CRITICAL MASS CRITICAL Jonathan Thompsonjonathan Hansman |Heather C Ountry N for Peoplewhocare West Aboutthe Ews CONTENTS

December 10, 2018 | $5 | Vol. 50 No. 21 | www.hcn.org H Despite a radioactive past, the West the past, Despite a radioactive again must weigh a nuclear future igh igh GRIJALVA |ARBOREALERRATICS INTHEHOUSE|BORDERTUNNELS CRITICAL MASS CRITICAL Jonathan ThompsonJonathan Hansman |Heather C ountry N For peoplewhocare West aboutthe ews CONTENTS

Editor’s note Nuclear’s long odds

A light breeze rustled the leaves clinging to the trees behind the Sunflower Café in Sonoma, California, Nov. 8. By the time I downed my second cup of coffee, it had stiffened into a gusty gale from the northeast; when I stepped outside 30 minutes later, billowing clouds of acrid, yellow- brown smoke were descending on the town square like a flock of J.K. Rowling’s Dementors. By the next day, the Camp Fire, more than 100 miles to the east, had burned an astonishing 70,000 acres, consuming the town of Paradise and killing more than 88 people, many of them desperately trying to flee through tinder-dry woodlands. In San Fran- cisco, residents wearing masks struggled to breath air thicker than Beijing’s toxic soup. Meanwhile, outside Los Angeles, the Woolsey Fire, fanned by the same late-season winds, raced through chaparral toward the sea, burning the houses of both rich and poor. Coming on the heels of a deadly hurricane A tour group at the B Reactor of the Hanford nuclear site. MASON VRANISH / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO season and a tempestuous election, the blazes delivered an unmistakable message: Climate change FEATURES is here, no matter how vociferously some deny it, and we have to take notice. 12 Generation Atomic Can a new generation of environmental The activists profiled in this issue’s cover story activists save nuclear power? By Jonathan Thompson agree. Yet, their solution — a global expansion of nuclear power to replace carbon-spewing fossil 18 No Fix for Our Nuclear Past At Washington’s Hanford fuels — is embraced by few in the U.S. To them, nuclear site, failing infrastructure and make-do plans By Heather Hansman the solution is clear: Go nuclear or risk the planet. But, as Jonathan Thompson writes, nuclear power’s future is more uncertain than ever. Utilities have CURRENTS largely turned to cheaper natural gas and solar 5 and wind, and are considering shuttering existing On the cover Where police are failing Indigenous women Poor data collection complicates the issue of the missing and murdered nuclear plants as they come up for relicensing. Illustration by 6 Meanwhile, the long-hoped-for (and heavily Stephen Barnwell. This Arizona lawmaker intends to force a reckoning subsidized) new generation of small, nimble plants ©2018 STEPHEN BARNWELL Democratic spitfire Rep. Raúl Grijalva with climate change — “nukes in a can” — has had trouble gaining C/O THEISPOT will take the helm of the Natural Resource Committee traction, even in the conservative Interior West. 6 The Latest: NPS climate leader resigns It’s not just the economics. After all, we 7 As border wall grows, tunnels proliferate The administration is could decide to swallow the costs and go all-in on ignoring a big question: How do you secure a border below the ground? nuclear to slow what the latest National Climate Assessment report (released, ironically, the day 7 The Latest: BLM drops wild horse sterilization plan after Thanksgiving) says is already upon us: the 8 The arboreal erratic A coastal Alaska rainforest tree makes its accelerated floods, droughts and fires that will cost unlikely home in Oregon’s dry mountains us tens of billions of dollars annually. But nuclear power and weapons production are both still saddled with a legacy of spills and DEPARTMENTS meltdowns and radioactive waste, contaminating 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG sites like eastern Washington’s Hanford nuclear Complete access complex. As Heather Hansman reports in our to subscriber-only 4 LETTERS second feature, the prospect of safely cleaning up content 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends these places seems as far away now as it did when HCN’s website 23 MARKETPLACE cleanups started three decades ago. hcn.org Today’s climate-savvy nuclear advocates Digital edition 28 BOOKS Buffalo Cactus & Other New Stories from the Southwest acknowledge these obstacles but refuse to give hcne.ws/digi-5021 edited by D. Seth Horton & Brett Garcia Myhren. Reviewed by Jenny Shank up. The odds are long, the challenges perhaps 29 PERSPECTIVE insurmountable, but any optimism is welcome in Follow us these dark times. As my plane departed the Oakland By Monica Gokey Is sporting a Patagonia fleece now a political statement? airport Nov. 10, I could barely make out the San  30 ESSAY The arresting quiet of a crane By Stephen R. Miller Francisco skyline. A few minutes later, we broke out @highcountrynews 32 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston into blue sky. —Paul Larmer, executive director/publisher 2 High Country News December 10, 2018 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG

How to prepare for a wildfire Trending In the wake of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Climate report California, the deadliest and most destructive in state history, it is important to know some details deep simple steps to take to prepare before the hits to the flames. Here are five steps recommended by Southwest fire safety professionals: The United States 1. Determine if you live in a fire-prone area, Global Climate known as a Wildland Urban Interface. This Research Program can be researched through the U.S. Forest released a federal Service. report over the holiday 2. Get ready ahead of time: Both long-term weekend about home maintenance and short-term planning climate change can improve your ability to survive an evacua- and its impact on tion scenario. the U.S. economy, 3. Know your evacuation plan and communi- infrastructure and cate it with your community and family. more. The message is 4. Leave your property in good shape for grim. In the American first responders by attaching hoses, closing Southwest, for windows and removing flammable material example, temperatures from around your home. have increased and 5. Prepare to be without power or cell service will keep going up, during wildfire emergencies, and carry maps amplifying droughts. that can help guide you when services are Climate change is also Cars abandoned by people fleeing the Camp Fire line the road out of Paradise, California. down. CARL SEGERSTROM NOAH BERGER/AP IMAGES contributing to Read more online: hcne.ws/prepare-wildfire Southwestern water scarcity, while forests and other ecosystems Inside Colorado’s ‘hotbed’ Wildfire recovery is possible — Wildfire vulnerability based on landscape have a harder time of wildlife conflict for some Westerners risk and socioeconomic factors of recovery providing wildlife habitat, clean Domestic sheep can transmit a deadly As Westerners prepare for future fires, new Colville water and jobs. bacteria to bighorns when the two species research suggests that the answer isn’t as simple Reservation Southwestern tribes mingle on public lands. Wildlife officials as avoiding flammable areas. In the academic Yakama are especially at risk Reservation are supposed to make sure that wild and journal PLOS One, researchers explained that for Crow Cheyenne because of historical domestic sheep don’t interact. But according people living in wildfire-prone areas, the possible Warm Springs Reservation Reservation Reservation and ongoing threats to a trove of Colorado Parks and Wildlife devastation is increased by socioeconomic and to their adaptive documents recently obtained by High historical factors. Hoopa capacity, and people Country News, they mingle more frequently Most Americans living in high-risk areas Reservation across the Southwest than previously known. And though failures are affluent, but these aren’t necessarily the Pyramid Lake Reservation will suffer more health on the part of ranchers, federal agencies and most wildfire-vulnerable Americans. Roughly effects. Taken in total, state wildlife managers are often to blame, 40 percent of Americans living in wildfire-prone Tule River the assessment it’s always the bighorns that pay the price. areas, or about 12 million people, lack the Reservation Navajo Reservation offers very little good The documents reveal that Colorado’s wildlife resources to prepare for or recover from fire. In news, but local efforts general, the study found that the elderly, disabled agency has limited authority to effectively Fort Apache to adapt and mitigate manage wildlife. In practice, a great deal of and non-English-speaking are more likely to be Reservation Mescalero are inspiring hope. responsibility falls to permit-holders to keep devastated by a fire. Reservation LAURA PASKUS domestic sheep separated from bighorn By far, the most fire-vulnerable communities Tohono O’odham in the West are tribal nations: Native Americans, Reservation herds. Even when they fall short of their You say agreements, Parks and Wildlife can’t take regardless of income, are vastly overrepresented Low vulnerability disciplinary action. in regions that are both fire-prone and fire- HANK LAVIGNE: “Sadly, PAIGE BLANKENBUEHLER vulnerable. the GOP will consider SOURCE: IAN DAVIES Read more online: hcne.ws/big-horn MAYA L. KAPOOR Read more online: High vulnerability this the cost of doing hcne.ws/wildfire-economics business.”

KEN SAYERS: “That Havasu makes it sound like it Riviera State is regional. The whole Park, where country will suffer 830,000 from those hits.” Arizona Number of barrels of heavy crude oil per State Parks day that could be carried from Alberta and Trails GIBBY TIMLETS: to the Gulf Coast through the proposed “Getting rid of humans bulldozed 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline. But in potential will be the best thing November, a federal judge ruled against this planet ever did.“ archaeological the Trump administration on a lawsuit sites. filed by the Indigenous Environmental Read more online: ARIZONA STATE PARKS DEPARTMENT Network. Now the State Department must hcne.ws/sw-climate supplement an earlier Environmental and Facebook.com/ What is lost when cultural sites are bulldozed? Impact Statement and take a “hard look” highcountrynews at the effects of current oil prices, potential In October, a former archaeologist with Arizona of the claims, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey fired Black increases in greenhouse gas emissions, Parks and Trails accused his former boss, Sue and her deputy director. Now, tribal leaders wait possible damage to cultural resources and Black, of violating dozens of archaeological sites for the results of a criminal investigation. new data on oil spills. while developing parkland, many of them holding ELENA SAAVEDRA BUCKLEY JONATHAN THOMPSON Read more online: evidence of Native American heritage. In the wake Read more online: hcne.ws/bulldoze hcne.ws/keystone

Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. www.hcn.org High Country News 3 LETTERS Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428.

High Country News HATE-GROUP AGITATION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Paul Larmer I just read your article on the Citizens EDITOR-IN-CHIEF for Equal Rights Alliance with great Brian Calvert interest and gratitude (“Why don’t anti- ART DIRECTOR Cindy Wehling Indian groups count as hate groups?” DIGITAL EDITOR HCN, 11/26/18). I’d be interested regard- Gretchen King less, but I am a landowner in Sanders ASSOCIATE EDITORS Tristan Ahtone County, Montana, and have been Maya L. Kapoor bombarded by the oddest, most addled, Kate Schimel acerbic and confusing series of votes on ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR Luna Anna Archey the irrigation district — the Flathead ASSISTANT EDITORS Water Compact — over the years. My Emily Benson takeaway from your article is: Of course; Paige Blankenbuehler Anna V. Smith I should have guessed. All the communi- EDITOR AT LARGE cations have been so melodramatic that Betsy Marston I could make neither heads nor tails of COPY EDITOR them, but I now realize that this is hate- Diane Sylvain CONTRIBUTING EDITORS group agitation, using symbolism I am Graham Brewer unfamiliar with. Cally Carswell Ruxandra Guidi I have to interact with everyone as Michelle Nijhuis an individual, and I do not seek disen- Jodi Peterson gagement. The designation of the people Jonathan Thompson CORRESPONDENTS who believe the CERA spin — who are, PAT BAGLEY/THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE VIA CAGLECARTOONS.COM Krista Langlois, as you point out, susceptible to latch- Sarah Tory, Tay Wiles, ing onto horrid stereotyping and the Joshua Zaffos Americans in the state. (Heitkamp lost DOING JUSTICE TO OUR STORIES “getting things for free” discourse — as EDITORIAL FELLOWS in the 2018 midterms, to Republican Carl Segerstrom hate-group sympathizers will only A few of the recent letters to the editor Kevin Kramer, by more than 35,000 Jessica Kutz polarize and invigorate more. Yet to (Ferm, 10/29/18, and Mumaw, 10/15/18) EDITORIAL INTERN votes.) An initial challenge to the law me, this discussion provides clarity and lamenting High Country News’ shifts Elena Saavedra Buckley last year overturned key provisions of DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR understanding. I await the results of the toward coverage reflecting the issues the legislation, enabling more Native Laurie Milford Southern Poverty Law Center’s analysis faced by people in the region — not just Americans to vote, but the U.S. Supreme PHILANTHROPY ADVISOR and wonder how CERA will compare white recreationists, ranchers or public- Alyssa Pinkerton Court upheld a district court ruling in nationally with other groups. It will lands managers, but people, including DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE September that reinstated the stricter Hannah Stevens require of the SPLC, perhaps, a novel immigrants, prisoners, queer people and law. Now we have entire swaths of land DIGITAL MARKETER framework in order to account for the others, who have often been overlooked Chris King out West — reservations — where the relationship of Native American culture in the American West’s homogenous EVENTS & BUSINESS PARTNER basic right of American citizens, the COORDINATOR to land and water. image of itself — make me wonder what Laura Dixon right to vote, has been made prohibi- WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPER direction these readers wish the maga- Sarah Rogers tively difficult. Eric Strebel zine would take instead. IT MANAGER Boulder, Colorado Alan Wells Pete Simon I can’t remember a time when High IT SUPPORT TECHNICIAN Arvada, Colorado Country News was not a part of my VOTER EXCLUSION Josh McIntire life, from cutting out funny pictures in ACCOUNTANT Erica Howard As facetious as it might sound, ‘LIMOUSINE LIBERALS’ AND the black-and-white newsprint pages ACCOUNTS ASSISTANT the lawmakers in North Dakota ‘REDNECK RIFFRAFF’ as a child to now, nearly 30 years later, Mary Zachman could be included on a list of anti- looking forward to my annual holiday In the excerpt from her new book, Desert CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Indian hate groups (“Why don’t anti- gift renewal from my parents. (You’re Christie Cantrell Cabal, Amy Irvine speaks volumes of Indian groups count as hate groups?” not getting out of it this year, Dad!) CUSTOMER SERVICE truth in a few carefully chosen words Kathy Martinez (Circ. HCN, 11/26/18). The evidence: North The magazine has always seemed to (“Contrarian Cowboy: A note to Edward Systems Administrator), Dakota’s 2017 voter ID law, which reflect my family and my communities’ Rebecca Hemer, Karen Abbey,” HCN, 11/12/18). I nodded in rec- requires strict forms of identification, conversations, as we’ve learned and Howe, Pam Peters, ognition as she described the contrast Doris Teel including street addresses. The law dis- grown and, hopefully, become better GRANTWRITER of old-time rural folk with the vocifer- Janet Reasoner enfranchises voters on American Indian at listening to the stories that might [email protected] ous shouts of urban activists who fail reservations, where street addresses not look like our own, but have equally [email protected] to recognize that their lifestyles are as [email protected] often do not exist and many residents shaped the regions we call home, in all problematic as those of the “redneck [email protected] get mail by post office box. The law its contradictions, beauty, injustices and [email protected] riffraff” when it comes to impacting our requires voters to have a street address nuance. Thank you for always striving FOUNDER Tom Bell most beloved outdoor places. I embody to constitute a “valid” ID for registra- to do justice to our stories. BOARD OF DIRECTORS both sides. I am part of the problem. John Belkin, Colo. tion. This potentially affects 20 percent Erica Watson Beth Conover, Colo. of the average voter turnout in the state. Linda Paul Jay Dean, Calif. Denali Park, Alaska Bob Fulkerson, Nev. State legislators created the law Boise, Idaho Anastasia Greene, Wash. following Democratic Sen. Heidi Wayne Hare, Colo. Heitkamp’s victorious election in 2012 Laura Helmuth, Md. John Heyneman, Wyo. by a mere 3,000 votes. In that election, Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico she received heavy support from Native Samaria Jaffe, Calif. Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) independent 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post Estee Rivera Murdock, Colo. media organization that covers the issues that define the offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Rick Tallman, Colo. High American West. Its mission is to inform and inspire people Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles Luis Torres, N.M. to act on behalf of the region’s diverse natural and human in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country communities. (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: Florence Williams, D.C. News times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Paonia, CO 800-905-1155 | hcn.org Printed on recycled paper. 4 High Country News December 10, 2018 CURRENTS

the issue is affecting their own citizens. Where police are failing Ninety-eight cases could not be categorized as either “missing” or “murdered” Indigenous women owing to poor record-keeping by local law Poor data collection complicates the issue enforcement. This lack of information and aware- of the missing and murdered ness, both on the part of law enforcement BY GRAHAM LEE BREWER and reporters, can encourage the use of stereotypes, which tend to shroud the se- riousness of the problem, said Sarah Deer, landmark report from the Seattle be missing. The reasons range from un- a professor and author on Native Ameri- A Indian Health Board’s Urban Indian derreporting and poor record keeping to can law and a member of the Muscogee Health Institute paints a critical picture institutional racism in the media and poor (Creek) Nation. of law enforcement, data collection and relationships between law enforcement “A big reason Native women and girls media coverage of missing and murdered and Indigenous communities. Echohawk go missing is because people make as- Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in says that this creates yet another obstacle sumptions that these people chose to live a the United States. There is no authorita- for the government agencies and lawmak- high-risk lifestyle,” said Deer. “And so law tive accounting of MMIWG in the U.S., but ers who rely on such data to make their enforcement and sometimes local commu- it is estimated that in Canada, up to 4,000 policy decisions. nity leaders are saying, ‘This isn’t some- women have gone missing or been mur- Of the 506 cases cited in the study, one that we’re going to be looking for.’ ” dered over the last several decades. 95 percent were not covered by media An analysis of record-keeping and po- The study, issued Nov. 14, documents outside of their local market. One case re- lice practices is part of Canada’s National 506 unique cases in 71 cities across the ceived 47 percent of the national coverage Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indig- country, most notably in the West. The re- — that of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, enous Girls, established in 2016. Canada, port shifts focus from rural reservations a member of the Spirit Lake Tribe, who unlike the U.S., is treating the problem and tribal communities, which have been was pregnant when she was murdered as a national crisis. Through community hit hard by the crisis, to urban areas. To- by her Fargo, North Dakota, neighbor in hearings and testimony before the Cana- day, 71 percent of American Indians and 2017. dian government, the inquiry is gathering Alaska Natives live in towns and cities, Law enforcement data on homicides and recording the stories of Indigenous yet little to no research has been done that do exist are also often mistakenly people, along with statistics and expert on violence against American Indian and categorized, with American Indian and testimony, in an effort to understand and Alaska Native women in urban areas. Alaska Native women identified as white address the root causes of the problem. Of the 71 cities listed in the report, or Hispanic. In Seattle, researchers were The final evidence-gathering hearings Seattle ranked number one, with 45 given an updated list after the depart- will be held in December, and the inquiry’s identified cases involving missing and ment’s homicide unit found that, until the commissioners will submit a final report murdered Indigenous women and girls. early 1980s, the letter “N” in its system to the Canadian government by May 2019. Albuquerque came in second, with 37 cas- meant “Negro” and not “Native Ameri- Echohawk hopes the data set released es. The matter is further complicated by can.” Of the 25 women and girls the study on Nov. 14 will force policymakers to rec- the fact that half the cases in Albuquer- identified in Gallup, New Mexico, 20 were ognize the issue and take action. que are not categorized as “murdered” or not listed in law enforcement records. Sev- “We did this (study) because Native “missing” people because the local police enty-five percent of the women and girls people needed this in their hands to put did not so categorize the cases. According in the study lacked any tribal affiliation, in the faces of policymakers and say, ‘Now to the report, the Albuquerque Police De- meaning that even tribal governments I have the data, you can’t ignore me any partment was one of six law enforcement have no way to fully comprehend how longer.’ ” agencies that failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests. “That’s a database and a system being Participants in complicit in the erasure and the genocide Native American of Native people. If there is no data on us, Indian Lobby Day gather in we don’t exist,” said Abigail Echohawk, Washington’s director of the Urban Indian Health Insti- Capitol building tute and a member of the Pawnee Nation to protest Missing of Oklahoma. “No matter where (Native and Murdered women are), whether in the data or in the Indigenous Women media, they completely disappear.” in January. Authors Researchers gathered the data from of a new report hope Albuquerque from missing persons data- the new data will bases, news reports, social media and in- push policymakers terviews with family members. to recognize the issue and take The report’s database goes back to the action. 1940s, but two-thirds of the cases collected TED S. WARREN/AP IMAGES occurred between 2010 and 2018. And researchers emphasized that the scope of the problem is likely much greater than that, given the amount of data that appears to

Graham Lee Brewer is a contributing editor at High Country News and a member of the Cherokee Nation.  @grahambrewer

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 THE LATEST Backstory Rep. Raúl Grijalva speaks with reporters on In 2011, archaeologist Capitol Hill last January. SUSAN WALSH/AP Marcy Rockman became the first person appointed to study climate change’s I have a list of every inquiry the commit- impacts on cultural tee has made — many went unanswered resources in national by the Interior Department. We are going parks. That year, to send those inquiries again. We want an- the GOP-controlled swers to all of these questions. If we get the Congress cut her information, we proceed from there. If we program’s budget are ignored again, we are in a realm where by 70 percent; with we need to use legal authority. We, as the less than $3 million, majority, have options that we didn’t have Rockman studied national parks as a minority. That includes subpoenas. across the country. At the same time, HCN: How will you change the committee’s then-Park Service posture toward climate change and wild- Director Jonathan fire, now that we’re seeing much longer Jarvis commissioned fire seasons? a scientific report that urged park managers RG: There is no way to deny it: The planet to “boldly and is getting hotter, it is getting drier, and one decisively” prepare This Arizona lawmaker intends to force of the things we need to do is confront the for severe climate issue of these wildfires and other natural shifts (“How the Park a reckoning with climate change catastrophes that are happening — and Service is planning confront them with the urgency that they for climate change,” demand. The president doesn’t think cli- HCN, 8/22/16). Democratic spitfire Rep. Raúl Grijalva will take the helm of the Natural Resource Committee mate is the reason. That denial is embed- Followup ded in Interior and this administration. BY PAIGE BLANKENBUEHLER We need to elevate the importance of ad- On Nov. 2, Rockman dressing climate change. resigned, saying that she had to fight to Less than a week before the midterm elec- jurisdiction, we have issues that have to Our response has been reactive. We perform even basic tions, U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., be dealt with — tribal sovereignty, educa- have always dealt with the fire issue as tasks. Her resignation released a report detailing how the House tion, health care, historical and cultural a budgetary issue, and we should, but letter reiterated the Committee on Natural Resources, on which resource preservation. it’s more than that. The issue of climate importance of address- he has served for 14 years, stacked its hear- The other issue is climate change. It change cannot be denied. We need to look ing climate impacts at how we change building standards and and added that the ings with industry interests. “Under Re- touches every issue that we deal with, and publican leadership,” he wrote, “hearings the fossil-fuel extraction industries are where we decide it’s OK to build homes. In Park Service did not some cases, denial (of building permits) is adequately support have disproportionally included witnesses making such a rush for resources in our a good thing. cultural resources, who pad their profits by degrading public public lands. This administration, in two thereby hampering her lands.” years, has made every effort to suppress efforts, “as through- Now that Democrats have won a ma- science and dumb down the issue of climate HCN: How do you plan to handle the scan- out I’ve remained jority in the House, Grijalva will have his change. We want to elevate that again to dals and lawsuits facing Interior Secre- effectively a program chance, as the committee’s new chairman, the status it deserves in decision-making. tary Ryan Zinke? of one.” Rockman now to change the direction of the governing plans to work with the RG: There are 14 Inspector General inves- body that oversees federal lands and en- HCN: How will you do that? International Council tigations looking into Interior Secretary ergy and water resources. Grijalva’s com- on Monuments and RG: We will begin to look at ways in which Ryan Zinke and the Department of Justice mittee will also oversee and investigate the Sites to encourage our jurisdiction can help mitigate the ef- is taking a look at him. (Editor’s note: So Interior Department, employing the sys- greater inclusion of fects of climate change. We’ll do that leg- far, investigators have yet to confirm any cultural and natural tem of checks and balances that Grijalva islatively, by holding hearings and intro- wrongdoing.) At some point, those dogs heritage consider- thinks his predecessors neglected. ducing policy initiatives. My committee start nipping at your heels. We’ve reached ations in reports from In late November, High Country News will revisit all of the rules that have been a point that Zinke needs to move on. the Intergovernmental spoke with Grijalva about his priorities changed by this administration that have There’s no question that the extrac- Panel on Climate and what his leadership could mean for to do with climate change and science, the tive industries have had a free rein un- Change. climate change policies and resource man- JODI PETERSON Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness der Zinke. It’s no coincidence that Grand agement in the West. This interview has Act, and responsibility over our federal Staircase-Escalante National Monument been edited for clarity and length. waters and waterways. The list goes on was shrunk because of coal deposits. and on. Bears Ears (National Monument) was High Country News: As you assume chair- shrunk because of nearby uranium de- manship, what do you hope to do differ- HCN: How effective can you realistically posits. The criteria of making decisions ently than the outgoing chairman, Rep. be in changing the direction of the com- on how to best conserve and have a multi- Rob Bishop, R-Utah? mittee? use philosophy for our public lands and Raúl Grijalva: We have an opportunity to assets has been skewed in one direction RG: The prerogatives of the current admin- take this committee and its priorities and and one direction only. istration will limit our authority. With this its policies and legislative initiatives and The extractive industries are protect- administration, we have had no oversight steer it in a different direction. Under our ing Zinke. He’s curried favor with them, Marcy Rockman at hearings. Our requests for accountability and they are protecting him. He has a re- the 2017 Climate and inquiries for information have been sponsibility to protect the multi-use phi- March at the White Paige Blankenbuehler is an assistant editor for ignored. But I’m going to re-establish a losophy of the department. He’s failed. Re-  House. ANDREW S. POTTS High Country News. @ PaigeBlank co-equal status. sources are there not just for extraction. 6 High Country News December 10, 2018 played a role, too. Over the years, offi- As border wall grows, tunnels proliferate cials have found nearly 200 tunnels along the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, The Trump administration is ignoring a big question: mostly in Arizona and California. They How do you secure a border below the ground? range from rudimentary crawlspaces to BY SARAH TORY “super tunnels” that cost upwards of a million dollars to build and are equipped with elevators, electric lights, and dis- n a recent Friday in October, Tekae a private home in the town of Jacume, 60 guised exits and entrances. Lenoir refused O Michael, a Border Patrol agent who miles east of Tijuana. Although the tun- to describe them as sophisticated, though. handles public affairs, drove a large SUV nel still lacked an exit into the U.S., it did “I would not want to give our enemies that along the towering corrugated metal fence succeed in crossing the border, despite the kind of credit,” he told me, insisting that A wild horse corral that marks the U.S.-Mexico border near presence of a 16-foot-high steel bollard wall. I write these details down in my note- facility in Hines, Otay Mesa, an industrial area southeast Sandwiched between the two border book: “The only thing that’s of note when Oregon. GREG SHINE/BLM of San Diego. To her left lay another fence, walls overlooking the warehouses of Otay it comes to these tunnels in San Diego is topped with concertina wire, creating a Mesa, Michael handed out helmets and their persistence and audacity.” THE LATEST 14-mile corridor complete with stadium harnesses to a group of reporters, includ- Inside the tunnel, 70 feet under- lighting, hidden motion sensors and sur- ing me. Below us lay the Galvez Tunnel, ground, Lenoir pointed admiringly to Backstory veillance cameras that lent the border an which the Border Patrol has kept open the orange tubing covering the electrical About 67,000 wild atmosphere of impenetrability. for training and media tours since its wires that run along the gray sandstone horses and burros But appearances can be deceiving. discovery in 2009. Before the U.S. began walls, sculpted with chisels and jackham- roam the West’s Michael pointed to where cuts had been building a wall along the Southwest bor- mers. “One of the few quasi-professional public lands. Federally protected since made near the bottom of the secondary der, there was little need for tunnels, jobs I’ve seen,” he said. 1971, the animals fence. Dense fog poses another challenge, Lance Lenoir, the head of the five-member Professional or not, stopping the tun- are both costly and she added. “It only takes a minute to get Tunnel Rats team, told me. A few cables nels is harder than one might expect. Like controversial. The over, and then you can just vanish.” strung between wooden posts were all many others, the Galvez Tunnel started Bureau of Land It’s one thing to build a wall — or that marked the boundary between the inside a warehouse in northern Tijuana Management spends reinforce an existing one — to secure two countries. and ended in Otay Mesa, taking advan- $76 million per year the border above the ground. But how do Then, “we put a fence up,” said Lenoir, tage of the heavy truck traffic in and out on their oversight, you secure the ground beneath it? There, whose brusque manner was tempered by of the area to help distract unwanted and around two- Michael admitted, the border looks more the image of a cartoon rat on the back of attention. Working with Mexican officials thirds of them live in like Swiss cheese. Since the early 1990s, his camel-colored shirt. Since the early to stop the tunnels is another challenge: permanent holding pens. Most observers 65 tunnels have been discovered in the 1990s, when border security tightened, There are fewer resources and attention agree the population Otay Mesa area, mostly built for drug an average of two cross-border tunnels devoted to the issue in Mexico. Right must be controlled, trafficking. But human smugglers some- have been found every year. Smugglers now, Lenoir said, “We’ve closed off these but disagree strongly times use existing storm drains to ferry use them to transport ever-larger quanti- tunnels on the U.S side, but they’re com- on how to do so migrants across, too. In the U.S., finding ties of drugs into the U.S. — most success- pletely open in Tijuana.” One time, after (“Is there a way and dismantling those tunnels (the “sub- fully, the Sinaloa Cartel, whose notorious experiencing a feeling of déjà vu, he found through the West’s terranean threat” in Border Patrol lingo) kingpin, El Chapo, masterminded the first himself in the same tunnel that he and his bitter horse wars?” falls to a little-known group of agents cross-border narcotúnel from Agua Prieta team had previously found and plugged. HCN, 11/9/12). within the agency — the Confined Spaces to Douglas, Arizona, in 1989. The builders had simply dug around what Entry Team, or, simply, the Tunnel Rats. Still, Lenoir noted, enhanced border the Tunnel Rats had closed off. Followup The agents struggle to stay ahead of security is not the only reason for the Since at least the ancient Egyptians, In early November, the digging. On Sept. 19, Mexican officials proliferation of tunnels; the rise of car- humans have dug tunnels, and yet even the BLM abandoned its plan to spay unearthed another tunnel, starting from tels and a growing U.S. drug market have with modern technology, it’s surprisingly about 100 wild hard to detect them. Agents can deploy mares in Oregon, small robots equipped with cameras to after a lawsuit check for smuggling activity, and they brought a temporary can use sonic radar to monitor different halt to the research. ground densities, but mostly, they rely Wild horse advocates on tips and informants who keep tabs prefer a contraceptive on the warehouses in Otay Mesa — a vaccine that makes strategy Lenoir likened to “knowing your mares infertile for about a year, but battlefield.” the BLM says its After the hour-long tour was over, widespread use on we clambered back up the ladder and herds that roam emerged into the glare of the Southern thousands of acres California sun. Through the slats in the isn’t feasible. Instead, wall, the cars and people and buildings the agency plans to of Mexico were visible just a few feet increase adoption away. From here, the border didn’t look incentives to find like a battlefield, any more than the wall homes for more horses, and will likely seemed like an impenetrable barrier. In continue searching for the end, it appeared, all it would take is a humane, permanent some digging. sterilization method. JODI PETERSON Sarah Tory is a correspondent for High Country News. She writes from Carbondale, Colorado. Border Patrol Agent Jeremy Wilkins inside the Galvez Tunnel near San Diego.  @ tory_sarah SARAH TORY/HIGH COUNTRY NEWS www.hcn.org High Country News 7 The arboreal erratic A coastal Alaska rainforest tree makes its unlikely home in Oregon’s dry mountains STORY AND ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH GILMAN

otanists have a joke about time, and former Forest Service Northwest softening the unblinking sunshine to an Bdistance and themselves. region botanist Mark Skinner, who ethereal glow. These are the last creatures Where most people walk about three stopped every 20 feet to inspect a new a botanist would expect to find in this miles in an hour, botanists will tell you wildflower, exclaiming, “You don’t want to place: a wayward pocket of Alaska yellow they dawdle along at one mile every three walk by all this stuff, do ya?” But as we cedars, hundreds of miles inland from hours. After all, it is only when you pause switch-backed down a hot, bright slope their core range, which stretches along that the green blur of a forest resolves into of yellowing grass, Rausch also lingered the rainy coasts and cold mountains of individual species. over his fair share of plants, especially Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Joe Rausch, head botanist for the trees emblematic of the mountain range’s and through the high Cascades in western Malheur National Forest in Oregon, parched climate — juniper, ponderosa Washington and Oregon. claims to be different, though. The barrel- pine, mountain mahogany dangling with Yellow cedar has long been one of the chested 44-year-old looks more like a horsehair lichen. It was a good thing, too: far Northwest coast’s most culturally firefighter than someone fascinated by the Our destination was the kind you can and commercially important trees, with genetics of miner’s lettuce plants. “I am easily miss, where a few steps take you strong, decay-resistant wood prized for impatient for a botanist,” he said. into a different world. building and sculpture, and soft fibrous This “impatience” is relative. It’s true Rausch signaled for us to leave the bark used in weaving. They’re thirsty, too. that Rausch strode down the trail, deep in trail where it crossed a shadowy notch in Ketchikan, Alaska, deep in yellow-cedar central Oregon’s Aldrich Mountains, well the mountainside, threaded by a stream. country, receives a squelchy 150 inches ahead of forest geneticist Andy Bower The desert forest fell away as we climbed, of precipitation annually. The Aldrich and we soon found ourselves in a cooler, Mountains get just 21. Sarah Gilman writes and draws from Portland, wetter grove of feathery conifers. Their “Why are these here?” I asked Rausch. Oregon. limbs joined overhead like linked hands, Please see Arboreal, page 22

8 High Country News December 10, 2018 THE HCN COMMUNITY

RESEARCH FUND

10 High Country News December 10, 2018 DEAR FRIENDS

Stephanie Gilbert | Montrose, CO Mary Anne Lower | South Pasadena, CA A most welcome winter William Gillette | Littleton, CO Debra L. Lowrey | Denver, CO David Glaeseman | Buckeye, AZ Miles Lowry | St. Charles, IL Looking out on the rain now borhood Goes Boom,” (HCN, Corinne Glock | Denver, CO Alston Lundgren | Santa Fe, NM washing away last weekend’s 10/29/18) stopped in at the Pao- Judith Gould | Boulder, CO Torsten Lyon | Golden, CO snow here in Spokane, Wash- nia office just before Thanks- Mary H. Graci | Bozeman, MT Tom & Barb Macgillivray | Windsor, CO ington, I envy the folks at High giving. Ted, who says the story Mary & Todd Graeff | Boise, ID Hugh MacMillan | Sedalia, CO Country News’ home base in drew a lot of attention on Colo- Susan Grant | Colorado Springs, CO Molly Magnuson | Santa Fe, NM Colorado, where a healthy dose rado’s Front Range, was passing John & Janet Green | Duluth, MN Walter Major | Lawrenceburg, KY of white stuff is flying around through Paonia with Amanda Linda Grey & Terry Root | Golden, CO Brandt Mannchen | Humble, TX the Rocky Mountains (though Prentiss and a crazy Boston ter- not, as of press time, in Paonia). rier named Tilly, on a road trip Glenn Griffin | Silver City, NM Marge Mansfield | Seattle, WA The people of the Four Corners that included Santa Fe, New Lori Groninger | Morrison, CO Patrick Mardock | Seattle, WA are particularly grateful, given Mexico, and Basalt, Colorado. Robert B. Haight | Riverton, WY Marie K. Martin | Grand Junction, CO the persistent drought that has A group of 15 people from Richard Halgren | Forestville, CA Jay and Kim Matthews | Corvallis, MT gripped the region lately. the Montrose Rec Center in Larry Hampson & Laura Ackerman | Spokane, WA Grace M. Marvin | Chico, CA In November, on the cam- nearby Montrose, Colorado, Olga Harbour | Tucson, AZ James Maxfield | Heber City, UT pus of our satellite office at spent well over an hour tour- Thomas Harding | Whitefish, MT Jill McCaughna | Fort Bragg, CA Western Colorado University ing the Paonia office Nov. 15, Marita Hart | Salt Lake City, UT Robert Aquinas McNally | Concord, CA in Gunnison, Editor-in-Chief asking probing and intelligent Russell & Billie Hart | Spokane, WA Bob Meehan | Portland, OR Brian Calvert introduced author questions, such as, “What kind David Hartesveldt | North Fork, CA Suki & William Molina | Boise, ID Michael Kodas, co-director of the of mistakes do you especially Charles & Bonnie Hash | Bozeman, MT Dorothy Montgomery | Tucson, AZ University of Colorado Boul- watch out for in fact-checking?” Bruce Hawtin | Jackson, WY Roxann Moore & John Walker | Coaldale, CO der’s Center for Environmental Copy editor Diane Sylvain joked Evan Haynes | Gaithersburg, MD Neighborhood Acupuncture, PLLC | Seattle, WA Journalism, who discussed about always double-checking John T. Heimer | Boise, ID Bruce & Sue Newell | Helena, MT his recent book, Megafire: The names and definitions, specifi- Richard Helfrich | Vida, OR Sam Newman | Oakland, CA Race To Extinguish a Deadly cally noting the correct explana- Gerald Henrikson | Culver, OR Fran Nimick | Colorado Springs, CO Epidemic of Flame. The discus- tion of NEPA. Guess what: In Robert Hiester | Oak Creek, CO David A. Noble | Spokane Valley, WA sion was especially timely, given “Sagebrush Rebel appointed to William E. Hine Jr. | Catawissa, PA Bud Norvell | Ithaca, NY California’s catastrophic wild- Interior Department” (HCN, John Hodge | Bellingham, WA John J. O’Hara | Berlin, NJ fires and the Nov. 23 release of 11/26/18), we failed to do just John Hoffman | Sonoita, AZ Kerry R. Page | Boise, ID the second volume of the 4th that. The federal environmental Shari Hogshead & Paul Gauthier | Bend, OR Adrienne Poirier | Flagstaff, AZ National Climate Assessment, law NEPA is the National En- Lloyd Holland | Lolo, MT Bruce Potter | Annapolis, MD which estimates that “the area vironmental Policy Act, not the Seth & Nancy Hoyt | Long Lake, MN Bryce Purkey | Meeker, CO burned by wildfire across the National Environmental Protec- Brent Hrometz | White Mountain Lake, AZ Bart Rea | Casper, WY western United States from tion Act. We regret the error, Jeff “Doc” Hubbard | Tustin, CA Kenneth F. Reinert | Sun Lakes, AZ 1984 to 2015 was twice what and not for the first time. Kate Hudson | Carbondale, CO James Remitz | Coeur d Alene, ID would have burned had climate —Carl Segerstrom, Barbara J. Hughes | Steamboat Springs, CO Maria Katherman & Will Robinson | Douglas, WY change not occurred.” for the staff Faith Ingwersen | Sheridan, WY Brett B. Roper | Logan, UT Frequent HCN contributor Ben Goldfarb’s book Eager: The Allen & Barbara Jackson | Meridian, ID Lin Rowland | Flagstaff, AZ Surprising, Secret Life of Bea- Kathy Jacobs | Tucson, AZ Hans Royer | Monterey, CA vers and Why They Matter made Clyde Jex | Grand Junction, CO Pete Ruhl | Castle Rock, CO The Washington Post’s list of “50 Erik Johnson | Boulder, CO Corinne Schieman | Salida, CO notable works of nonfiction in Diana Jones | Prescott Valley, AZ George Schovajsa | Hotchkiss, CO 2018.” An excerpt from the book, Carl P. Jordan | Athens, GA Wayne Schumacher | Clarkdale, AZ “How beavers make the desert Walden & Betty Joura | Dallas, OR Linda & Paul Schutt | Breckenridge, CO bloom,” appeared earlier this Ray Kamm | Boise, ID G.A. Seiffert | Scottsbluff, NE year in the magazine (HCN, Patrick Kane | Salt Lake City, UT Turko Semmes | Atascadero, CA 9/3/18). In its one-sentence Rajan Kapur | Boulder, CO Jerry E. Seth | Albuquerque, NM description of Eager, The Wash- Hugh Kenny | Cheyenne, WY Bern Shanks | Deer Harbor, WA ington Post asks: “Can those Michael Kepler | Englewood, CO Maitland Sharpe | Hume, VA paddle-tailed, buck-toothed dam David Kimball & Anne Austin Taylor | Richard Shepard | Troutdale, OR builders offer humans some Mill Valley, CA Bill Sims | Winnemucca, NV help in restoring our ailing en- Reida & Charles Kimmel | Eugene, OR Jeff Snyder | Divide, CO vironment?” We here at HCN Madge Kistner | Boulder, CO Margie Sohl | Salida, CO know that Ben’s answer is a re- Ron & Judy Knoshaug | Arvada, CO Hong & Sunnie Son | Hiawassee, GA sounding yes. Congratulations, Julia Whyde and Frank Korfanta | Casper, WY Lawrence Sprague | Andover, NH Ben, on a “dam” fine book! Alfred J. Kreinberg | Grand Junction, CO Thomas St. Martin | Denver, CO Meanwhile, an article from Ashley Krest | Paonia, CO Ron & Joy Surdam | Jackson Hole, WY former editorial fellow Lyndsey Paul Kriescher | Denver, CO Diana F. Tomback | Denver, CO Gilpin appeared in the Columbia Martha L. Kriske | Arvada, CO Bill Tonkin | Boise, ID Journalism Review. In “What John Kubica | Houston, TX Richard & Sandy Towers | San Antonio, TX I’ve learned in two years trying Don Kusler | Snohomish, WA David Trout | Port Orchard, WA to shift narratives about the Jacqueline Larner | Denver, CO Stephen Vago | Sterling, VA South,” Lyndsey describes how Al Larson | Concord, NH Bill Voigt | Laramie, WY she tries to tell nuanced stories Percy Laube & Joan Ridell | Somers, MT Christal Waters | Davis, CA about the region in her upstart publication, Southerly. Joel & Maxine Lautenberg | Stillwater, NY Gary Werner | Madison, WI Ted Wood, who photographed Full of frosty trees for rosy-cheeked Vincent & Nancy Lee | Cortez, CO Aaron Wernham & Jana McAninch | families, Grand Mesa, just north of Nathaniel Leonard | Eagle Point, OR Bozeman, MT oil and gas development — and Paonia, was bustling the weekend William Locke | Arvada, CO Dave White | Grand Junction, CO the people affected by it — for after Thanksgiving. our story, “When Your Neigh- LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 FEATURE BY JONATHAN THOMPSON

GENERATION ATOMIC Can a new generation of environmental activists save nuclear power?

Clean power forever, the planet hotter and drier and smokier. within our grasp, To do so, however, we must embrace by splitting atoms, nuclear power — conquer our irrational it’s come to pass. fears of radiation and return to “a story Tomorrow will be so great. that can be told in terms of abundance in Clean power forever, the world we live in.” will be our fate. Redfoot is a nuclear engineer, a devout environmentalist and an —“Clean Power Forever,” unflinching advocate for nuclear power. lyrics by Eric Meyer, founder of Renewable energy alone is not enough, Generation Atomic, 2018. she says; only if we use nuclear too can we eliminate fossil fuel burning. Sure, mma Redfoot stands at a nukes have their problems, she says. But whiteboard in a small confer- in true technophile form, she assures ence room, sketching neutrons, me that those problems can be fixed — protons and nuclei, her voice through engineering. rising enthusiastically as One such problem is nuclear power’s E she explains nuclear fission: inflexibility. Redfoot explains that when A neutron blasted into a uranium-235 a nuclear plant operator tries to ramp atom shatters the atom, releasing energy reactor output up or down in response to and yet more neutrons that split other changes in electricity demand or in solar uranium atoms, causing a frenetically or wind power production, xenon-135 energetic chain reaction. “The crazy thing and samarium-149, or “fission product about nuclear energy is that it turns poisons,” build up. She pauses when she mass into energy,” she says, her gray-blue sees my eyes widen with alarm at the eyes opening wider. “It. Destroys. Mass!” term, then looks ruefully back at her On the other side of the thick glass whiteboard: “Nuclear is really terrible them fellow millennials, she is determined window here at the Center for Advanced with names.” to brighten the view of nuclear energy. Energy Studies (CAES) on the out- In fact, nuclear is terrible with public These activists are self-consciously skirts of Idaho Falls, Idaho, the mercury perception in general. It’s a problem grassroots-scrappy. No slick and polished approaches 100 degrees, the sun an angry that even Redfoot, who has a bit of a ad campaigns here; instead, they stage orange blob behind the thickening gauze Sissy Spacek-circa-1975 vibe and wears pro-nuclear rallies that emulate the of smoke from wildfires across the region a cheery “Atoms for Peace” T-shirt, iconography of the 1980s-era no-nukes — a reminder of the toll fossil fuels are acknowledges can’t be engineered away. movement and the playful energy of taking on the planet. “The negatives are usually what people anti-war agitator Abbie Hoffman’s band But Redfoot says that the situation start with when they think of nuclear,” of youth activists. They sing opera, tag isn’t hopeless, that we can slash green- she says. their tweets with #SplitDontEmit and house gases and still have nice electri- So Redfoot accentuates the positives. have developed a pro-nuke smartphone fied things, including this comfortable Together with a growing collection of app. They even organized a Nuclear climate-controlled room, without making climate-hawk pro-nuclear folks, many of Pride Festival, complete with music,

12 High Country News December 10, 2018 theatre and cartoonish logos of flowers WHEN NUCLEAR POWER FIRST wilderness-drowning dams. The issue Nuclear engineer emerging from nuclear cooling towers. APPEARED in the West, it sundered an divided the Sierra Club, but ultimately and activist — and Eco-modernist Michael Shellenberger, environmental community primarily the group supported the plant, which got environmentalist — the high priest of the movement, calls it focused on protecting wildlands. Some licensed in 1968. Emma Redfoot poses outside Atomic Humanism. I think of it as Green members of the Sierra Club, including Brower left the club and started the Vallecitos Nuclear Evangelism. its charismatic director, David Brower, Friends of the Earth, where he contin- Nuclear Center “We believe that nuclear power can opposed Pacific Gas & Electric’s 1966 ued his fight against Diablo Canyon. near Livermore, and will actually save the world,” Matt proposal to build the Diablo Canyon He was joined by the anti-nuclear San California, where Bennett, vice president of public affairs nuclear generating station on the Central Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and the the dome of a for the left-leaning think tank Third Way, Coast of California mainly because it Abalone Alliance, which rose up alongside nuclear power plant told the Nuclear Energy Assembly in would industrialize the coastline, not the reactor containment domes in the that once produced 2016. “We are never going to reach our because they were ideologically opposed 1970s. In 1979, some 30,000 protesters, 40,000 megawatt- climate goals if we just focus on things to nuclear power. Others saw nuclear musicians and politicians — includ- hours of electricity that are in vogue at the moment.” plants as preferable to river-killing, ing Gov. Jerry Brown, then in his first still stands. SARAH CRAIG

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 period as governor — attended a Stop- Diablo concert and rally. That same year, Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island suffered its meltdown, the Church Rock spill in New Mexico sent millions of gallons of radioactive effluent onto the Navajo Nation, The China Syndrome hit theaters, and a rousing, star-studded “No Nukes” concert rocked Madison Square Garden, with Jackson Browne, Carly Simon, John Hall and Bonnie Raitt imploring the world to “take all your atomic poison power away.” Neither the growing wave of popular opinion and pop culture, however, nor the discovery of new seismic faults near the plant, could stop Diablo Canyon — not even the revelation that its blueprints were flawed. In 1985 — the year before the Chernobyl incident — the two reactors began churning about 18 million megawatt-hours of low-emissions juice into the electrical grid each year, power- ing some 1.7 million homes. Emma Redfoot was born several years later. She grew up in Montana, spend- ing a good part of her childhood outdoors in the woods and mountains. After high school, she pursued environmental studies at Lewis and Clark College. During that time, she traveled to Latin America to work on a permaculture farm and then to research service tourism. It came to her that the two most pressing issues facing her generation were global warming and global poverty. And energy was the key to tackling both. “Energy is the ideal thing to empower people,” she told me at CAES, a part of the sprawling, federally run Idaho National Laboratories that boasts a strangely Silicon Valley-like feel, right down to the brightly colored beanbags in the lobby. Millions of people who lack access to the grid are forced to burn wood, coal, dung or even tires and other garbage for cooking and heating, to the detriment of their health and the planet’s. They need electricity, she said, but getting it from fossil fuels merely centralizes the pollution. Wind and solar have problems, too; they are intermittent and require lots of space. No source of electricity is truly clean or carbon-free. Material for solar panels or batteries must be mined, wind turbines manufactured. Uranium mining, milling and enrichment are energy-intensive, and coal mines and natural gas wells ooze methane. When the entire fuel life cycle is taken into account, however, nuclear is among the most climate-friendly, emit- ting 100 times less carbon per megawatt- hour than coal and 50 times less than natural gas — even less than photovolta- ics. Fission spews none of the nasty air pollutants emitted by burning coal, and only a fraction of the solid waste. Nuclear, Redfoot concluded, is the best way to pull people out of poverty without contributing to climate change, so she headed back to school at the University of Idaho to pursue Diablo Canyon Power Plant in central California, contentious from the start, is scheduled to a master’s degree in nuclear engineering. close in 2025. HERB LING To members of Gen X and their

14 High Country News December 10, 2018 elders — the now-middle-aged baby boomers who grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation — Redfoot’s path can seem a little jarring. They remember the No Nukes movement, 99 Luftballons, Three Mile Island, War Games and The Day After; in the West, they witnessed firsthand the deadly legacy of uranium mining and milling and nuclear tests. But Redfoot, like much of the self-proclaimed Generation Atomic, was brought up after the Cold War ended and the term “mutually assured destruction” had faded from the lexicon. The alarm over the Chernobyl disaster had ebbed; “No Nukes” was merely a graying relic of her parents’ generation, like the vinyl record- ings of its soundtrack. This lack of baggage, combined with the existential angst induced by climate change, allows millennials to see nuclear power much as their grandpar- ents might have, back when Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech. Nuclear energy would help redeem the world from the terrible scourge of atomic weapons, the president said; it would be used to “serve the needs rather than the fears of the world — to make the deserts flourish, to warm the cold, to feed the hungry, to alleviate the misery of the world.” That optimism drew Redfoot to Diablo Canyon for an internship. But when she arrived, she found the plant — and That would cost billions, and in today’s in part to radioactive-steam leaks, as At an Environmental nuclear energy in general — facing its own electricity market, it’s just not worth it. a prelude to what would happen when Progress-sponsored existential crisis. Before a new generation An abundance of cheap natural gas Diablo Canyon shut down. pro-nuclear march in Chicago in October of safer, more nimble nuclear power plants and the rise of renewables have brought In order to fill the 18,000 gigawatt- 2016, Emma Redfoot, could be deployed to save the climate, the wholesale electricity prices down, making hour void left by San Onofre’s departure center back, stands atomic evangelists would first have to both nuclear and coal plants less cost- and to meet increasing electricity demand beside pro-nuclear save the existing infrastructure. effective, even without the expensive due to rising temperatures, California activists, including cooling-system upgrades. Plus, the vari- grid operators turned to natural gas. Mothers for Nuclear WHEN REDFOOT ARRIVED at San Luis ability of solar and wind, which produce Generation from gas jumped by a whop- founders Heather Obispo in 2014 to take her engineering only when the sun is shining and the ping 30,000 gigawatt-hours, resulting in Matteson (braid) and prerequisites at Cal Poly, PG&E’s effort to wind is blowing, has increased the need an annual increase of more than 20 mil- Kristin Zaitz, front COURTESY OF renew its 40-year operating license with for flexible generation that can quickly lion tons of additional carbon emissions row, right. EMMA REDFOOT the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and increase or decrease the amount of juice — about half of which could be directly its lease on state lands was well underway. going into the grid. Natural gas is limber attributed to San Onofre’s closure. It was The plant’s two reactors, which comprise in that way but nuclear is less so, thanks as if by taking a nuclear plant offline, the Western Grid’s third-largest generator in part to those darned fission poisons California had fired up a massive coal- after Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant Redfoot described, which make the reac- fired power plant and run it full-bore. and Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam, tion less efficient. PG&E was increasingly The green evangelists predicted the had been fissioning for years without any seeing the bottom-line appeal of letting same carbon surge if Diablo Canyon major incidents. Yet PG&E officials knew the plant go dark. were to close. But PG&E believed it the renewals were no slam dunk; Friends All this helped spark the nuclear could avoid that scenario: Demand for of the Earth, Mothers for Peace and other evangelism movement. Shellenberger electricity was actually going down, the opposition groups, concerned about nearby left the Breakthrough Institute and company said, because of an increase in earthquake faults, the waste problem and started the pro-nuclear advocacy group distributed generation from solar and the plant’s fish-killing cooling system, Environmental Progress. Diablo Canyon wind, efficiency measures and a chang- would make sure of that. engineer Kristin Zaitz and reactor opera- ing electricity market. In 2016, the utility Each day, Diablo Canyon sucks up tor Heather Matteson founded Mothers for announced it would shut Diablo Canyon about 2.5 billion gallons of ocean water Nuclear to lobby for keeping the plant run- down in 2025, following a plan endorsed to generate steam and cool the reac- ning for another 20 years or more. Zaitz, by greens and unions that would provide tors, before spitting it out — 20 degrees who wrote that she “grew up on the writ- a “just transition” for the community warmer — back into the Pacific. The ings of John Muir,” was dumbfounded that and the workers, and replace lost power process kills an estimated 5,000 adult fish environmentalists wanted to shutter the capacity with low-carbon sources other and 1.5 billion fish eggs and fry every year. plant, even at the expense of the climate. than natural gas. The warm-water discharges also alter The advocates argued that closure The nuclear evangelists are skepti- the aquatic ecosystem in Diablo Cove. would not only rob the community of cal of this plan, which outgoing Gov. In 2010, the state of California ordered 1,500 high-paying jobs, it would deprive Jerry Brown signed off on in September. coastal plants to do away with so-called the state’s grid of its single largest gen- Shellenberger calls it a “back-room” deal “once-through” cooling systems. To keep erator of low-emissions juice. They cited “negotiated by corrupt institutions behav- its lease, PG&E would have to retrofit the the 2012 shutdown of the San Onofre ing unethically and perhaps illegally.” plant with less deadly cooling technology. Generating Station near San Diego, due The activists’ complaint, though, goes

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 beyond the politics: Jettisoning Diablo limiting methane pollution from oil and Canyon, they say, will delay the move gas production. A high price on carbon away from fossil fuels. emissions would also give nuclear a leg “Diablo Canyon acts as the reliable up on natural gas and coal. ground on which wind and solar can be That’s not to say that nuclear power built,” Emma Redfoot told California land isn’t getting a boost from the federal commissioners in June 2016. “I cannot government. On the contrary: Over the see how replacing a clean source of past decade, substantial federal dollars energy with a clean source of energy is a have been invested in a new generation step forward.” of so-called advanced reactor designs. This summer, the Department of Energy’s BUT THE SIMPLE ARGUMENT that Gateway for Accelerated Innovation nuclear plants should stay because they in Nuclear doled out $53 million to are cleaner is increasingly complicated various endeavors, and in September, these days by the economic and political a bipartisan coalition led by Sens. Lisa factors involved. When coal plants face Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Cory Booker, When emissions from all phases of power sources’ life cycles are a shutdown for economic reasons, they D-N.J., introduced a bill that would direct accounted for, from mining to manufacturing to generating power, have a huge domestic coal-mining indus- the department to support the develop- nuclear rivals even solar power in terms of climate friendliness. try willing to spend millions on lobbyists ment of advanced reactors. SOURCE: WORLD NUCLEAR ASSOCIATION and campaigns to try to keep them open. At the head of these politically Nuclear plants facing retirement get far sexy innovations is a project pushed less help, despite the fervent support of by a Portland, Oregon-based company their green proponents. called NuScale, which would include 12 That’s in part because globalism has 60-megawatt reactors installed on the reduced the domestic uranium-mining vast landscape near Idaho Falls co-opted lobby to a mere shadow of its Cold War by the Idaho National Laboratory. Utah self. In 2017, U.S. uranium producers Association of Municipal Power Suppliers, kicked out a record low of just 1,150 tons or UAMPS. With 46 members scattered of uranium concentrate (compared to the across the Interior West, UAMPS will own 600 million tons of U.S. coal mined for the euphemistically named Carbon Free power production last year), or about 5 Power Project — if it gets built. percent of the fuel consumed by domes- NuScale claims that its small modu- tic nuclear plants. The other 95 percent lar reactors, or SMRs, will be safer and comes mainly from Canada, Australia, use less water than conventional reac- Russia and Kazakhstan. Only about tors. But the big selling point is their 400 people currently work in the U.S. relatively low buy-in cost. A utility could, uranium-mining industry. That’s not theoretically, build a micro-nuke plant exactly a formidable voting bloc, nor are for less than $2 billion upfront, a bargain its members easily transformed into the next to the $27 billion or so currently kind of “real America” working-class icons being spent to construct new reactors at that coal miners have become. the Vogtle plant in Georgia. The reactors Rather than spend political capital would be manufactured in a facility, then on fighting for Diablo Canyon, the two trucked to the installation; what NuScale largest domestic uranium producers, loses in economies of scale, it hopes to off- Ur-Energy and Energy Fuels — which set with the volume of reactors produced. owns the Daneros Mine and White Mesa NuScale’s corporate demeanor screams Mill near Utah’s Bears Ears National scrappy startup, but it’s actually mostly When the San Onofre nuclear plant stopped producing power in early Monument — petitioned the Trump owned by Fluor Corporation, the global 2012, California grid operators filled the void with natural gas, reversing administration to force utilities to col- construction conglomerate that was the the downward trend of greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s lectively purchase at least 25 percent of lead contractor on the $60 billion cleanup electricity sector. The problem was exacerbated by the loss of hydropower that year, thanks to drought, and by increased electricity consumption due their fuel domestically. Nuclear boosters, of the former Hanford nuclear weapons to heat. Since then, renewable power sources have gained a larger share including the Nuclear Energy Institute, complex in eastern Washington. (See story of the state’s power mix, and overall power consumption has decreased, the industry’s biggest lobbyist, aren’t on nuclear waste cleanup efforts on page bringing emissions back to pre-2012 levels. SOURCE: CALIFORNIA ENERGY COMMISSION so keen on the idea, however. Limits or 18.) Fluor has spent over $12 million tariffs would increase the cost of uranium on lobbyists over the last three years; it and therefore the operating costs for has been a major political donor, primar- nuclear plants, making them even less ily to Republican campaigns, and it put competitive with natural gas. $250,000 into Trump’s Inauguration The Trump administration made a Day fund. The feds have been generous feeble attempt to throw imperiled nuclear in return: NuScale has received nearly plants a lifeline this past summer by $288 million in grants from the fed- forcing utilities to buy coal and nuclear eral government since 2014, including power regardless of the cost, but that rule $47 million in 2018. is currently on hold. Green nuclear evan- NuScale hopes to be generating gelists, meanwhile, don’t want that kind power in 2026. It has already cleared of help. “Nuclear people are so unhappy the first licensing hurdle with the U.S. that we keep getting saddled with coal,” Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is says Redfoot. After all, nuclear’s strongest well into the second phase. But nothing marketing asset is that it’s not coal. If will happen unless UAMPS succeeds Trump were genuinely interested in help- in selling the concept to its members. ing nuclear, Redfoot said, he would have Thus far, it’s run into resistance in Price, Nuclear power plants are among the largest generators on the Western kept President Barack Obama’s Clean Utah, where leaders fear it would help Grid, each with annual outputs equal to dozens of the biggest wind or Power Plan, which limited emissions kill the local coal industry; in Truckee, solar installations combined. SOURCE: ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION from coal-fired plants, as well as rules California, because it would hamper the

16 High Country News December 10, 2018 community’s efforts to go 100 percent renewable; and in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where people are leery of invest- ing in unproven technology, not to mention the high projected operating costs relative to other energy sources. Anti- nuclear activists in Utah and Idaho are battling the project, too, mostly because it will use a lot of water and add to the growing stockpile of radioactive waste. Redfoot said she is “impressed” that UAMPS finds value in nuclear, but for all of her desire to keep existing nuclear generation online, she’s decidedly cooler on new construction, including the UAMPS project. Beginning in about 2006, domestic electricity consumption stopped its long and steady climb and hit a plateau. Until it starts rising again due to mass electrifica- tion of transportation or industry, Redfoot said, “it’s hard to make an argument to build new reactors now in the U.S.” disease or other maladies from exposure adequate. Shellenberger has written that An artist’s rendering to uranium and its radioactive “daugh- he would like to see the idea of a national of a 60-megawatt IN SEPTEMBER, THE DEPARTMENT OF ters.” The nuclear evangelists’ assurances depository abandoned altogether. Instead, micro-nuclear ENERGY posted a video on Twitter. It’s in that mining is safer now are belied by the he thinks that the $45 billion or so in reactor similar to black-and-white, with artificial scratches fact that one of the few uranium facilities an industry-funded depository savings what is proposed for added to give it a vintage look, and stars left in the U.S. — Ur-Energy’s Lost Creek account should be given back to exist- the area near Idaho Falls. COURTESY OF Generation Atomic founder Eric Meyer, in-situ operation in Wyoming — has had ing nuclear plants like Diablo Canyon to NUSCALE belting out an aria in a smooth baritone. at least 40 violations, spills or “reportable keep them running. “Clean Power Forever,” he sings, “within events” since 2013, including a release Either way lies risk. On the one hand, our grasp. By splitting atoms, it’s come to of 1,625 gallons of uranium-containing there is the possibility of reactor melt- pass. Saving 2 million lives, just in this production fluid this summer. downs, of bomb-building terrorists acquir- past century.” “Nuclear needs to take ownership ing enriched uranium or the plutonium The video was filmed as part of a of its history, of the harm done to the that is a component of nuclear waste. On CAES advocacy training session at Navajo people,” says Redfoot, even as the other hand, the Intergovernmental Experimental Breeder Reactor number she notes that all the uranium mining Panel on Climate Change recently 1, west of Idaho Falls, where in 1951, and milling up until the late 1960s warned that without immediate and nuclear fission was first used to generate was intended for weapons, not energy severe cuts in greenhouse gas emis- and transmit electricity. EBR-I is now a production, including the activities at sions, the global temperature will rise museum that serves as a church of sorts Rocky Flats and Hanford. But it also 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or more above for nuclear evangelists. Its mid-century, needs to move forward, she says, and the pre-industrial times within just a couple retro-futuristic, sleek and chunky control policymakers, the influencers and the of decades, manifesting in rising seas, panels and knobs and valves evoke a more environmentalists must rationally weigh crippling drought, pestilence, megafires optimistic era — a time when the same the risks of continuing to generate power and devastating floods. If something’s not terrible yet elegant process that annihi- with nuclear fission against the far more done soon, the climate change catas- lated two Japanese cities and ended World pressing risk of burning fossil fuel at trophe may grow far worse by the time War II prophesied the dawn of a more anywhere near the current rate. Generation Atomic reaches middle age. prosperous Atomic Age and might even be Nuclear reactor waste — evangelists What’s a little radioactive steam, a employed “in accomplishing such bizarre prefer the term “spent fuel” — is also football field’s worth of waste and a few tasks as irrigating the Sahara and melting a risk, Redfoot acknowledges. But the thousand or so dead fish next to that? the ice cap on Greenland.” Atomic Action app points out that the This is the calculus that drove Meyer The difference is that today’s nuclear 80,000 or so metric tons of spent fuel that to quit his jobs as a Minnesota labor evangelists hope to employ atomic fission U.S. reactors have produced since 1968, organizer and professional opera singer to keep those same ice caps frozen — and stacked 24 feet high, could all fit onto a to head to California to support Diablo to save lives. The 2 million lives Meyer single football field; and that all of that Canyon and then start Generation sang about come from a 2013 paper by material is accounted for, and its stor- Atomic, and travel the world serenad- NASA scientists Pushker Kharecha and age in dry casks is highly regulated and ing anti-nuclear protesters with “I can’t James Hansen, who brought the loom- closely monitored. Compare that to coal help falling in love with U (as in U-235).” ing climate change catastrophe into the power plants, which annually kick out It’s even pushed the consistently anti- public eye three decades ago. It estimated tens of millions of tons of nasty fly ash, nuclear Union of Concerned Scientists in Jonathan Thompson is that nuclear power had prevented 1.84 slag and other solid waste, in addition to November to change its tune and join the a contributing editor million air pollution-related deaths. That all the toxins and particulates that spew green nuclear evangelists’ fight to keep at High Country News figure does not include mortality caused from the smokestacks, as well as the bil- some existing nuclear plants running for and the author of by climate change, such as the scores of lions of gallons of briney, contaminated the sake of the climate. River of Lost Souls: The lives lost this fall to climate-exacerbated “produced water” that oil and gas wells And it’s what inspired Redfoot to Science, Politics and fires in California, or, for that matter, the vomit each year. These fossil fuel waste get her degree this August and head to Greed Behind the Gold non-air-pollution-related deaths caused streams are toxic and can be radioac- California to work as a fellow for Oklo, King Mine Disaster.  by coal or natural gas extraction. tive, while federal regulations on their a startup that’s developing a very small @jonnypeace Yet it also misses the human and disposal are virtually nonexistent. fast reactor that could be deployed in This coverage environmental cost of mining and milling Though the nuclear evangelist move- places like India, where some 300 mil- is supported by uranium, the countless Western uranium ment is far from monolithic, its acolytes lion people lack grid access — a number, contributors to the miners and millworkers, and the people generally believe that the current spent- Redfoot says, “that breaks my heart.” High Country News who lived nearby — both Navajo and fuel situation — with waste stored on site “For me,” she concluded, “being an Enterprise Journalism white — who have gotten cancer, kidney in large, sealed canisters — is perfectly environmentalist is being pro-nuclear.” Fund.

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 FEATURE | By Heather Hansman

No Fix for Our Nuclear Past At Washington’s Hanford nuclear site, failing infrastructure and make-do plans

he Hanford nuclear complex production plant. (The other two parties in eastern Washington lies are the U.S. Department of Energy and in a green-gold sagebrush the Environmental Protection Agency.) steppe, so big you can’t see the On a sweltering June evening, we stand edges of it and shimmery in on the edge of the site’s central plateau, theT summer heat. The only landmarks wind buffeting our faces as we stare at are low-slung buildings on the horizon the bony frame of the future vitrification and ancient sand dunes scrubbed bare plant. If you were to pull a shot glass full when the glaciers melted. There’s almost of liquid out of one of the tanks buried no trace that this is the biggest nuclear near us, it would kill everyone with 100 waste dump in the country. The scale of yards instantly. And the danger would nuclear waste is like that: sprawling out not disappear: Plutonium has a half-life into the metaphysical distance, too big for of 24,100 years. The plant is supposed Inside one of the the human mind to hold. to start processing the most toxic waste tanks at Hanford, That’s what John Price tells me. He’s in 2036. But construction has stalled where the cleanup the tri-party agreement section man- out and most of the waste sits in under- operation continues. ager for the Washington Department ground tanks, some of which have begun Courtesy of Washington of Ecology, which regulates Hanford, to fail. “Suppose all these things are River Protection Solutions the site of the country’s first plutonium starting to fall apart faster than we can clean them up,” Price says. “It becomes a really interesting moral question.” Over the ridge north of us, the Columbia River curves around the site, appearing motionless others inhaled radioactive dust at the until you get close and same site, halting work indefinitely. Then, see how much water is in June of this year, the Department of pushing past the banks. Energy (DOE), which is responsible for Over the past year, the site, released a proposal to reclassify a series of accidents some of the high-level waste as less toxic, has put the spotlight with what’s called a “Waste Incidental to on Hanford, its aging Reprocessing” evaluation, so they could infrastructure and the clean it up sooner and more cheaply. lack of a long-term solu- “There’s a lot more work to do than tion. In May 2017, part of there is money to get it accomplished,” the Plutonium Uranium Price said. “We’ve really come to a fork in Extraction Facility, which the road.” holds rail cars full of solid Across the country, big energy compa- waste, collapsed. Later that nies are considering a move from coal to year, workers tearing down the nuclear-fueled plants even as sites like Plutonium Finishing Plant were Hanford remain mired in many-decades- contaminated with plutonium and long cleanups of radioactive landscapes. americium particles when an open-air As the possibility of more waste looms, demolition went wrong. In December, Hanford has become a flashpoint for

18 High Country News December 10, 2018 people who fear that there’s no safe way could have calculated, mostly due to the eggs; and technetium-99, which dissolves The B Reactor sits in to deal with our nuclear legacy. In this radioactive detritus they left behind. like salt in water and has a half-life of the sagebrush steppe era of climate change and large-scale en- The Government Accountability Office 211,000 years. of the Hanford Site, vironmental degradation, the site raises estimates cleaning up Hanford could The 586 square miles of sage still Washington, along the the question: Can we ever clean up the total more than $100 billion. Since 1989, hold the 324 Building, home to highly banks of the Columbia River, where a massive mistakes of our past? when Hanford was first designated as a radioactive nuclear containment cham- cleanup continues. Superfund site, 889 buildings have been bers called hot cells, less than 1,000 feet Stuart Isett In February 1945, Col. Franklin demolished, 18.5 million tons of debris from the Columbia and right across from Matthias, the eager young civil engineer have been put in controlled landfills, and the town of Richland, where many of the who directed construction of Hanford, 20 billion gallons of groundwater have Hanford workers live. In the central pla- took a train to Los Angeles to hand-deliv- been treated. With three decades of work, teau, where the ghostly vitrification plant er the first 100-gram plutonium plug fab- the scope of the problem has been greatly stands, the Waste Encapsulation Storage ricated at the site to a courier from Los reduced, but the really toxic stuff is still Facility holds 1,936 radioactive cesium Alamos, New Mexico. It would become the on site. The groundwater beneath Han- and strontium capsules currently kept core of bombs like the Fat Man, dropped ford is never going to be clean enough to in a glorified swimming pool. If an earth- on Nagasaki that August. As he handed drink, thanks to a cocktail of chemicals: quake were to crack the pool, or the water off the hockey puck-sized object, he told strontium-90, which deteriorates marrow supply were to run dry, those isotopes, the courier it cost $300 million to make. in the bones of humans and animals and physically hot and linked to bone cancer, The production of those pucks would takes 300 years to break down; hexava- would spread quickly. prove to cost far more than even Matthias lent chromium, which mutates salmon The knotty heart of the cleanup is the

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 last 15 percent of the cleanup could be as expensive as the first 85 percent, which has already taken 30 years. Maintaining the tanks alone costs $300 million a year, and the minimum amount needed to keep things safe increases as time goes on and infrastructure ages. There currently isn’t enough federal funding to meet cleanup benchmarks, and no money has been al- located for accidents like the tunnel col- lapse that contaminated workers. At the current rate of funding and cleanup, the DOE’s Richland Office, which manages most of the site, falls another year behind schedule every two years, and the Office of River Protection, which oversees the tank waste, slips back a year every three. This year, President Donald Trump proposed slashing the budget for Hanford cleanup by $230 million.

If you’re a civilian, one of the only ways to get a close look at the hyperobject that is the complex cleanup process is to score a seat on one of the Department of Energy’s annual cleanup tours. On a sun- beaten summer day, I boarded an overly air-conditioned short bus packed with retirement-aged folks. Joe Guyette, the volunteer tour guide, has worked at Han- ford since 1973; before that, he was in the Army, where he says he got the better part of a lifetime’s dose of radiation. He does these tours to try allay negative per- ceptions of Hanford and show the public just how complicated the cleanup is. “It’s clear that sometimes they haven’t been careful,” Guyette says. “They get criticized about it, but they’re doing the best they can.” Guyette took us on a tour of the water treatment plant, where we talked about those groundwater plumes. We drove by the cocooned reactors and the dark, hulking plutonium finishing plant, hoping to get a sense what is actually worth being scared of, what constitutes cleanup, and how nuclear waste changes over time. He took us to a three-quarter-scale mock-up of the tank farms, because it’s impossible to go near the real ones, and we watched videos of water cannons trying to scour the tarry waste off the inside of the tanks. The water around tank farm, on the central plateau, where site. “The biggest mind-boggling thing Cleaning up the tank farm requires the cesium and 56 million gallons of high-level waste — about it is that we’re all going to be dead moving the waste out of the single-shell strontium capsules the official term for the long-lived radio- before this is cleaned up.” That timespan tanks, which are each as wide across in the pools at active material leftover from plutonium challenges our decision-making, which is as a tennis court and can hold up to a Hanford glows an production — sit in 177 underground much more suited to responding to acci- million gallons of waste, and into the eerie shade of blue tanks. Each tank holds a unique mixture dents than to multigenerational cleanup sturdier double-shell tanks. From there, in an effect known as the Cherenkov Glow. of sludge, solid, supernate liquid and projects. Philosopher Timothy Morton it will — theoretically — be vitrified, or The light comes crusty saltcake — a witch’s brew of 1,800 categorizes nuclear weapons, waste and turned into glass, at the as-yet-unbuilt from radioactive different chemicals that are buzzing, off- explosions (not to mention climate change vitrification plant and then sent to the cesium and gassing and breaking down. Sixty-seven and the longevity of Styrofoam cups) as stalled-out proposed federal nuclear re- strontium decay. of the 149 carbon-steel single-shell tanks “hyperobjects” — real-life objects that are pository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Department of Energy and one of the newer 28 double shells too large in time and space for humans to or to another long-term storage facility. have leaked, but the Energy Department fully grasp. How, then, can we calculate Every step is excruciatingly complex. The refuses to build new ones, and every year all their costs? massive tanks were designed to hold ra- the timeframe for cleanup gets longer. The Department of Energy spends bil- dioactive materials, not release them, so “If you think it’s nearly intractable, lions of dollars on the cleanup each year; any material in these tanks has to come that’s because it is,” said Randy Brad- next year, it has a $2.4 billion budget. out through a pipe just 12 inches around. bury, the communications director from But those billions are barely enough to Challenges like this have forced Hanford Washington’s Department of Ecology, one keep the wheels on, and the Government managers to invent every step of the of the three parties that regulates the Accountability Office estimates that the cleanup process, from how to sample the

20 High Country News December 10, 2018 contents to how to keep video cameras That has created expensive and dan- troubled cleanup efforts as well as ex- from burning up in the radioactive heat gerous blockages throughout the nuclear perts’ failure to account for the many inside. It’s a constant guessing game, waste management system. Without a ways its dangers manifest. where the questions of how to store the place to send waste, the cleanup at Han- Ross explained to a room full of gray waste and neuter its effects change end- ford has no real endgame. Because of heads why her people at the Energy De- lessly. That’s why in June, the Energy the long-term impossibility, the Hanford partment thought they could do it safely. Department proposed reclassifying the Advisory Board — a coalition of tribal “Your concern is what if we’re wrong,” she remaining high-level waste in the C members, community volunteers and gov- said to the crowd. “I hear that.” section of the tank farm as low-activity ernment workers who advise the agencies She says they’ll look at how the closed waste, and then filling the tanks with that manage the site — is constantly wor- system is going to perform over the long grout to stabilize the remaining 66,000 ried that the funds might dry up while term. Their model goes to 1,000 years, gallons of waste, so it could be kept onsite the tanks are still full. The fear of slashed but they’ll also consider what might hap- permanently. The department thinks that funding, and the cleanup’s long delay, is pen in 10,000 years, and model out to the it would be safe enough to close the door part of what drove the Department of En- half-life of plutonium, 24,000 years. They on the tank cleanup once the grout is in, ergy to consider grouting. plan to use what they call “institutional except for long-term monitoring. But the proposal worries watchdog controls” — signs, gates and infrastruc- According to the tri-party agreement groups, who are concerned about short- ture — to keep people away from the that governs the cleanup, the Energy sighted cost-saving measures that could waste for 100 years. Department is currently required to get 99 percent of the waste out of the tanks and vitrify it, but Sherri Ross of the department says the definition of high-level waste overlooks the fact that much of the waste is no longer very toxic. They’ve taken 1.7 million gallons of waste of out of the C Farm tanks, or about 96 percent. Of the residual that’s left, the bulk of the material has less than a 30-year half-life, so it’s already become half as radioactive. The move has resurfaced a question that has plagued Hanford experts for years: Is it better to do a decent job now, or the best job later? Some people believe a fast response may be safer than a slower, more thor- ough response. “Until all the waste is out of those tanks, it’s almost inevitable that more of them will leak,” Bradbury says. The tanks, built starting in the 1940s, were designed to safely contain waste for up to 40 years on the assumption that we’d have figured out a long-term plan by then. But we haven’t, at Hanford or anywhere else. High-level waste was never supposed to stay on site permanently. The waste from the tanks is intended to be vitrified, turned into glass rods, then sent to a federal repository, where it would sit, isolated, forever. But that repository doesn’t exist yet, and it’s possible that it never will. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the spot to store the waste. Despite $15 bil- put surrounding communities at lasting But people close to Hanford argue The vitrification lion spent studying the site, and a grow- risk by keeping 700,00 gallons of waste there are too many unanswered ques- plant, still under ing cost to hold the waste at other sites, that’s currently classified as high-level, tions. For example: If there’s a leak 100 construction, will plans for Yucca have been in limbo for de- and that might ultimately leak to the years in the future, will the government convert high-level cades, in large part because of opposition river on site. “What the DOE is proposing have money to deal with it? What hap- radioactive waste from Nevadans, including former Senate into a stable glass is to make the Hanford site a high-level pens if people are trying to farm at Han- Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who form for storage. waste repository in all but name,” said ford in 100 years? Or 1,000 years? How don’t want the waste transported through Hanford Vit Plant Tom Carpenter, executive director of do you tell people in 200 years not to dis- or stored in their state. A bill to reopen the Hanford Challenge, an environmental turb the soil? How can you be sure they’ll Yucca passed the U.S. House of Represen- advocacy group. “That does not belong in understand the same things we do — the tatives as recently as May, but failed in an agriculture zone in a major river sys- same language, the same symbols? the Senate. tem in an earthquake zone.” “When I hear people say things “We’ve made stuff that will be dan- like, ‘This will never happen,’ I re- gerous for millennia and we deal with it Leaving waste, even if it’s contained, ally want to caution them,” Rod Skeen in two-year congressional cycles,” said has proved a hard sell with the public. In of the Confederated Tribes of the William Kinsella, a North Carolina State meetings over the plan in October, people Umatilla Indian Reservation told the University professor whose research pointed to past failures. “The history of Hanford Advisory Board. He says that includes nuclear weapons cleanup. “We Hanford is one of wishful thinking,” one traditional water uses, like fishing and don’t want to make hasty decisions, but speaker told the assembled experts. That sweat lodges, mean the tribe’s exposure it’s a chokepoint for nuclear constipation.” distrust has roots in the site’s constantly is different than what the Energy De-

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 partment might assume exposure looks in the future,” she says. “We basically as broad-scale, but I’m worried about the fu- like. Tribes have historic treaty rights a country have to learn how to have the ture,” he says, when we stop on the north to hunting and fishing grounds within appropriate amount of fear.” side of the river and look back toward the the site, and they’ve asked the DOE not hulking shells of the former reactors. “I to reclassify waste in the past, because THE LATE SUMMER LIGHT slips out as don’t want to sensationalize the ground- of concerns about how that waste would we drive back to town, passing historic water plumes or the collapses, but the trickle down into the ecosystem, and their tribal hunting grounds and driving by no-Yucca solution is a real threat.” food system. the beach where Price likes to launch his As Price thinks about the cleanup’s Those kinds of low-probability but boat to paddle on the Columbia. We trace future, he’s concerned that we can’t see high-risk odds have created an environ- the edge of the 195,000-acre Hanford the limit of what might happen here, in a ment that University of Washington pro- Reach National Monument within the worst-case scenario. And he worries that fessor Shannon Cram calls “the politics site, where 43 new-to-science plant and the fear of nuclear waste’s slippery threat of impossibility.” How do you navigate insect species were found during a Na- will fade, even if the threat itself doesn’t, a situation where safety is impossible ture Conservancy survey in the ’90s. or that controls will loosen as people to promise? The people in charge of car- I ask Price what he thinks the worst- become overwhelmed by the scale of the ing for Hanford are trying to prevent case scenario might be, and he says there problem. unknown future problems, and fix past are two things that keep him up at night. To fix our past mistakes, we need to generations’ mistakes. But in the face of The first is a dramatic natural disaster, have more foresight than the people who a budget crunch and an overwhelming such as an earthquake or a fire, that came before us. But that’s nearly impossi- cleanup, it’s nearly impossible to know would damage the fragile infrastructure ble. In the 1940s, Hanford scientists faced what’s right. and cause a massive spill. The site sits at an immediate fear by creating weapons Heather Hansman Cram, who has studied the long-term the drought-prone edge of the Cascadia that ended a war but left an unplanned lives in Seattle, where public health effects of Hanford, says it’s subduction zone, so both are likely. The toxic legacy. Today, as we struggle to dis- she writes about likely that Hanford will never be com- week before our visit, a fire burned 2,500 entangle ourselves from energy sources water and the West. pletely clean, and that, if some waste is acres here, and we can still smell the that leave us with multigenerational Downriver, her first always going to remain in the ground, the charred sage. But Price’s second fear is problems like climate change, there’s book, will be out in real challenge is deciding what an accept- about the equally insidious threat people little evidence for further-reaching imagi- April. Follow her able level of exposure is. pose to themselves: A lack of long-term nation in our decision-making. It’s still  @hhansman “I think it’s really misleading to call protection and the erosion of care. He says impossible to know what we can’t see it cleanup,” Cram says. “It’s not clean, it’s the paradox of Hanford is trying to con- coming. And if we fail, this waste pile and This coverage contained and monitored.” Cram remains vince people that the site is safe now, but more like it will remain our legacy, sitting is supported by concerned about the possibility of disas- that in 500 — or 1,000 — years, it might in overlooked corners like the empty east- contributors to the ter being passed on to future generations. not be, and that we have to make deci- ern Washington plains, for longer than High Country News “The brewing threat doesn’t get enough sions with those unknown risks in mind. humanity can comprehend — or even Enterprise Journalism attention, because a lot of it is looming “I’m not really worried about today, remember. Fund.

Arboreal, continued from page 8 Oregon soil may be increasingly tenuous, are freezing to death in such high numbers though. Under current climate change that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is He beamed and lobbed the question forecasts, the forest that surrounds them considering whether to list them under the back at me. “Right?” will grow yet warmer and drier, and, Endangered Species Act. The grove has been only thinly studied, thanks also to fuel buildup, more prone to For now, central Oregon’s grove seems so no one is certain of the answer. But burning. Yellow cedars are poorly prepared to have begun a slow rebound. Beneath scientists believe that the trees belong to for wildfire. The thin bark that works so fire-killed trees, Skinner and Bower were the forests that may have blanketed these well in the warp and weft of blankets and relieved to see thousands of yellow cedar now-sere highlands during the last ice age, hats does a poor job insulating the trees seedlings fighting towards the sun. They which ended roughly 12,000 years ago. from extreme heat, and their shallow looked fragile and improbable, spindly When glaciers retreat, they often leave roots are easily scorched. In 2006, the green sprays catching the light. But they behind giant, freestanding boulders called Forest Service set an ill-advised backburn had grown taller since Rausch last saw “erratics” that seem out of context with through Cedar Grove as part of an effort them, several years ago. He broke away their surroundings. Here, in the Cedar to fight the Shake Table Complex Fire. from us to examine a spring where it Grove Botanical Area, the long-lost climate Tragically, the backburn was enough to poured directly from beneath the exposed that made those glaciers left behind a sort kill 90 percent of the mature cedars in roots of a healthy, mature cedar as big of arboreal erratic, protected, perhaps, by the 26-acre protected area — all save the around as a rain barrel. The water here the north-facing slope and the cold springs 2-acre swatch where we stood. is consistently several degrees cooler than that feed the stream we hiked up. Fire scientists recently discovered that in most other springs he’s checked on the Pollen records from the region hundreds of the older cedar trees here had Malheur over the years, using the pocket confirm that other tree species suited to lived through past ground fires before dying thermometer he carries for this purpose. colder, wetter conditions were once more in the backburn, suggesting the species Maybe it will stay that way, anchoring widespread here. As the climate changed, may be more resilient than previously the cedar grove even as the world changes they gave way to those with warmer, thought. But it’s unclear whether this will around it. drier proclivities. In the 1974 paper that provide any hedge against future blazes. Rausch reached into the sparkling formally described the yellow cedar grove, If not, flames may erase them from this water, lifted it in quick handfuls to his researcher Robert Frenkel speculated it extreme margin of their range, while ice mouth. I did the same. It was icy and was a last remnant of a landscape chewed threatens them in their northern coastal clean and tasted like snowmelt. It tasted away over centuries by heat and wildfire. strongholds. Warmer temperatures have like some other season, some other place, Just one other far-inland fragment is reduced snowpack at low elevations some other time. I looked at my watch known, in eastern British Columbia. enough to expose the trees’ shallow roots and realized four hours had passed. We’d The yellow cedars’ hold on this patch of to the extreme cold of spring frosts. They covered less than a mile.

22 High Country News December 10, 2018

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26 High Country News December 10, 2018 www.hcn.org High Country News 27 BOOKS

SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGES; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LUNA ANNA ARCHEY Looking for love in all the wrong places It’s hard to hide from the news these thinks. When a few mistakes convince her though she has visibly flouted her church’s days, even in the pages of a book. Buffalo manager she’s too old to work, she must rules, her stability and compassion keeps Cactus, a collection of 21 recent stories depend on the kindness of her neighbor. it running despite its clashing priests: a with Western settings, delves into hot- Victor Lodato’s heartrending story fragile but beloved recovering alcoholic button issues such as immigration and “Jack, July,” captures the hopeless loop and a by-the-book Nigerian, “horrified by addiction, and even, inadvertently, the of meth addiction as a young man makes her messy fecundity,” whose stentorian #MeToo movement. It features one story his way down Speedway in Tucson on a homilies alienate his parishioners. by disgraced author Ron Carlson, who blistering day, seeking drugs, shelter and The lives of some of the West’s es- resigned from UC Irvine in August 2018 love. Through quirky, piercing details, sential workers, seasonal guides to the (five months after Buffalo Cactus was Lodato brings us into Jack’s mind, offer- region’s outdoor attractions, are the focus published), following allegations of sexual ing insight into the experience of meth of Corey Campbell’s “Ocean-Friendly Buffalo Cactus & misconduct. addiction: “People going fast rearranged Cuisine.” The narrator, Katherine, is part Other New Stories Aside from the Carlson story, which the furniture, or crawled around looking of a two-woman team leading a foreign from the Southwest the reader can easily ignore, Buffalo Cac- for carpet crumbs. Anything that used tour group on a bus through Arches and Edited by D. Seth tus offers a chance to move past the stark your hands, which, compelled by the the Grand Canyon. This peripatetic job Horton and Brett headlines and discover the nuanced hu- imaginative fervor of your mind, became suits Katherine, who, in the wake of her man stories that underlie them. Alberto tools in a breathless campaign to change mother’s death, “quit marriage and my Garcia Myhren Álvaro Ríos’s “Ten Seconds in Two Lives,” the shape of the world.” nursing program and found this desert,” 278 pages, softcover: opens the collection with the affecting, Las Vegas appears in all its seedy glo- she explains, deriving solace from drift- $24.95. fable-like tale of Julio and Marta, two ry in Robert Rosenberg’s “Circus Circus,” ing. Still, she can’t help but seek con- University of New legal immigrants from Mexico, young, in where a mother embarks on a frantic nection with an appealing widower from Mexico Press, 2018. love and struggling financially as they quest to find her 4-year-old daughter at Croatia. start out their new lives together. One a dilapidated casino after her estranged A quest for connection unites all these day, Julio unwittingly becomes involved husband, a chronic gambler, loses her stories thematically, even if many of their in a drug deal, earning $200. In the end, there. Connie worked at the cashier’s characters choose to live in the West crossing the U.S.-Mexico border had not cage at a casino and had always told precisely because of the solitude its wide- been nearly as momentous as the couple herself not to succumb to gamblers’ ad- open landscape offers them. From an expected, but this transaction, Julio vances. “I knew I looked prettier on their itinerant adjunct professor in Las Cruces thought, “felt like the moment, the thing lucky nights.” But Connie let her guard in Robin Romm’s “Adulthood,” who fails he always thought he would feel, the line, down once, a misstep that results in a to resist the comforts of a less-than-ideal the crossing over.” child and marriage to an unreliable man. relationship, to an older woman in Sierra Many stories share this focus on As their tragicomic search unfolds, Con- Bellows’ title story, who tolerates — with people eking out a living on the margins nie realizes the disappearance has been a disastrous results — her late-in-life of society. In Judy Troy’s “Lugar Tranqui- setup, her husband’s way of forcing her to paramour’s desire to keep a buffalo calf lo,” two elderly widows living in a mobile relieve him of parenting responsibilities. in his suburban Arizona neighborhood, home retirement community in Santa Fe Another Southwestern woman facing these characters’ hearts keep getting become friends. Louise’s late husband’s the prospect of single motherhood ani- them into trouble. But as much as their gambling left her nearly penniless, but mates Kirstin Valdez Quade’s masterful yearning for one another is the source of she cheerfully supports herself with a job “Ordinary Sins.” Crystal is unmarried, many of their failures, their inextinguish- at a hotel. “A job took you out of yourself pregnant with twins, and working in the able love is, in the end, their triumph. and into the drama of the world,” she office of a Catholic church in Santa Fe. Al- BY JENNY SHANK

28 High Country News December 10, 2018 PERSPECTIVE LUNA ANNA ARCHEY LUNA Is sporting a Patagonia fleece now a political statement?

In early November, I was surveying the aftermath of think so. An ad I’d recently seen from a stockman’s the Mesa Fire in west-central Idaho with several car- advocacy group played in my mind. The Public Lands loads of people from all walks of Western life. There Council offers a “Patagonia shame” patch that people were representatives from the timber industry, local can iron onto their clothing to cover up the Patago- elected officials, a team of “-ologists” from the U.S. nia logo. The group pegs it as a cure-all for people Forest Service and several faces from the conserva- who want to wear their warm garments without tion community. I was there as a radio reporter. the disgrace of supporting a company with a liberal Apart from my regular uniform of headphones and political agenda. a mic, I was dressed appropriately for a 40-degree Patagonia’s conservation ethos — stereotyped as day in the field, in Muck boots, jeans, a scarf and a a liberal cause in recent years, though people on both NEWS 20-year-old Patagonia fleece. sides of the aisle share these values — is hardly new COMMENTARY It’s that last item that’s been on my mind ever news. Patagonia is one of several outdoor apparel BY MONICA since. companies that have denounced national monument GOKEY At one point during the tour, we were standing reductions, a fight that reached a boiling point last in a circle, looking up at needle freeze. This is what year when the Outdoor Retailer trade show decided happens when a fire burns hot enough to fix the to leave Utah over the state’s campaign to shrink needles on an evergreen tree in a windswept posi- Bears Ears National Monument. tion, like something you’d see in a Dr. Seuss story. What is new is the company’s Fire managers use it as a forensic tool to determine endorsement of two Democratic which way a fire moved across the landscape. candidates in hotly contested U.S. After Patagonia’s When everyone was looking up at the fire’s after- Senate races — Jon Tester of Mon- endorsement of two math, I glanced at the people gathered around me. tana and Jacky Rosen of Nevada. I noticed that a gentleman from an Idaho conserva- It was Patagonia’s first foray into Democratic candidates tion group and I were the only two people wearing championing specific candidates in this fall, I started to something overtly labeled Patagonia, and I inwardly high-stakes elections, and both the cringed. company’s picks won. “Hundreds wonder if I’d unwittingly It’s a cardinal sin for reporters to display any- of corporations back political committed a fashion thing that might lead sources to believe we are any- candidates,” the company said in a thing but neutral parties. In my entire adult life as a press release. “The difference with faux pas that day journalist, I’ve never contributed to a political group, our activism is that we put our nor have I attended any kind of cause-driven event, logo on it.” in the forest. except in my professional capacity. People routinely So … does that make it a ask me how I “really” feel about certain issues, and political statement to wear some- I usually tell them the truth — that sometimes I go thing bearing that brand name? into a story leaning one way or the other, but the When I examine the problem up close, new truths more I learn about both sides, the more I find myself bubble to the surface. I realize I would never wear an in the middle. My job is to find the facts, make sense NRA T-shirt, just like I would never wear a Green- of them, and produce a fair story that gives readers peace one. I’m deliberate in not taking a side, either or listeners enough information to make up their passively or actively. Those ethics matter to me. But own minds. I’m less judicious about noticing where my consum- Before the 2018 midterm elections, I never erism intersects with political activism, and maybe thought twice about which warm clothes I wore in that needs to change. the field. I couldn’t tell you the brand of the borrowed That day in the forest, if someone had pointed to down jacket I wore during my third trimester on a my fleece and asked me if I believed in Patagonia’s reporting trip to sagebrush country last winter, nor political agenda, I would’ve shrugged and said I which of my several sets of underlayers I stripped believe in wearing warm clothes on a cold day. But down to while hauling rocks alongside small-claims I’m open minded to the possibility that wearing miners in south-central Idaho last fall. I choose my a Patagonia sweater might someday be seen as a attire based on my desired level of dryness, warmth statement about one’s self and one’s political values. and comfort, and some low bar of style. If that day comes, I suppose I’ll have to retire my But after Patagonia’s endorsement of two Demo- favorite fleece. Or, at the very least, find my own cool cratic candidates this fall, I started to wonder if I’d patch to sew over the logo. unwittingly committed a fashion faux pas that day in the forest. Monica Gokey is a print and radio journalist in Many in the conservative community seem to Idaho’s west-central mountains.

www.hcn.org High Country News 29 ESSAY | BY STEPHEN R. MILLER Sandhill cranes lift off from the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, Washington. CHRIS PARMETER‎

The arresting quiet of a crane

here had been such a racket, just moments ago. sagebrush with its head pointed southeast and its We were gathered at the Columbia National long blue tentacles winding northwest. It is part of a Wildlife Refuge to witness the sandhill crane massive public works project initiated in 1933 that T migration, and we heard the birds before we siphons water from the Columbia River to irrigate saw them. They cooed and clucked over our heads as this otherwise arid plateau. River water leaking from the sun slipped toward the distant Cascade Moun- the fields of wheat and barley that surround the blue tains. Then they appeared, wings arced high, dainty squid flows into the reservoir through the tentacles. A cow-trodden legs dangling in anticipation of the shallow water Some is reapplied to the fields, some seeps into ponds, below. As they landed in the crowded marsh, songbirds lakes and marshes. It is because of all this that the pasture is a whistled from cattail perches, hidden frogs croaked a cranes still come here. din, and a pair of beavers splashed in the fading light. This broad, open land had seemed wild, but it is far cry from Now, on a hill a mere two miles west, the Colum- actually heavily managed — most of all, its water, col- bia plateau is suddenly quiet. Arrestingly quiet. So lected and dispersed at deliberate intervals to mimic wilderness, quiet I only notice when someone breaks it by crack- wetland habitat. Only about 30,000 sandhill cranes ing a beer. The sound stuns the way a good, hard stage here (compared to 600,000 in Nebraska), but but it beats a laugh exposes long-held sullenness, and leaves me they do well. Inside the refuge, farmers partner with wondering what has changed. conservation managers to grow grain that lures birds. strip mall. Our camp on the Seep Lakes Wildlife Area Elsewhere, they leave free calories strewn about — Washington state land that hugs the refuge — fallow fields. Even the cows, grazing ignorantly on sounds empty by comparison, but the view is nearly public and private land, are helpfully chomping down the same. All around us is a wide expanse of scrub habitat-hindering invasive weeds. steppe awash in spring-green bunchgrass and teal This is not unique. Government initiatives, sage. Umber buttes rise where violent floods scoured including the Conservation Reserve and Stewardship WHY BUILD WHAT the ancient basalt. Below our camp, water glints like programs (whose fates may be decided by changes to Dyneema content more mercury in the bottom of a bathtub. But there is no the farm bill), pay the nation’s farmers and cattlemen than doubles the fabric’s cooing, croaking or clapping. There is only the wind, to help maintain wildlife habitat. A cow-trodden pas- WON’T LAST? tear strength, and the organic cotton is Texas-grown into which someone gasps, “That smell!” referring, of ture is a far cry from wilderness, but it beats a strip course, to the unmistakably pungent scent of cow. mall, and with half of the West’s wetland resources Although I have spent the day tracing hoof trails already lost to development, wildlife biologists are To make the most durable work denim possible, we turned to Hammer loop and large from the trodden bank of one watering hole to the less worried about cows than they are about the the strongest lightweight fi ber in the world. drop-in utility pockets trampled edge of another, I just now consider the im- remaining ranchers selling off their acreage. hold small tools and pact of the grazing cattle. Like much of the plateau, The refuge is designed to provide safe passage The newest addition to the Patagonia Workwear line, our Steel larger phones this area is a jumble of federal, state and private through a maze of built environments. Wilderness, Forge Denim blends 92% organic cotton with 8% Dyneema®, a land. A rancher owns some acreage surrounding the by definition, is uncultivated, allowing wild things to fi ber that’s light enough to fl oat on water but 15 times stronger small lake and graciously allows the public to use it. Double-fabric knees suffer or prosper despite us. A bear, which could live than steel. It’s used in crane slings, tow ropes and anchor cables, Camping is no longer allowed inside the refuge, so we and die without ever stumbling upon a person, might accommodate knee pads, and now it’s helping us fuse a traditional fabric with advanced tech- with bottom openings sleep here and then migrate there for the birds. know wilderness. A crane, which spends its life hop- that allow easy cleanout It seems reasonable that a creature with 10 mil- ping over us, cannot. Cranes depend on us because nology to build a more durable material that will withstand years lion years of generational knowledge would make we control their universe of food, water, space and of demanding work. wise choices about where it sets down, and standing danger. Domineering as we may be, our presence is in Dyed with natural indigo here amid the silence and stink, I assume the cranes their best interest. They would fare far worse without Timber framer Bodie Johansson chisels out fl oor joist housings in the Handcrafted Log grown in Tennessee, are avoiding the cows. Herds of cattle lumbering our help in the world we’ve created. & Timber yard in Ridgway, Colorado. BLAKE GORDON © 2018 Patagonia, Inc. replacing petroleum- haphazardly across a landscape can trample nests Still, it must seem odd that we gather in droves derived synthetic dyes Stephen R. Miller and chew through wetland vegetation. If I were a just to watch them splash in noisy marshes. Like is a Ted Scripps crane, the cow’s embarrassing dumbness would be parents keeping a watchful eye from poolside reclin- fellow in environ- enough to send me to the refuge. But I seem to have ers, we corral them in the shallow end. Speaking of mental journalism overlooked something larger. which, it turns out that the cows are not to blame for at the University of Men’s North of our camp sits the Potholes Reservoir, a the silence near our camp. The nearby water is too Colorado. Follow @ Steel Forge body of water shaped like a squid, laid out amid the deep for cranes to stand. SMillerPNW Denim Pants

30 High Country News December 10, 2018

PAT_F18_HighCountry-Denim-FP.indd 1 8/2/18 3:32 PM WHY BUILD WHAT Dyneema content more than doubles the fabric’s WON’T LAST? tear strength, and the organic cotton is Texas-grown

To make the most durable work denim possible, we turned to Hammer loop and large the strongest lightweight fi ber in the world. drop-in utility pockets hold small tools and The newest addition to the Patagonia Workwear line, our Steel larger phones Forge Denim blends 92% organic cotton with 8% Dyneema®, a fi ber that’s light enough to fl oat on water but 15 times stronger Double-fabric knees than steel. It’s used in crane slings, tow ropes and anchor cables, accommodate knee pads, and now it’s helping us fuse a traditional fabric with advanced tech- with bottom openings nology to build a more durable material that will withstand years that allow easy cleanout of demanding work.

Dyed with natural indigo Timber framer Bodie Johansson chisels out ﬂ oor joist housings in the Handcrafted Log grown in Tennessee, & Timber yard in Ridgway, Colorado. BLAKE GORDON © 2018 Patagonia, Inc. replacing petroleum- derived synthetic dyes

Men’s Steel Forge Denim Pants

PAT_F18_HighCountry-Denim-FP.indd 1 8/2/18 3:32 PM HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY BETSY MARSTON

THE WEST Pangburn said. For Jack Cohen, a Esquire magazine writer Charles P. retired fire research scientist, one Pierce finds himself flummoxed by the important lesson was that houses novel constitutional interpretations, and other buildings needed a or “bafflegab,” of Mike Lee, the senior “defensible perimeter”; he cites the Republican U.S. senator from Utah. In experience of medical staffers and a speech to The Federalist Society, Lee patients from the Paradise hospital warned that America will face another who found their escape blocked civil war unless a host of “unconsti- by flames. They abandoned their tutional” federal programs are elimi- vehicle and survived by climbing nated, including funding for K through onto the roof of a home. There, they 12 public education, the Interstate cleared debris from the gutters, wet Highway System, workforce regulation, down the roof and managed to keep the Department of Commerce and espe- the fire at bay even as it consumed cially what Lee calls “the huge glut of the houses around them. “A house federally owned land.” Lee also claimed that doesn’t burn is the best place that Social Security, federal child labor to be during a wildfire,” Cohen laws and Medicare have no basis in law. concluded. His conclusion is stark: The country must choose between “federalism or COLORADO violence.” Pierce’s own conclusion is In old Norse legends, a troll was a equally stark: The Utah senator’s grasp demon; these days, trolls are an- of the actual Constitution, he says, is other kind of demon, those snarky “eccentric,” if not outright “batsh*t.” commenters on the internet. But then there’s the magnetic attrac- COLORADO tion of “Isak Heartstone,” a 15-foot- Some 500 people paid from $199 to tall smiling troll made of recycled $349 each to take part in a “Flat Earth wood by the Danish artist Thomas UTAH Terms of endeerment. PAM KING International Conference” in Denver, Dambo. The resort town of Brecken- the Denver Post reports. According to ridge, Colorado, placed Dambo’s troll its website, the conference promised to along a trail behind a residential “uncover and debunk pseudo-scientific even as he pointed the finger at “radical environ- neighborhood, reports Atlas Obscura, ‘facts’ while presenting the true evidence which mentalists” for interfering with forest manage- and in a single year, Isak’s soulful eyes attracted shockingly points to our existence on a flat, sta- ment: “This is on them,” he said firmly. For his thousands of visitors. Leigh Girvin, a 46-year tionary plane.” As the YouTube channel part, The Hill reports, President Donald Trump resident of the area, loved the troll, too, but said “Globebusters” explains, “We’re not on an actual blamed federal bureaucrats, accusing forest its popularity caused serious problems: “Imagine ball. It’s a plain and the outsides of it are be- managers, in a widely quoted remark, of failing 10,000 people knocking on your door asking for ing held in. We believe the oceans are being to “take care of the floors. You know, the floors directions.” The troll had many local defenders, held in by Antarctica, and it is not necessarily of the forest, very important.” The president and arguments in town about keeping it were a continent so much as it is a boundary that added that “Finland spent a lot of time raking heated. “This is what trolls do,” said Girvin. “They encompasses the oceans.” On their website, con- and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t bring out our best and our worst.” Finally, on Nov. ference organizers helpfully answered common have any problem.” Fire behavior these days, 15, the town dismantled the troll board by board questions, such as, “Will I fall off the edge?” Rest much like the behavior of some political leaders, and removed it. Only temporarily, though: Isak assured, the answer to that is “no.” is becoming increasingly unpredictable. In an ef- will return to be reconstructed in a less populated fort to get beyond blame, the Los Angeles Times area. At the least, said Haley Littleton, a spokes- CALIFORNIA talked to a number of fire experts. One of them, person for the town, everyone learned about the The historic wildfires in Northern California, which Jonathan Pangburn of the California Depart- power of public art: “We felt a kind of pride and killed scores of people and destroyed thousands ment of Forestry and Fire Protection, said that amazement at what creative art was able to do.” of homes, spurred some public officials to find a when the Camp Fire spread from the forest to scapegoat. Apparently forgetting that he is not the town of Paradise, it changed from a wildfire WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see in charge of the Forest Service, which is man- to an “urban conflagration”: Fierce winds sent hcn.org. aged by the Agriculture Department, Interior burning embers through the air and ignited one Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and Department Secretary Ryan Zinke told Breitbart house after another. “It was some of the most in- often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag News that “it’s not a time for finger pointing,” tense fire behavior that I have ever witnessed,” photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

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High that are unique to the American West with a magazine and a Country website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write News High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or For people who care about the West. [email protected], or call 970-527-4898. 32 High Country News December 10, 2018