A workshop on the cleanup and reuse of brownfields will be held today, Thursday, Sept. 4, at the Missoula City Council Chambers at 140 W. Pine St. and, in the afternoon, at the Missoula County Courthouse less than a block away at 200 W. Broadway, rooms 201 and 374.

Anyone interested is welcome to attend, including local officials, developers, landowners, bankers, lenders, community leaders, attorneys and consultants as well as the general public or anyone who fits some, all or none of the labels mentioned above. (Registration is $25 and can be done online or in person at 8 a.m. at the Council Chambers.)  

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paperboard blues

An enterprising young millworker and his union cohorts have a plan to save Missoula's Smurfit-Stone paperboard mill.

The millworker is 27-year-old Roy Houseman.

"It's a serious concern," Houseman said. "But I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure it doesn't happen." 

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“Low Flows, Hot Trout"

A new report by the Missoula-based nonprofit Clark Fork Coalition provides a comprehensive view of how global climate change has affected - and will likely affect - western Montana and north Idaho.

"We view this as a starting point for discussion and a motivator for action," said Clark Fork Coalition director Karen Knudsen. Temperatures in the report's coverage area increased, on average by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years and may well continue to warm, over the next 100 years, by another 5.4 degrees. 

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From the new west blog: Western Tanager Migration

As an unofficial birdwatcher – the kind who doesn’t carry a little notebook and camera while tramping through woods – I sometimes get a geeky thrill out of the visitors to my backyard bird feeders.

Last week a neon-yellow and red Western Tanager stopped by for thistle seed. Out on a dogwalk, more of them sang in the trees along the Boise river. Zing! went the strings of my bird-lovers heart.

This morning, the Idaho Statesman’s outdoor writer Pete Zimowsky informs us that the tanagers are migrating, and other Rocky Mountain western states are enjoying the migration, too.

I thought it was just my optimist's mind imagining a dramatic increase in bird life along the streams and in the trees of my riverfront neighborhood, but Zimo says it's everywhere. We are awakened every morning now by birdsong, and instead of the usual two or three chirpers, there are dozens, singing and trilling and calling and scolding.

Keep your eyes open for the Tanagers, not to mention the state bird of Montana and Oregon, the yellow Western Meadowlark, Idaho’s Mountain Bluebird, and Colorado’s Lark Bunting.  

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Idaho Politics: Senate

Idaho Republican Senators Larry Craig and Mike Crapo both had something to say today about the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, on which the Senate voted to continue debate.

Who Cares About Global Warming Anyway?
by: Senator Larry Craig

If you remember Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie and his visit to Boise, you might be shocked to learn how the Democrat-led Congress actually handled an issue some say is the most important crisis of our time. You may not even have known this debate was going on, considering how disorganized, brief and superficial the debate was. 

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Water, Wind and Climate Change

Colorado House Majority Leader Alice Madden put up a slide of Lake Mead with the rhetorical question: Half empty or half full?

Madden’s immediate subject at the University of Colorado’s Natural Resource Law Center’s Annual Summer Conference was water, but the question echoed around a wide variety of subjects: energy, climate, renewable resources. 

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