http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/main/C96/L96/ New West Network: The Voice of the Rocky Mountains en info@newwest.net Copyright 2011 Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:55:46 MST Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:55:46 MST http://www.newwest.net/city/article/chasing_the_colorado_river_peter_mcbride/C96/L96/ Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:34:33 MST Growing up on a cattle ranch in the Elk Mountains of Colorado, I spent many hours operating a haybine. Essentially an oversized lawnmower on steroids, a haybine perches the driver high above tines furiously whisking up stalks of grasses like timothy and brome, leaves of clover, and vast plumes of grass pollen. The sound of machinery belts whirl and groan, and typically a hot August sun beams across your trail of dust. It is the ideal place to focus on water. From this elevated, noisy seat, your senses become immersed in hay. The smell of cut grasses chokes you. The subtle changes in the whine of the machine relate directly to the thickness and type of grass you are cutting. And the view, roughly 10 feet above the meadow, is a perfect vantage to see where water seeped into the high-mountain roots and where it didn't. Dry spots stand out like brown beacons in a maze of green life. Our somewhat antiquated hay-cutting machine boasts a sixteen-foot cutting bar, twirling wire fingers, and large rollers that break the grass stalks to "condition" or dry the hay faster. It is a dangerous machine that you respect. When I lost the tip of my thumb to it as a teenager when the engine wasn't even running, it earned mine. But more importantly, despite its clatter and clunkiness, the haybine provides a wondrous tool to witness the laborious hours of a summer's irrigation. I can see exactly where I (or maybe my brother) missed an irrigation set, or where our gravity-fed sprinkler over-soaked a spot, nurturing less desirable wiregrass to shoot stalks skyward. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/flooding_roundup_rain_runoff_pummel_rockies/C96/L96/ Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:13:27 MST Heavy rains pelting western Montana this week sent area officials scrambling and Cottonwood Creek over its banks in the rural town of Deer Lodge on Tuesday, where sections of newly constructed retaining walls intended to prevent flooding failed their first test and collapsed into the creek. It was the town's first flood since its historic 500-year-level flood in 1981, residents said. Despite dozens of volunteers and local contractors contributing trucks and equipment to help the city crew, at one point the community ran out of sandbags and had to send for more from neighboring Anaconda. More rain is expected through the week. Spring floods have been an ongoing problem throughout the state and the Rockies, thanks to a drenching combination of rapid snowmelt and excessive rainfall. In Montana, the counties of Clearwater, Deer Lodge, Flathead, Granite, Lake, Lincoln, Mineral, Missoula, Powell, Ravalli and Sanders are all under flood warning. Silver-Bow and Idaho's Lemhi County are also on flood watch, the National Weather Service reports. In particular, the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers in Missoula and surrounding counties will be problematic, with the Clark Fork at Missoula already flooding and predicted to be two feet higher by Thursday, according to the Missoulian. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/new_transmission_system_make_wind_power_industry_more_profitable_utah/C96/L96/ Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:14:59 MST About 25 years ago Utah inventor Gary Lee was growing frustrated with his snowmobile's gearbox. Far too often when he was out riding the transmission would get really hot and burn out the rubber belt inside the gearbox. This got Lee thinking about how to design a more durable transmission. After years of work he's designed a prototype of a recently patented transmission that he claims could make wind power profitable and help the industry move away from subsidies. The poor reliability of gearboxes is a challenge for the wind power industry and the high cost of replacing busted gearboxes is a chief expense, according to the American Wind Energy Association. While wind turbines are designed to operate for 20 years, estimates for the life of an average gearbox are in the six-to-10-year range, although this can vary, Jeroen van Dam, an engineer with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Gearbox Reliability Collaborative, said in an email. The collaborative, which includes wind turbine manufacturers, owners, operators and research institutes, has found that gearbox problems are an industry-wide issue and not tied to a particular wind turbine or gearbox manufacturer, he added.  The fixed gearboxes currently used in wind turbines are vulnerable to spikes in wind speeds, Lee said in a telephone interview. High-speed gusts apply a lot of torque (the force that spins the turbine's shaft) to the transmission, placing it under stress. Sometimes, the wind doesn't hit the turbine straight on and might catch just one of the blades, which can bend the gears, Lee said. "If you look at windmills, you'll see quite often that several of them are not turning and that's because they're broken," he said. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/in_boys_of_bonneville_the_story_of_an_unknown_legend/C96/L96/ Mon, 06 Jun 2011 05:03:47 MST In the '30s and '40s, a Salt Lake City construction worker turned racecar driver transformed the notion of what a car was capable of, and he transformed the Bonneville Salt Flats from a plain of death into a landscape of possibility. For most Americans, Ab Jenkins isn't exactly a household name, but many of the speed records he set in his handcrafted car, the Mormon Meteor, still hold 70 years after he set them racing across the Utah wasteland. Salt Lake City director Curt Wallin presents Ab Jenkins' story in The Boys of Bonneville: Racing on a Ribbon of Salt. Trained as a biologist, Wallin devoted many of his early films to the natural world. A film about fast cars, he says, it's a bit of a departure. But when the car's current owner approached him about making the film, he says, "I couldn't resist doing this." The Boys of Bonneville has it Colorado premier Saturday, June 11 at 10 a.m. at the Breckenridge Festival of Film. The Festival runs June 9-12. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/will_new_legislation_make_way_for_an_oil_shale_boom/C96/L96/ Thu, 02 Jun 2011 21:22:50 MST U.S. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming introduced the American Energy and Western Jobs Act in May in an attempt to streamline the leasing process for the oil shale industry in the Rocky Mountains. The bill would repeal onshore leasing reforms proposed by Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last year, and would also force Salazar to open 10 more research and development parcels for lease in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. (The bill also called for repealing the 2011 Wild Lands Order, though Salazar backed away from that policy earlier this week.) The language of the bill is leaving some energy industry watchdogs uneasy. The proposed legislation--cosponsored by fellow Wyoming Republican Mike Enzi and Utah Republicans Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch --would also streamline the permitting process by speeding up lease issuance after purchase, while requiring the DOI to set onshore oil and gas production goals that maintain or ramp up production levels. Simply put, it would be a return to the oil shale regulations of the Bush Administration.  http://www.newwest.net/city/article/flooding_roundup_high_water_in_the_rockies/C96/L96/ Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:40:25 MST Heavy rain and snowfall, combined with rapidly melting snowpack, are sending rivers and streams over their banks in western states. Weber County, Utah, is being hit especially hard this week with flood warnings on two area rivers. According to the National Weather Service, a flood warning remains in effect till noon Friday for Weber County on the south forth of the Ogden River near Huntsville, where melting snow is causing the water to rise. The river is presently about 0.2 feet below its flood stage of 4.6 feet. Threatening campgrounds, homes and farms, the river was expected to flood Thursday and continue for the next few days. The nearby Weber River and its Lost Creek tributary are also flooding for the same reason.  High or actual flood-stage waters have been reported all along the two waterways. The bridge on Lost Creek road at the confluence of the two streams is expected to flood. Flooding between Echo Reservoir and Weber Canyon is expected to hit low fields, roads, and the towns of Morgan and Uintah. Perhaps most significantly, the snowmelt buildup is threatening a levee system above Plain City, and the levee is believed to be in real danger of failing.  http://www.newwest.net/city/article/why_salazar_backed_down_on_wild_lands/C96/L96/ Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:21:23 MST After strong opposition from several Western states and a pending lawsuit, Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is backing down from his controversial "Wild Lands" policy.  The announcement comes on the heels of a law suit proposed by Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, which was also supported by governors from Wyoming and Alaska, as well as the recent budget deal which prevented the Interior Department from funding the plan. "I am confirming today that the Bureau of Land Management will not designate land as 'Wild Lands,'" Salazar said in a memo to Bob Abbey, director of the Bureau of Land Management. Instead, Salazar said he would work with locally supported efforts to preserve wilderness.  http://www.newwest.net/city/article/denver_librarian_finalist_for_amazon_award_jess_walters_poets_becomes_a_fil/C96/L96/ Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:02:24 MST Gregory Hill, who works as a book buyer at the University of Denver's Penrose Library, is one of three finalists in the general fiction category for this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. According to the contest website, Hill's novel, East of Denver, "tells the story of Shakespeare Williams, who returns to his family's farm in eastern Colorado to find his widowed, senile father living in squalor. Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a plot with his father and a motley crew of his former high school classmates to rob the local bank." Greg Glasgow recently interviewed Hill for the University of Denver blog. Glasgow writes: "The story is based on Hill's own past growing up in Joes, Colo. (called Dorsey, Colo., in the book), and his more recent experiences watching his father's battle against Alzheimer's disease." Also in the Roundup: The winners of the Reading the West Book Award, Filming on the adaptation of Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets begins in August, a poetry contest sponsored by the Denver County Fair, and regional book tours for Karl Marlantes, Janet Fox, Emma Donaghue, and Justin Cronin. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/reading_the_west_high_plains_book_awards_finalists_announced/C96/L96/ Wed, 25 May 2011 07:00:40 MST Last week two regional organizations announced the finalists for their annual book awards. I've listed the finalists below with links to New West's reviews of the books and author interviews. First, the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association announced the finalists for its Reading the West Book Awards (that's the new name of the MPIBA's longstanding book award series). The shortlist in the Adult category: • Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession by Craig Childs (Little, Brown and Co.) • The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) • Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock (Graywolf Press) • Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America by Eric Jay Dolin (W.W. Norton) • The Ringer by Jenny Shank (The Permanent Press) Also in the Roundup: The finalists for the High Plains Book Awards, The Whitefish Review seeks donations for its ninth issue, The High Desert Journal announces a poetry prize, and the tally on how many books Oprah helped David Wroblewski and Cormac McCarthy sell. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/in_this_light_collects_utah_writer_melanie_rae_thons_greatest_hits/C96/L96/ Mon, 23 May 2011 07:00:43 MST The accomplished writer Melanie Rae Thon grew up in Montana and teaches at the University of Utah. In This Light: New & Selected Stories (Graywolf Press, 256 pages, $15) collects some of the highlights of her career, and there have been many--her stories have regularly appeared in the Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Thon frequently sets her stories in the West, but they follow none of the typical paths Western writers are often expected to take. Thon focuses on people who exist on the fringes of society, who are damaged, dispossessed, addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, or all three, people who never have the chance to stop and admire the landscape--like the homeless kids of Kalispell in her story "Heavenly Creatures"--they're too busy scrapping for survival. Thon relentlessly turns her attention on people that society ignores, and describes them with intense language in stories that are replete with ghosts.