasis. It almost crushed me when those pine needles, looking for love and larvae. drunk bozos trashed our pool last year — I haven’t seen another Jemez Mountains literally. I was hatching and one of them salamander in a few years, so I’d love to almost stepped on me. I’m female, silvery meet a gal who’s ready to connect over with dark stripes. My dream pupfish is a blue some termites and who might even drop guy with a yellow tail, who enjoys gnawing some eggs in a rocky crevice, after I’ve algae from the ever-popular limestone ledge. crawled back under the rotting piece of If you can handle the heat of a Mohave wood I call home. desert pool, love swimming in salinity that would make other fish crawl onto land and run away, and don’t mind treading water in In the spirit of famously low levels of dissolved oxygen, let’s summer love, get together and splurge on some snails. High Country News imagines online dating from the perspective of some of the Small Toad, Big Spoon Male Yosemite toad here, looking to meet a West’s rarest Fun night on the (prairie dog) town lady friend near my favorite high mountain species. Our lake. When I’m not hunting for beetles or If you enjoy smelling flowers on a gentle wrestling centipedes, I saunter over to a sunny spring breeze that’s tickling your whiskers conclusion? The as you slink through grass on your belly and basking spot — I’ve never been much for On the Prowl? hopping. When love’s on my mind, I get right clobber prairie dogs, we’ve got something next time we in common (other than, let’s be honest, a Does your idea of a perfect day include in the lake and sing my heart out. I may be bounding across the snow on giant furry have a rough small but I can wrap myself around you and lot of DNA). This male black-footed ferret is hoping to find a lady love who’s in the paws, chasing snowshoe hares in the forests go at romance, hold on tight. Let’s not waste any time; before of the Northern U.S.? If so, you may be the you know it, winter will be here, and I’ll be mood. I know you’ll only want me around for a few days and that’s fine; I prefer my space mountain male for me. Just follow the scent we’ll look on snuggled up in the entrance of a deer mouse — like, acres and acres of space — too. I’ve trails I’ve peed around my territory. I’m a the bright burrow again, dreaming away the snow. never had the plague but I can tell you some free-living Canada lynx girl doing my own crazy stories about a bobcat who stalked me thing, looking for that special someone side: At least a couple of years ago. to commit to for the spring-fling breeding we humans season. By early summer, I’ll be welcoming new kittens and showing you the log den still have door. #singleladies several billion potential mates out there.

Not you, Daniel I’m a sleek swimmer who loves chasing fish with her friends. I’m hoping for a partner Sending you love letters, who enjoys exploring the warm waters of by which I mean birds the northern Gulf of California as much as You’ll recognize me by my unusual yellow I do. But let’s be realistic here: Since fewer color — all the other paintbrushes grow Feeling myself than 30 of our kind remain in existence, I’m in reds, oranges, even pinks. As a golden Hey, any Kanab ambersnails looking for down for a first date with any guy who’s not paintbrush, I’m not the most social species love? I’m a glossy gastropod, flatworm-free, my cousin, Daniel. Some call me vaquita, on the Washington prairie; I’m more of a half an inch long from spire to operculum, some call me cochito, some call me Gulf of homebody. In fact, I’m pretty well rooted in if you’re wondering. I’m living in a spring California harbor porpoise, some call me place, but if you send me a hummingbird, I’ll on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, clickclickclickeeeEEEE. I don’t care what you share some pollen and some nectar. It’s an enjoying life, staying cool, exploring the Maya L. Kapoor is an call me — if you think this could work, just old family recipe we’ve been perfecting since algae. Actually, I’m also hermaphroditic and associate editor with call me! the last Ice Age. I can fertilize myself. Go away. High County News.

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Betsy Marston

THE WEST IDAHO If a Western business is booming these Ordinary grasshoppers and earwigs can be days, it’s likely connected to marijuana. In annoying enough, but ranchers in Owyhee Colorado, the “new normal” is $100 million County, Idaho, are at war with formidable in cannabis sales every month, reports the 3-inch-long Mormon crickets, reports the Denver Post. And this May, adds The Can- Idaho Statesman. The “creepy scourge” nabist, the state passed a major milestone: strikes about every eight years, and the bugs Since legalization in 2014, $500 million has are a serious nuisance: Besides devouring been collected in state tax. alfalfa, stored animal feed and even vine- Pent-up demand in Nevada was demon- yards, they appear to have it in for vehicles, strated this July 2 — opening day for the causing “slippery, bug-slick car crashes as sale of recreational marijuana. Customers they march across highways and roads.” But lined up by the hundreds outside the newly that’s not as unnerving as the recent truck opened pot shops, and the Department of accident in Oregon that catapulted 7,500 Taxation expects to rake in at least $100 mil- pounds of eels onto Highway 101. The slimy lion in the next six months. Dozens of new hagfish emitted so much goo on the road — UTAH Western diets. greg woodall businesses, mainly in the Las Vegas area, about five pounds from each fish — that the were so mobbed that many of them ran out Oregonian describes “a chain reaction” of ve- in less than two weeks. That forced the gov- hicles smashing into other vehicles. Injuries ernor and state Legislature to quickly change WASHINGTON were minor, unless you count the eels, which all a restrictive law on restocking “to continue the In 2008, wildlife biologist John Marzluff at the died. This gives us an excuse to quote the inimi- flow of product to the retail store,” reports The University of Washington made news when he table Ogden Nash: “I don’t mind eels. / Except as Associated Press. A 77-year-old Navy veteran, tested the hypothesis that crows could learn to meals. / And the way they feels.” who waited in line for hours on the Las Vegas identify individual faces. He and his research- Strip, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I ers — wearing Dick Cheney masks — found COLORADO never thought I’d live to see it. I thought it that the birds could easily tell one person’s face “A gang of goats,” as Fox News characterized would be undercover forever and I’d just have to from another, and what’s more, “crows teach it, vandalized Kryptane Systems in Louisville, continue finding it the best way I could.” other crows to detest specific people and some- about 20 miles north of Denver, splintering In Oregon, after the sale of recreational times attack them,” says Seattle Met magazine. two glass front doors. A surveillance camera marijuana became legal in 2014, the tiny town Recently, Kaeli Smith, a Ph.D. candidate at the revealed the story: One of the goats, probably of Huntington, population 435, took its time to university’s Avian Conservation Lab, showed seeing his reflection, butted the door for 20 min- decide whether to allow pot shops. Meanwhile, writer Ross Gardner something else: Crows utes until it shattered, left, then later returned the interstate had bypassed Huntington, the hold crow funerals. Swift demonstrated this by to attack the adjoining door, too. “I don’t know town’s economy was in tatters, and only the holding a dead crow in her hands near some why” he came back, Greg Cappert, an engineer hope of attracting pot customers from Boise, dumpsters. Within minutes — “It was like at the company, told police. “Just to be mean, Idaho, just 30 miles away, where marijuana is sorcery,” marveled the writer — a flock of crows I guess.” Kids today, we’d say, except these illegal, seemed an option. Reluctantly, the town converged above them, shrieking so loudly that goats were grownups. And as Cappert warned: permitted retail pot sales. Now, Huntington’s talking was impossible. But once she gently “They’re still out there somewhere, so protect marijuana dispensaries are enjoying a “mini- covered the dead bird, the corvids slowly quieted your doors, everyone.” boom” that has also boomed the town budget. A and eventually left. Researchers have also found few residents remain adamantly opposed, but that crows will reward humans who treat them WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see as Shellie Nash, deputy city recorder, put it, the well, giving them gifts that can include candy, hcn.org. businesses are “not bringing in riffraff and stuff keys — probably not the ones you lost — and like people originally expected.” Visitors hang coins. As for what the urban-adapted birds like Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and around town when the dispensaries get busy, to eat, that’s easy, says Marzluff: “They will eat often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram. said Councilman Chuck Guerri, “so they mingle anything and they will try everything.” … and have a hamburger or something. Every little bit helps when you’re a small town.”

High Six weeks after we moved to Nederland, Colorado, Country the most destructive wildfire in Boulder News “ For people who care about the West. County’s history wiped out over 160 homes. High Country News covers the important issues and stories that are unique to the American West with a My husband made jokes that we had officially magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write moved into the ‘fire pit.’ High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or Leslie Brodhead, in her essay, “A note to neighbors: Cut those trees down,” [email protected], or call 970-527-4898. from Writers” on the Range, hcn.org/wotr 28 High Country News August 7, 2017