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But on July 13, 2013, the scene at the Yates Shaft headframe is vastly different. In the parking lot, amid former Homestake offices and machine shops, people of all ages are gathered for a kind of science fair. Some peer through telescopes at solar flares, while others watch demonstrations of solar panels and water filtration systems.
They're also eager to get a glimpse of the old mine. Donning hardhats, dozens file into the hoist room, where giant spools of wrist-thick cable still raise and lower the cages. These days, however, the cages are packed with scientists, who go deep underground in search of discoveries on the frontiers of physics.
This mine is now the Sanford Underground Research Facility, owned and operated by the state government, with the U.S. Department of Energy providing funding and management support. And July 13 is Neutrino Day, Lead's annual festival, named for the tiny, elusive particles that are considered so important, scientists studying them have won three Nobel prizes. Because neutrinos can best be studied deep underground, this old mining town has made the unlikely decision to transform itself with Big Science – the stuff of high-tech centralized labs and federal budgets.
Neutrino Day also enlivens downtown Lead. A school bus shuttles tourists to the 99-year-old Historic Homestake Opera House, where Rick Gaitskell, a physicist from Rhode Island's Ivy League Brown University, is on stage. He speaks in a polished British accent about his search for "dark matter," one of the great unclaimed prizes in the field of particle astrophysics, and something that also might be studied effectively in the mine's depths. Down the block, a restaurant advertises $8.99 Double Dark Matter Cheeseburgers. And in the Lead Deadwood Arts Center gallery, 22 South Dakota artists display their own interpretations of dark matter in mind-bending sculptures and paintings. One, titled A New Millennium of Knowledge – In Search of Dark Matter, depicts a Homestake headframe beside a unicorn and an atom buzzing with electrons.
By the time Neutrino Day 2013 winds down, an impressive 1,100-some scientific tourists have participated, the biggest turnout since the Chamber of Commerce launched the festival in 2001. Back then, when Lead was courting the lab to compensate for the mine's closure that year, Neutrino Day was less a tourist event than a determined show of support from local businesses and boosters. Even though the shift to Big Science hasn't made the town rich yet, many people echo the Chamber's website, which declares: "Lead's future lies in the Sanford Laboratory."
"It's a big deal for our little town, which has struggled and struggled over the years," says Karen Everett, a former Homestake employee who's now the director of the Lead Deadwood Arts Center, "to all of a sudden be on the world map for physics."
In coming years, the discoveries made here could fundamentally re-order our understanding of the universe, answering questions such as: Why does matter exist at all? But as the next generation of underground experiments takes shape, the lab is also revealing the messy, political underside of Big Science. And this intellectual industry is already reshaping this rural community in surprising ways. If this is the ultimate case of the Old West meeting the New, the two are so far proving surprisingly compatible.
From 1877 until 2001, Lead was a company town, ticking to the shifts at the Homestake Mine. Even the brick and mortar of the town moved with the mine, the streets and buildings buckling from the collapse of tunnels chiseled by Italians and Swedes with eight-pound sledges. The mine's open pit encroached on downtown, and eventually 370 miles of tunnels were dug. Homestake paychecks built homes and shops, while the company itself built the opera house, recreation center and library.
Homestake was one of the richest mines in the country, yielding 1,400 tons of gold and enabling the company to extend its operations internationally in the 1960s. It became the deepest mine in the Western Hemisphere. But at 8,000 feet below the surface –– so far down the rock was hot to the touch –– the cost to extract the low-grade ore increased, while gold prices declined. So in a move typical for any commodity-based, boom-and-bust business, Homestake cut its Lead operations by more than half in 1998, and in 2000 announced plans to close the mine by the end of the next year. It was already clear, however, that the mine had other uses – especially for cutting-edge physics research.
Neutrinos are often called "the ghosts of the universe" because they're invisible, electrically neutral and millions of times smaller than electrons. Scientists first postulated their existence in the 1930s, and believe that they're generated by nuclear fusion in stars and possibly by supernovas and other violent cosmic events, as well as by nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs. It's thought that some are even relics of the original Big Bang that created the universe. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frederick Reines called them "the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being." They "can travel at nearly the speed of light ... without being deflected by magnetic fields or absorbed by matter," conveying "astronomical information from the edge of the universe and from deep inside the most cataclysmic high-energy processes," according to a consortium of universities in 11 countries. Our sun alone generates so many neutrinos that tens of billions of them pass through a person's fingernail every second.
"Even though neutrinos are some of the most abundant particles in the universe, they are essentially the least understood," says John Wilkerson, a University of North Carolina physics professor and principal investigator for a current neutrino experiment in the Sanford Lab. But understanding them, he says, may enable scientists to answer fundamental questions about the fabric of the cosmos, including why more matter exists than anti-matter (particles that combine with and annihilate matter). In other words, he says, the study of neutrinos may help us answer the most basic question of all: "Why are we here?"
On the Earth's surface, the subtle natural drizzle of neutrinos is obscured by a barrage of cosmic rays – bits of atomic shrapnel hurled by exploding stars and black holes. But thick layers of rock block cosmic rays – a capability that has made the Homestake Mine valuable for research since the 1960s, when a team led by U.S. Atomic Energy Commission physicist Ray Davis sought to detect neutrinos in a cavern on the 4,850-foot level, which miners had excavated for the experiment. The team installed a detector – basically a 100,000-gallon tank of dry-cleaning fluid – and, by 1968, registered the occasional faint collision between neutrino and atom, also eventually winning a Nobel Prize. The famous "Homestake experiment," which was the first to observe the sun's neutrinos, inspired other experiments in underground labs around the world.
More recently, physicists also began going underground to study dark matter particles, which have proven even more elusive. Since the 1930s, astronomers have predicted the existence of an unaccounted-for mass that comprises more than 25 percent of the universe, binding together galaxies and other celestial bodies. Like neutrinos, dark matter particles may pass invisibly through the Earth as we pinwheel around our galaxy at hundreds of miles per second.
"Dark matter may have had profound effects on the evolution of the galaxy and the universe," says Jaret Heise, a Canadian with a graying ponytail who speaks about the cosmos as casually as one might speak about the weather. He used to conduct neutrino experiments in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, 6,800 feet down in a nickel mine in Ontario, Canada, and now serves as the Sanford Lab's science director. "It's likely that it was the kernel around which our galaxy formed."
As questions about neutrinos and dark matter became central to advancing the physics frontiers, access to underground labs grew more crucial. The U.S. had only a few relatively shallow sites that were fully dedicated to research, including an abandoned iron mine in Minnesota, so U.S. researchers often had to rely on well-funded underground labs burrowed into Italian and Russian mountains or tucked into a Japanese mine. A National Research Council report, begun in 2000 and published in 2003, joined many other expert voices calling for the development of a convenient deep underground lab in the U.S.
"We are at a special moment in our journey to understand the universe and the physical laws that govern it," the National Research Council said, acknowledging that "these questions strain the limits of human ingenuity." Yet no one foresaw the challenges involved in trying to transform the Homestake Mine into the world's premier underground lab.
By the time the last load of ore was hoisted up the Homestake Mine's shafts in December 2001, Democratic South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson had secured $10 million, part of an appropriations bill signed by Republican President George W. Bush, to help build a national lab here. Scientists rallied around a National Science Foundation proposal to turn the mine into their dream, the National Underground Science Laboratory, a $200 million complex where biologists and geologists could probe the tunnels for deep-earth organisms and core samples, and physicists could conduct large experiments in refinished rooms carved from the rock to depths of 7,400 feet.
Two key scientists hailed the mine's research potential in the Rapid City Journal, predicting it would lead to "the development of new materials important to industry, the design and testing of various detectors crucial to national security and defense, and novel opportunities for future advances in earth science, microbiology, electronics, computer engineering, etc."
There were plenty of reasons for locals to support the proposal. For one thing, it meant pumps would continue to keep underground water from filling the tunnels, staving off the spread of acidic, toxic runoff – one of the problems common to closed-down heavy metals mines. It also carried a whiff of excitement, recalling the time "Champion Wire-walker" Ivy Baldwin tight-roped 800 feet across the Homestake open pit in 1916. And, most of all, it would extend the Homestake Mine's long run.
"This mine had been going so long, you had fourth-generation mining families," says Jim Hanhardt, who started work at Homestake in 1988 as a miner and a shaftman. "To a lot of people, this was the only employment they knew. Everybody hoped (the lab) would happen soon enough, they wouldn't have to move away to different jobs."
Lab boosters stoked those hopes. South Dakota School of Mines and Technology President Richard Gowen, whom Gov. Mike Rounds would later appoint as head of the Homestake Laboratory Conversion Project, told miners, "You know the rock, you know the mine and you're the people we want," according to the Black Hills Pioneer. The Journal described a hand-written sign left on a pile of blasting caps on the 7400 Level during the last mining shift: "Save for the NSF."
The mine-to-lab conversion, however, hit an obstacle immediately. The same month the last ore was extracted, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation bought out Homestake, aiming to tap the company's 125 years of experience on its way to becoming a global giant. Barrick agreed in principle to donate the Homestake Mine to science, but feared lawsuits over injuries and environmental problems. When Democratic South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle championed a bill to shield the company from liability, he drew fire not just from environmentalists – who thought it would set a bad precedent for mine reclamation – but also from political rivals. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh – always seeking an angle against liberals, even if it meant a momentary alliance with environmentalists – blasted Daschle for giving Barrick "a free pass on polluting the environment with toxic waste."
The partisan sparring and unresolved liability stalled negotiations at the national level, even as Lead and neighboring cities and counties passed resolutions supporting the lab. Barrick continued to resist the complicated mine-transfer deal, despite a pleading letter from 14 Nobel Prize-winning scientists and legendary physicist Stephen Hawking, and in June 2003, the company shut down the pumps. Some physicists began proposing other lab sites.
With the lab proposal here unraveling, the mine's closure "had a tremendous impact on the town," says Hanhardt, who worked on the final crews shuttering the mine until 2003. "The prices on housing dropped, people had to move away. ... It just caused a lot of turmoil."
Then, in 2004, Gov. Rounds, citing the billions of dollars of economic development the lab might bring to the Black Hills, pushed the state Legislature to resolve the liability concerns by creating the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority. The new agency would resemble entities created by other states to cash in on science research, but its main purpose was to assume full ownership of the defunct mine and take Barrick off the hook. In 2006, the company gave the state the mine property, including 186 surface acres.
But the delay allowed other Western communities to enter the competition for a new underground lab. The proposals ranged from expanding the Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to using railroad tunnels under the Cascade Mountains near Seattle. In 2005, the National Science Foundation narrowed the proposals to Homestake and the Henderson molybdenum mine in Empire, Colo., largely because both sites, by virtue of being mines, were already excavated and had much of the necessary infrastructure, such as hoists. Empire, like Lead, saw a chance to dodge a mining bust.
It wasn't the first time that Westerners had competed for Big Science. In the late 1980s, most Western states vied for the Superconducting Super Collider, a 53-mile circumference, $4.4 billion project that would have been the world's largest atom-smasher, another important tactic in particle physics. "We can smell the supercollider. ... It smells like greenbacks," Utah Lt. Gov. Val Oveson told the Denver Post. In South Dakota, the Legislature approved $63 million in incentives and offered to condemn and purchase land for the Super Collider. The feds eventually chose Dallas, Texas, and pumped more than $2 billion into construction there, before Congress, concerned about ballooning costs, cancelled it in 1993.
Courting a physics lab for the Homestake Mine – an even larger incarnation of the original proposal, retitled the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory – South Dakota pledged $34 million for the nuts-and-bolts work of retrofitting the mine. Another $70 million came from T. Denny Sanford, a South Dakotan who made the Forbes billionaire list by issuing credit cards with high fees and up to 79.9 percent interest rates to people with bad credit scores through the bank he owns, First Premier. (Sanford had already plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into children's hospitals at the advice of friend Newt Gingrich.) But the bulk of the lab's funding depended on the National Science Foundation's approval.
Another round of suspense ended in 2007: A National Science Foundation committee unanimously selected Homestake, citing several factors, including the mine's depth and the character of the rock, which formed an effective shield for experiments. The state's Science Authority started rehabilitating the shafts and pumping out the water. Then more obstacles arose. The National Science Foundation had allotted $29 million to help design the lab, but it turned down a request for double that amount to deal with unexpected water and safety concerns.
In 2010, the National Science Foundation decided not to take a managing role, saying the Energy Department was better suited for the job. The decision derailed grand plans for creating a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory in the Homestake Mine. But one of the oldest and biggest federal labs in the West – the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley, where particle accelerator experiments in the 1930s gave rise to Big Science, and where research ranging from climate change to biology continues today – agreed to manage a scaled-down version. It would start off with a few high-priority physics experiments on the 4850 Level (where Davis' neutrino experiment still stood), while also opening the tunnels to geologists and biologists. And it was renamed after Sanford, as the importance of his donation was magnified by the National Science Foundation's withdrawal.
Local contractors hastened the mine retrofit, stretching miles of wire and ductwork down the shafts, hauling tons of rebar, gravel and concrete on the hoists, and turning the dark, narrow, dirt-floored tunnel on the 4850 Level into the "Davis Campus" – a 30,000-square-foot lab with a machine shop, flush toilets and Wi-Fi. After more than a decade of political wrangling, on May 30, 2012, dozens of scientists in hardhats gathered to celebrate what was in effect the underground lab's opening day.
"Other than the hardhats, you kind of forget you're a mile underground," Jim Hanhardt's son, Mark, tells me via videoconference from the Davis Campus when I visit the lab shortly after Neutrino Day. Along with a couple dozen other scientists and lab workers, he's just taken the 11-minute ride down the dark shaft in the same cage that his dad rode as a Homestake miner. Wearing safety glasses and a stubbly beard, he jokes with boyish enthusiasm as he explains what's going on with the experiments.
Mark Hanhardt calls himself "a jack of all trades, master of physics." During his days underground, he does odd jobs like repairing equipment, and he's also a 32-year-old grad student at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, a technical college with 2,400 students in nearby Rapid City, whose sports teams are named the "Hardrockers." He's involved in the lab's Large Underground Xenon, or LUX, dark-matter experiment, which has caught the interest of physicists around the world.
Particle astrophysics research proceeds the way all science does, from hypothesis to established theory. But it may be the only field in which scientists spend billions of dollars trying to prove the existence of something, like dark matter, that may not exist at all. This kind of Big Science, as many have predicted, could spin off new medical devices or weaponry the way early nuclear research yielded MRIs and warheads. But the scientists in this field are driven less by possible practical applications than by a restless desire to comprehend the cosmos, to find the patterns underlying both its unutterably vast and tiny realms. It's no wonder they have a habit of condensing their world into acronyms that baffle or amuse the uninitiated.
Weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, are the theoretical bits of dark matter that researchers hope to observe with the LUX. This experiment consists mainly of a trashcan-sized titanium canister filled with liquid xenon and suspended in a tank of water that further buffers the outside radiation. Like Davis' "neutrino tank," the LUX acts like a net, registering a distinct signal if struck by a passing WIMP. But on Oct. 30, after an 85-day search for WIMPs, scientists announced that the experiment – despite being more sensitive than any of its predecessors – had yet to observe any WIMPs.
On a typical recent day, scientists in steel-toed boots shuffle back and forth in the Davis Campus corridor. Others slip on hooded Tyvec jumpsuits and facemasks, preparing to enter a cleanroom. Inside, scientists are making the world's purest copper, by dissolving already purified chunks of copper from Finland in acid and re-forming it to prevent contamination from cosmic rays. It's then machined into parts for a neutrino experiment called the Majorana Demonstrator (named after "a brilliant Italian theoretician who had a brief career in the 1920s and '30s but vanished mysteriously at the age of 32"). This experiment will measure the radioactive decay of hockey puck-sized germanium crystals placed within a copper detector, shielded against even trace amounts of radiation from the surrounding rock by a castle of 5,000 lead bricks. The goal is to confirm "neutrinoless double-beta decay," a theoretical subatomic process that has never been observed. The results could help explain how matter outweighed anti-matter and created the known universe.
Over time, the Sanford Lab could grow to house more experiments, possibly as many as were envisioned for the grand original lab proposal. One in planning stages, with a nearly $1 billion price tag, is called the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment. It would catch a beam of the particles shot from the Energy Department's Fermilab near Chicago, observing how they morph as they pass through the Earth. Some physicists think it could be the country's flagship experiment, but it's also under budget pressure. The Energy Department's science budget has dwindled since 2010, as it shifts research toward energy conservation and climate change, the Obama administration's priorities. Still, at the Sanford Lab there's an optimism from seeing experiments up and running. "For the next couple decades, at least," says Mark Hanhardt, "we're going to see a lot of Big Science underground."
The work itself is not easy. Wilkerson's Majorana team – a dozen graduate students, post-docs and fellow professors – sometimes works double shifts on the 4850 Level during critical stages of the experiment. Like most of the other researchers, they stay in Lead for only a week or month at a time, rotating through rented houses. Others hail from universities as far away as Canada, Russia and Japan. Lead has everything they need, says Wilkerson, and it's a nice place to get outdoors during their brief free time. "Probably the biggest hardship," he says, "is that people are away from their families."
The scientists' transience and the budget pressures are partly why the lab has had less of an economic impact than locals hoped. Underground research is a specialized and relatively small field, tending to draw scientists who are tethered to their home universities. The biggest underground lab in the world, Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory, draws some 900 scientists but has no more full-time staff than Sanford.
And within the realm of Big Science, Sanford Lab is small. The Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland, Wash., and the Idaho National Lab in Idaho Falls – both run by the Energy Department – have billion-dollar budgets and thousands of employees, working on dozens of applied-science research projects ranging from bio-energy to nuclear fusion. In recent years, the Energy Department's Los Alamos, N.M., lab has ranked as the state's sixth-largest employer. The Sanford Lab's budget, in rough numbers, is $20 million per year, including
$13 million from the Energy Department, $4 million from the Sanford donation, and $2 million from the state.
But in Lead, the lab's $12 million payroll and more than 120 jobs go a long way. "It's the major employer in the community," says Mike Stahl, Lead's city administrator, who used to be a Homestake mining engineer. About 70 lab employees formerly worked for Homestake in one way or another. The lab depends on people with mining experience; they maintain and run the equipment, refurbish the shafts using special chainsaws and black-powder "microblasters," and install new steel supports so that the hoists can handle bigger, future experiments. Other former Homestake employees work at the lab as administrators, security guards and wastewater technicians. Full-timers get health insurance, three weeks' paid vacation and other benefits.
The traveling scientists "buy supplies (and) eat at restaurants," says Stahl. "There are a few art galleries they like to go to." Dena Sheets, a local property manager who rents houses to several of them, says the lab overall "has been a real shot in the arm for this economy." Especially during winter, when the roar of motorcycles headed to the annual national rally in nearby Sturgis has died down and the tourist economy limps along on winter recreation, "you can definitely tell when there is something going on at the lab," says Melissa Johnson, director of Lead's Chamber of Commerce. "It's pretty easy to spot (the scientists): They're not wearing snowmobile gear."
Evidence of the Homestake Mine bust remains visible. The union hall is now a bar, with a used-clothing store in back. Rows of vacant shops line the old downtown; "For Sale" signs dot the neighborhoods. Smaller-scale mining, employing about 150 people, continues a few miles west of town at a cyanide heap-leach operation run by Goldcorp, another Canadian company. But "people are kind of settled into the next stage," says Stahl. "They're past resenting the loss of the mine."
The impact of Big Science on the West has always been more complicated than the basic jobs and dollars. Richland prospers on high-tech business spun off the Pacific Northwest National Lab, but also inherited a legacy of nuclear contamination at the nearby Hanford site, which produced plutonium for weapons from the 1940s to the 1980s. Los Alamos has a nationally recognized high school nurtured by its rural pod of Ph.D.s, but a sense of isolation lingers like a decayed isotope from the secrecy of that town's World War II-era nuclear bomb-building. In Lead, there's a sense that Sanford Lab fills the void that opens like a wound when mining towns go bust. The underground science, which seems harmless compared to nuclear research, has given this small community a new sense of purpose.
"Lead still has a lot of retired Homestake employees and their families," says Stahl. "When the Sanford Lab has presentations, that room is full of those people. They're there because they find it interesting."
Jim Hanhardt recalls his previous life as a "tramp miner," going from town to town as metal prices climbed and fell. After his job with Homestake ended in 2003, he left for stints in California and then Montana. But "I had always had my eye on coming back," he says. "This was home. (My wife and I) raised our kids here."
When I meet him in the lab, near the hallway where the scientists suit up in coveralls for their ride down the shaft, his mining years show. He wears tiny hearing aids after years of operating machinery, and one finger bears a scar from an accident in a Colorado mine. He hands me a photo of a motorcycle he built. "Science is something I've always been interested in," he says.
A job with a contractor doing the shaft rehab in the lab drew him back to Lead in 2008. Two years later, the lab hired him directly, to continue to manage the retrofit and oversee other aspects of the lab operations, using his mining expertise. Like others here, he's hesitant to compare the lab to the mine. "Homestake employed a lot of miners, but (the lab) is a little bit different," he says. "Support of science brings in a bunch of new opportunities that weren't even envisioned back in the Homestake days."
He could be thinking of the local high-school kids doing class projects with the lab, or of recruits from the 4,400 students at Black Hills State University, in nearby Spearfish, who get summer internships here. Or how the state's Science Authority pays for a group of South Dakota high school grads to study physics for a month at the Energy Department's Fermilab and underground labs in Europe. All are part of Science Authority's mission "to foster transformational science education" in addition to running the lab. That mission will soon be anchored in a new $4.5 million education center at the Black Hills University campus, and the Sanford donation will be tapped for more than half of that cost. The center will, among other things, train the region's K-12 science teachers to create "a community culture of appreciation for the pursuit of knowledge," says Ben Sayler, the lab's director of education and outreach.
Jim Hanhardt is probably also proud that his son is one of the state's first physics Ph.D. students in decades. The South Dakota School of Mines' former physics Ph.D. program winked out in the 1950s, and until recently, this state and Vermont were the only states where students couldn't attain that degree. When lab proponents first came to South Dakota to drum up support, "there just weren't many physicists in (the state)," says Tina Keller, director of the physics program at University of South Dakota, where half of the 12 new Ph.D. candidates are enrolled. The lab pushed the state's universities to get involved in the research, and this year the Legislature began to provide funding for the new Ph.D. program, which could grow to more than 40 students. The Ph.D. students are the kind of people you want to keep around, Keller says. "They're creative, they're young, they have a lot of energy."
On Aug. 20, their first day of school, the new Ph.D. students meet in the lab for an orientation. Mark Hanhardt poses with the rest for a photo in front of the old shaft headframe. Some of the students will be on the 4850 Level daily, working on research and taking breaks to attend classes – via videoconference – transmitted from the University of South Dakota, 450 miles away.
"It's not unusual for me to be the only American in a room here," Mark says, down on the 4850 Level. "Being with that mix of cultures, but with everyone driven toward the same goal of ripping open the cover of the universe and taking a peek inside, that's exceptionally rewarding."
Marshall Swearingen, a former HCN intern, is now freelancing from Bozeman, Montana.
Matt Kapust, a South Dakota native who began working at the Sanford Lab as an intern while attending Black Hills State University, provided most of the photographs for this story from work he's done as the lab's multimedia specialist. Additional images were taken by his former photography professor, Steve Babbitt.
This story was funded with reader donations to the High Country News Research Fund.]]>
That was the cover story of the Dec. 7, 1987 issue of High Country News. It's just one of many news articles, essays and maps that you can find in the HCN archives, lined up in bound volumes on the shelves at HCN's Paonia, Colo. headquarters.
It was around this time last year, as cold morning breeze came off mountains yellow with aspen, that I first cracked open the bound volumes. With each turn of the pages – more yellowed and more tattered as I flipped back through the years – I felt my past becoming more whole. It was a wide view of the last 40 years in the West, like the view I get by climbing a certain mountain and looking across the valley where I live.
Part of the reason I couldn't stop flipping through the archives is that they're rare. I didn't know then that the university library here in Bozeman (and a few others in the region) also have bound volumes of HCN issues. But I knew I couldn't find them where I get most of my other information – on the internet.
But that's changing. I recently came across the railroad story, and countless other HCN gems, while digitally scanning every page of every issue that the magazine (then in a newspaper format) published between 1984 and 1994 – the year when issues started being posted routinely to this website. Now, I'm uploading the files to the "Past issues" section of the HCN website. Soon, we hope to have all of HCN history digitized and available there.
This is where you come in. To complete this project, we need many pre-1984 loose issues (which can lie flat on the scanner, unlike bound volumes), listed below. So please, dear old-time reader, do you have dusty piles of HCN issues lurking around the house? If you do, and can bear to part with them at least temporarily, please let me know: email@example.com.
As I continue the mostly robotic work of uploading the scanned files, I'll post more archive samplers here on this blog, as well as an updated list of the missing issues. So check back in – and check those attics!
(Dates unknown for those issues listed here without an exact date.)
Missing issues:
Marshall Swearingen is a former High Country News intern. He writes and archives from Bozeman, Montana.]]>
From the 1970s until 2005, Alaska managed most of the Bristol Bay watershed as key habitat for salmon. Then, likely under industry pressure, it rolled back those protections. In 2007, a consortium of Canadian and British mining companies called the Pebble Partnership formed, with plans to mine copper in the headwaters of the Kvichak and Nushagak rivers. Members of local tribes, fearing water pollution from the Pebble Mine -- which could become one of North America's largest -- asked the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene in 2010. "In some areas, we probably could work mining and fish together," says Larson. "But not at the headwaters of two of the largest-producing salmon rivers in the world." Fishermen and big green groups such as the Natural Resource Defense Council joined the fight. And in April, the EPA released a second draft of a study expressing serious concerns about mining's impact on salmon, raising hopes that the agency might invoke its controversial, seldom-used veto power to halt the project in its tracks.
Under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, the EPA has the power to override infrastructure projects approved by the often pro-development Army Corps of Engineers when fish, wildlife, drinking water or recreation are threatened. It does this by vetoing the permits for "dredged or fill material" required to excavate mines and construct tailings dams. Environmental groups have often asked the EPA to use 404(c), but it has done so only 13 times, mostly in the Eastern and Southern U.S.
None of those projects posed anywhere near the threat that the Pebble Mine does, says Craig Johnston, a professor at Oregon's Lewis and Clark Law School. (He worked for the EPA in 1986 on the veto of a Massachusetts shopping mall, which would have destroyed what the agency itself called an "ordinary swamp.") And with Pebble Mine's metals valued at more than $48 billion, the project also dwarfs others in terms of potential profits.
EPA's April report found that a hypothetical Pebble Mine could consume several miles of spawning streams and contaminate the watershed with acid mine drainage and copper, which is toxic to salmonids. Leaks in the slurry pipeline transporting the copper to an ocean port would release high concentrations of toxic metals. And a failure of the tailings dams would devastate salmon habitat for decades. To protect salmon and streams, the draft states, mining wastes "would require management for centuries or even perpetuity."
Pebble, which intends to monitor the mine site "for a minimum of 30 years" after mining ceases, according to its website, is critical of the EPA for overlooking potential mitigation measures like constructing new salmon habitat, and for speculating on its plans before it even files for permits (which it may do this year), a concern shared by Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, the state's Department of Natural Resources and some local Native communities supportive of the mine for the jobs and tax revenue it would bring.
The EPA has vetoed high-profile projects in the past: In 1990, for example, then-Administrator William Reilly angered Colorado's congressmen by nixing Denver Water's plans to construct Two Forks Reservoir, which would have destroyed a prime trout stream. And in 2011, then-EPA head Lisa Jackson revoked a permit for a mountain-top-removal coal mine in West Virginia. The mining company appealed, but in April, the Supreme Court upheld the EPA's authority to use 404(c) "whenever" it wants. The Wall Street Journal, echoing outcry from business interests, editorialized that the agency's move was "about killing coal as part of the Obama Administration's climate agenda" and an effort to "shut down industries on ideological grounds," heightening the political risk of vetoing Pebble.
"EPA is under attack for almost everything it's doing," says Pat Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School who worked for the agency during three 404(c) cases. "Any action that EPA takes has to be viewed in the larger political context of, 'How many of these battles can the agency fight?' "
The EPA has tried to defuse the pressure by denying that the watershed study portends a veto. But Phil North, who worked as an EPA ecologist on the study before retiring in April, says there is "a lot of sympathy" within the agency for the tribes' concerns. He believes the science of the watershed study is clear: Pebble Mine is incompatible with subsistence life based around Bristol Bay's abundant salmon.
"I've worked on every major mine in Alaska in one capacity or another," he says. "This was the first one that I ever saw, that as I worked on it, I thought, 'You know, maybe this one is not such a good idea.' "]]>
Now, Denver-based oil and gas company Flatirons Resources wants to tap the area again -- this time for the helium. In March, the federal Bureau of Land Management approved the company's plan. It's the first time the agency has permitted a helium-only well, and the decision signals the rising importance of the inert gas, essential for a variety of high-tech applications, such as manufacturing fiber-optic cable, cooling MRI machines and performing certain types of welding.
The U.S. holds about 40 percent of the world's estimated helium resources. More than a third of the global supply comes from the BLM-operated Federal Helium Reserve near Amarillo, which taps a mother lode stretching from Texas to Kansas. The Reserve's dominance of the market has long suppressed private development of helium, though refineries in Utah and Wyoming produce some as a byproduct from natural gas extraction.
But with the Reserve now nearing the end of its life just as rising demand heightens global shortages, helium-
focused drilling is emerging in the West. "In 20 years," predicts Joe Peterson, assistant field manager for helium operations at the Reserve, most U.S. helium "will be coming from those Western areas."
Starting in World War I, when the U.S. Navy extracted helium for floating dirigibles, the federal government was the U.S.'s only major producer. In 1960, the Bureau of Mines created the Federal Helium Reserve to store the gas for Cold War rocketry and welding, pumping billions of cubic feet of it from private natural gas wells into an underground pocket of rock.
By the mid-'90s, the funds borrowed to construct the Reserve had ballooned into a $1.3 billion debt, and Congress passed the Helium Privatization Act hoping to amend the situation. The law mandated that the BLM -- which had taken over for the Bureau of Mines when that agency dissolved in 1995 -- sell off the helium stockpile to repay the debt, at which time the Reserve's funding would end.
The sell-off came with unintended consequences. Congress pegged the helium price high to repay the debt. But demand from high-tech industries pushed market prices above the Reserve's, making it the most desirable supplier and slowing down private development, says Janie Chermak, professor of economics at University of New Mexico. The private helium industry struggled for other reasons, too.
"It's a lot of work for a little bit of gas," shouts Nick Bradshaw, superintendent of Castleton Commodities International's Paradox Midstream gas plant, over the rumble of compressors in the facility's helium refinery. The maze of pipes and gauges chills a mix of nitrogen, helium and traces of other gases to 340 degrees below zero to liquefy the nitrogen so the helium gas can be siphoned off. Tanker trucks then take the gas to another plant where it's liquefied for distribution.
The Paradox plant, tucked in the red- rock hills south of Moab, Utah, started refining helium from nearby natural gas wells in 1992. When that field declined, the plant started pulling high-nitrogen gas from fields as far away as Colorado. Paradox is small compared to the West's biggest helium producer, an ExxonMobil natural gas refinery in southwest Wyoming, which pumps out a fifth of U.S. supply.
The Paradox plant shut down its helium facility in 2011, even though demand was high. A nationwide shale-gas drilling boom had slashed natural gas prices. With few wells being drilled, the plant was operating at a fraction of capacity and couldn't cover helium production's fixed costs.
The rise of shale gas -- which contains no helium because the small, buoyant molecules escape from porous shale -- hit production of helium-containing gas especially hard. Where helium is found, typically within impermeable domes of rock, it's mixed with nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and contains fewer hydrocarbons than shale gas -- an unattractive blend when natural gas prices slump.
But in February, with refined helium prices nearly quadrupled since 2000, CCI resumed production. "With the shortage, people (wanting helium) kept coming back to us," Bradshaw says. Praxair, a helium distributor, "put a deal in front of us to make (restarting the helium plant) worthwhile."
The prospect that the Federal Helium Reserve, now almost out of debt, could close this year has compounded the global helium shortage -- caused mainly by mechanical problems at plants in Algeria, Qatar and the U.S. -- and sparked an outcry from industry. "To put it simply, without helium, we cannot operate," a semiconductor manufacturer told the House Natural Resources Committee in February.
In response, the usually-divided House voted 394-1 for the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act, which would extend the Reserve's life (about three years at current drawdown rates, more if the rate is slowed), base its prices on the market and reserve some helium for government use. That bill and a similar Senate bill are sitting in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Even if the Reserve stays open, its role is waning along with the fields it taps. New helium sources are expected in Russia and Qatar, while U.S. helium production is moving westward. A Big Piney, Wyo., natural gas and helium plant is expected to be completed this year, and could produce about a tenth the amount of helium currently supplied annually by the Reserve. And if the Utah helium-only project succeeds, it may become a model for others.
Lack of private helium development in the past creates challenges for the industry now, says Scott Sears, a third-generation oil and gas man whose company, IACX Energy, will refine the helium from the new Utah well. The process for leasing helium on federal lands is cumbersome from lack of use, he says. Also, oil and gas companies, whose drill rigs and pipelines are necessary for growing helium production, tend to focus on hydrocarbons and overlook the gas's value.
Meanwhile, Sears is quietly scouting possible locations for other helium projects in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Montana, trying to get ahead of the competition. "My pitch to the oil and gas guys is, 'Hey, it's fun out here ... helium appears to be going nowhere but up,' " he says. "And the other side of me is saying, 'Shoot, maybe I should shut my mouth.' "]]>
"If the (Crystal) River is turning black, I know it's been raining in Coal Basin," says Bill Fales, whose ranch is about 11 miles downstream of Redstone. Last year, when the Forest Service proposed using cattle to help heal the mining scars, Fales and other local ranchers who run their cattle on public land in Coal Basin got involved. They call it the "Cow Stomp," and if it's successful, the project could become a model for restoration efforts around the country.
The Crystal River naturally runs thick with sediment because of the erosive geology of the area, so runoff from Coal Basin is an extra stress on the river's fish, says Mark Lacy, a Forest Service fish biologist at the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District of the White River National Forest. Local conservation groups like the Roaring Fork Conservancy have long pushed to restore the basin. Last year, they organized a meeting in Redstone to get a project rolling. What emerged is a collaboration between the Forest Service and local ranchers, with conservation groups and local governments pitching in funding.
The project "picks up where the state left off," says Forest Service soil scientist Brian McMullen. Mid-Continent Coke and Coal Company, which operated the mine before going bankrupt in the early 1990s, demolished its buildings when the mine closed. But the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety was left with most of the reclamation task. It decommissioned some roads and seeded the waste rock piles to help stabilize them, but Mid-Continent's reclamation bond ran out before the agency could fully stem erosion.
"You can't really mess this area up any more (than it already is)," says McMullen, who's leading an effort to use compost and bio-char (a smoldered wood product), along with native seed, to revegetate decommissioned roads. The basin has become a "laboratory for reclamation," says Ben Carlson, the Forest Service range technician who's leading the Cow Stomp experiment. On a 40-acre waste-rock pile near Coal Creek, Carlson and others fenced off a few one-acre plots. Some of the plots are being used to test how native grasses, flowers, and shrubs respond to compost and bio-char. But the center of the action is a plot where Fales and other ranchers ran about 80 cattle for a day-and-a-half last summer.
On that plot, the Forest Service spread native grass seed, then a layer of wheat straw and feed hay. The Forest Service provided a watering tank, and the ranchers herded their cattle onto the plot. As the cattle grazed the hay, they stomped the grass seed and straw into the soil, providing natural fertilizer with their cow-pies.
"It felt like trying to reclaim a parking lot," recalls Fales. But already, the experiment is showing hopeful, if subtle, results. The native grass is a thicker and healthier compared to the neighboring "control" plot where the treatment wasn't applied. And the layer of straw paid off immediately by helping shield the bare soil from the rain, reducing erosion. As the straw and cow-pies work their way into the dirt, they will increase the amount of organic matter, which helps retain moisture and supports vegetation.
It will be a couple years before the results show clearly, says Carlson. If the project is successful, it could become a model not just for reclaiming mine sites, but pads of scraped earth left from oil and gas drilling, which also cause erosion problems.
Meanwhile, the Cow Stomp may be helping ease divisions between conservationists and ranchers. "The fascinating part of this is that the Cattlemen's Association, Forest Service and environmental groups are all working together," says Dorothea Farris, treasurer of the Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association, one of the groups funding the project. Carlson and Fales hope to demonstrate how cattle can heal the land, not damage it. Putting lots of cattle onto the small plots is high-intensity, but the ranchers are letting the land rest and regenerate afterwards, which provides key benefits. Overgrazing is usually caused by having cattle in an area for too long, says Carlson.
Fales, who remembers when the Cow Stomp site was an aspen grove before it was buried in mine tailings, says his cattle are a tool, like a hammer: "Just 'cause you hit your thumb, doesn't mean you throw out the hammer."
Marshall Swearingen is a High Country News intern.]]>
In the 1870s, gold fever struck South Dakota's Black Hills. Mining camps like the infamous Deadwood sprung from the mud, supporting bustling trade in opium and liquor. The gold seams went deep, and hundreds of miners and their families settled into a stable and prosperous living in the nearby, larger town of Lead (pronounced "leed"). From 1879 until 2000, Homestake Mining Company carved 370 miles of tunnels as deep as 8,000 feet, creating one of the deepest mines in the country. But in 2000, the ore vein exhausted, Homestake shut down and Lead tumbled into decline.
Today, not miners but scientists don hard hats and neon-yellow vests and descend Homestake's mineshaft elevators to nearly a mile underground. They are drawn to the mine's extraordinary depth for a different reason: it provides a quiet environment for detecting faint but earth-penetrating signals from space. The experiments could give scientists insight into the fundamental workings of the universe. And they are breathing a new sense of purpose into Lead, which has struggled to redefine itself since Homestake left.
The Sanford Underground Research Facility is a collaboration between the State of South Dakota, the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and dozens of top research universities. After years of planning and construction, the lab opened last year, and scientists are readying their experiments.
For decades, physicists have pried into a realm of tiny, elusive particles millions of times smaller than atoms in order to understand the building blocks of the universe. Much of this research has made use of particle accelerators -- giant, underground magnetic tubes like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland -- to smash atoms together and observe the results. But another method involves observing particles hurling through space. On the surface of the earth, it's difficult to detect these particles because of the background noise of celestial and human-caused radiation. But deep underground, buffered by a mile-thick mass of earth, most of that background noise is absent, making places like Homestake prime real estate for research. Only a few such facilities exist in the world; one major one is in Italy.
One riddle the scientists are trying to resolve is the discord between their celestial observations and textbook theories of gravity. The discord suggests that the universe is hiding "dark matter," which hasn't been observed but is estimated to be five times more abundant than the stuff of galaxies. Scientists hypothesize that dark matter is made up of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPS. An experiment in the Sanford lab is designed to produce a flash of light when a cosmic particle hits it, and the intensity and pattern of the light can be used to infer whether or not the collision was caused by a WIMP.
Homestake has a history of this kind of experimentation. In the 1960s, Ray Davis became the first physicist to observe the sun's neutrinos -- another kind of tiny, penetrating particle. The mining company carved out a cavern for Davis to install his massive detector. Davis's work was famous in the physics community (he received the Nobel Prize in physics in 2002). So when Homestake announced the mine's closure in 2000, it took only two weeks for physicists to propose converting the mine into a laboratory.
Some of Lead's residents thought that the transition would be seamless, and were actually counting on the lab to save the town's economy. But figuring out who would own and operate the facility took time, and funding was tenuous. Meanwhile, the mine shafts were filling with groundwater. And the loss of mining jobs was so severe that Lead passed a special ordinance to deal with vacant and abandoned homes.
The state of South Dakota stepped in, and formed the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority in 2004 to handle the project. South Dakota had long tried to gain a foothold in science research, and Homestake's closure looked like a prime opportunity. Homestake donated the mine to South Dakota in 2006, and the state kicked in $40 million to start the retrofit. The lab's namesake benefactor, Denny Sanford, donated $70 million. The money has been used to refurbish mineshafts, excavate new areas and construct special rooms to clean and store scientific equipment.
"The Lab," as it's known in Lead, hasn't made up completely for the economic loss of the mine, but it's become a "very significant" part of the community, says Mike Stahl, Lead's city administrator. The influx of scientists and construction contractors has helped to prop up tax revenue. The lab employs about 130 people -- 70 of them former Homestake employees -- with an annual payroll of $8 million.
Meanwhile, Homestake crews are reclaiming parts of the old mine on the surface, dealing with tailings piles and open mine cuts. The memories of Lead's mining days linger on the landscape, but the town is reshaping itself, not just around the lab, but with hopes of attracting tourists and offering a family-friendly atmosphere to complement Deadwood's gambling scene. "Lead learned that the era of being a company town was over," writes Melissa Johnson, director of Lead's Chamber of Commerce, in The Western Planner, "and more importantly that it was a good thing."
Marshall Swearingen is a High Country News intern.
First image, courtesy City of Lead; second, third and fifth images, courtesy of Sanford Underground Research Facility; fourth image, Brookhaven National Lab.
Containment measures such as inspecting and cleaning boats have helped keep the mussels out of most Western waterways, although they've been found in a dozen water bodies in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. But this spring, quaggas were spotted for the first time at marinas on Lake Powell. The Associated Press reports that the Lake Powell quaggas "weren't close enough (together) to reproduce," so there may be time to stop their colonization of the reservoir.
The Environmental Protection Agency is skeptical of the mining company's claims, a view expressed in the agency's revised assessment of Pebble Mine. The eagerly awaited study, released in April, reiterates the agency's stance that the mine poses serious risks to the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, and brings EPA one step closer to possibly vetoing Pebble before it is ever built.
In 2010, leaders from among the 31 federally recognized tribes in the Bristol Bay area, where salmon support both subsistence livelihood and a $1 billion commercial fishery, appealed to the EPA for help. They expected that industry-friendly Alaska Department of Natural Resources would permit the mine, and knew that EPA has a unique power, granted by Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act: the agency can restrict or deny projects unilaterally, overruling state and federal permits, when "dredged or fill material" like mine-tailings dams would adversely affect water quality, fisheries, wildlife or recreation.
Like a presidential veto, Section 404(c) is intended to be a check against projects that gain political traction but would have detrimental local impacts. EPA has wielded Section 404(c) only 13 times since 1981, mostly in the eastern and southern U.S. The only time 404(c) trumped a project in a western state was in 1990, when EPA overruled the Army Corps of Engineers and vetoed Denver Water's plan to construct the Two Forks dam on the South Platte River (see HCN 11/20/2000 "Water pressure"). In the most recent case, in 2010, EPA exercised 404(c) against a mountaintop mine in West Virginia. That decision was overturned in district court because EPA denied the project after it had already been permitted, but was upheld in appeals court this spring, affirming EPA's power to veto a project at any time.
In the case of Pebble, EPA responded to locals' requests by initiating a detailed study of the potential impacts of the mine. The study took stock of the salmon fishery and how the locals use it, and envisioned multiple mine-development scenarios and how they might interact with the lush landscape. EPA released the first draft in May 2012, held meetings in native villages to get feedback from local residents, and put the study through a scientific peer review.
EPA's findings are not surprising given the well-established problems of open-pit mines. Besides consuming several miles of spawning streams, the sprawling Pebble Mine could easily leak acid mine drainage and copper -- which is toxic to salmonoids -- into the watershed, according the assessment. Leaks in the slurry pipeline transporting the copper to an ocean port would release toxic metals in high concentrations. And there would always be the threat of a failure of the tailings dams, unleashing a stew of leached heavy metals into the watershed.
Pebble Partnership has predictably criticized the study, accusing the EPA of not taking into account the jobs and tax revenue that the mine would bring, which appeal to many local, native groups. The company reassures on its website that when mining ceases and the pit and tailings piles fill with water, they will monitor and treat the water "for a minimum of 30 years," a brief moment compared to the thousands of years that Bristol Bay's residents have relied on salmon. The company's main criticism is that EPA is using hypothetical mining scenarios, rather than waiting for the company to submit a detailed mining permit proposal. But if EPA did wait, the company would likely criticize the agency for bogging down the permitting process.
The study released in April is a second draft, a response to criticism from both sides. EPA is taking a second round of public comment until May 31, and expects to release its final assessment sometime this year.
Meanwhile, opponents of the mine want EPA to hurry up and use its 404(c) powers. Curyung Tribal Council Chief Tom Tilden recently told the Bristol Bay Times: "We are suffering social and cultural harm from the proposed Pebble mine. We go to bed every night with this conflict heavy on our minds."
Marshall Swearingen is a High Country News intern.
Images courtesy EPA.
WSGS based the 10-billion ton milestone on detailed records the state has kept since 1865, shown on the graph below. What I learned from WSGS's coal history archive and from talking to WSGS coal geologist Chris Carroll is that coal's ebb and flow over the years tells a story much larger than numbers marked on a chart. Although we tend to think of our prodigious coal consumption as a sudden, intractable habit, Wyoming coal -- which is a big chunk of the country's coal -- has changed constantly over the years, adapting to new technologies, wars, laws and the vagaries of economics.
The first noticeable blips on the graph mark the years of World War I and World War II. During this period, the major use of coal was for industrial processes like firing blast furnaces to make steel, which ramped up during war efforts. According to Energy Information Agency data (graph below), it wasn't until the late 1950s that more coal was used by power plants than by industry.
Coal use predictably tapered off during the Great Depression, but its decline after World War II was more complicated. By the 1950s, coal was already the primary source of electricity, climbing above hydro power. But overall coal use in Wyoming declined during the 1950s as coal fell out of fashion for home heating and other domestic uses, in favor of natural gas (second graph below). Even so, the average home relied more on burning coal than using electricity (in terms of raw energy units) until nearly 1960.
As electricity use climbed steadily from the 1950s on, advances in coal-burning technology made coal more attractive as a fuel for electric generation. A few smaller coal-fired plants had been constructed in Wyoming starting the late 1940s. But in the 1970s, huge new plants were built to supply not only local demand, but that of the whole northwest region, and coal production hockey-sticked as a result.
The 1970s coal-plant building spree was stoked not only by rising electricity demand, but by the energy crisis kicked off by the 1973 oil embargo. The federal government saw in Wyoming a ripe and bountiful supply of domestic energy. To the horror of conservation groups and ranchers, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed building 42 coal-fired plants near the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana to feed the nation's seemingly insatiable energy appetite, and plans abounded for synthesizing coal into gasoline substitute.
As the foreign energy squeeze eased and energy consumption leveled off, however, most of these coal-plant and coal-gasification projects never materialized. The energy boom inevitably gave way to bust in the mid 1980s, and Wyoming coal production sputtered. But in 1990, it hit its next boom when the demand for Wyoming's low-sulfur coal skyrocketed after Congress amended the Clean Air Act to address acid rain, which in the northeast United States, especially, had become a major problem. As of 2011, 35 states got coal from Wyoming.
That's been good news for those concerned about human-caused climate change. "Public enemy No. 1 is burning coal" was what Steven Running, a University of Montana climate change researcher, told those gathered at a recent rally in Missoula. Coal companies have a different outlook. "The (coal mining) industry looks forward to supplying power from Wyoming coal ... for the next 100 years," said Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, in a press release issued by Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead's office in response to the 10 billion-ton milestone. Company profits would benefit from this vision of stable coal consumption. But if Wyoming coal's history is any lesson, its future is anything but certain.
Marshall Swearingen is a High Country News intern.
Images courtesy Wyoming State Geological Survey, Energy Information Agency, and Butte-Silver BowPublic Library.
That's because Kennecott employees expected a slide months in advance. For years, the mine has used sensors embedded in its walls to detect stress in rock, and lasers perched on the pit rim to measure the position of hundreds of reflectors mounted to the mine face. New radar technology allows the company to detect changes as small as 1/100th of an inch in the distance between monitoring stations inside the pit and large areas of the mine wall every six to eight minutes.
Starting in February, Kennecott workers observed minute movements in the mine's northeast face and began shifting roads, utilities and buildings out of the way. Not long before the slide, movement increased to two inches per day. The morning of the slide, the company evacuated its workers. Kennecott officials estimated that the landslide damage would cut the company's production of refined copper by 50 percent, down from 163,200 tons in 2012.]]>
Big data centers have been popping up around the West in recent years. Some of the world's biggest Internet companies -- Google, Facebook, Amazon -- are being drawn to the region for a variety of reasons, including hefty incentives from local and state governments trying to attract economic development. The "cloud" would seem to exist in an ethereal, purely digital realm but its material manifestation is staggering, and is reshaping some Western communities. It's a recent trend that raises a couple of questions: Why do companies build data centers where they do, and what's in it for towns like Cheyenne?
The answer to the first question is relatively straightforward. Companies want to build data centers near existing fiber optic cables -- the bundled strands of glass that shoot information around the world at near light-speed. Installing the cables is expensive, so companies try to locate data centers within a few miles of existing networks, which tend to follow interstate highway routes and other major transport corridors.
After that, companies can choose where other factors are favorable. "The biggest thing is cheap electricity," says Jonathan Koomey, a Research Fellow at the Steyer-Taylor center for energy policy at Stanford University, because data centers use prodigious amounts of electricity to power computer servers and keep them from overheating. That's drawn companies to states like Wyoming, where electricity costs half as much as in California or New England. Along the Columbia River, companies tap reliable hydro power at inexpensive industrial rates, one reason that region has become a hotspot for data centers. The data centers in the Columbia River region use about as much energy as 190,000 homes, according to figures released by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Climate is also a factor. Colder, drier climates make it easier to cool the computers, cutting down on electricity costs. When Facebook built its first company-owned data center in Prineville, Ore. in 2010, it installed a cooling system that uses less energy by evaporating water into the dry high-desert air. When T5 recently chose Colorado Springs as the place for a new $800 million data center campus, it cited the cool mountain climate as a major reason. But climate is becoming less of an issue as more efficient cooling systems are developed, says Koomey.
The biggest draw to companies, though, may be the tax incentives offered by local governments and states. Several states, including Washington and Wyoming, waive their sales tax for purchase of data center equipment, saving the companies millions of dollars. Oregon has no sales tax to begin with, and certain municipalities, mostly rural, have designated themselves as "enterprise zones," with certain property tax exemptions. That's saved Google $105 million since it built Oregon's first big data center in 2006 at The Dalles, on the banks of the Columbia River. Some states, like Wyoming, just outright pay companies cash, with hopes of recouping the money through property taxes and indirect economic benefits.
The enthusiasm for attracting data centers may be justified. Labor groups in Oregon welcomed Facebook, which used local, union labor to build the Prineville data center, bringing a solid boost to the region's construction trades. In Quincy, Wash., where half-a-dozen companies including Yahoo and Microsoft have built data centers since 2006, the small town's economy has prospered, says Tim Snead, Quincy's city administrator. According to a 2010 report by the Washington Resource Council, the town's property tax revenue nearly tripled between 2006 and 2009, increasing funding for schools and other public services by millions of dollars, even as the town and county cut property tax rates by 10 percent. After the wave of new construction left town, 220 permanent high-paying jobs remained.
But data centers have also stressed these small towns. When Facebook's data center came online, it used up most of the electric transmission line capacity, leaving local utilities scrambling to come up with enough electricity. In Quincy, Microsoft ran its huge back-up diesel generators -- intended for use during blackouts -- for 3,615 hours in 2010 while it made upgrades to its data center, causing some locals to complain about fumes and noise, according to the New York Times. In 2011, when the local utility threatened Microsoft with a $210,000 fine for overestimating its anticipated power use, the company dodged the fine by intentionally wasting millions of watts of electricity.
Quincy's Snead says there haven't been any notable incidents since 2011, and that overall most people in the community continue to view Quincy's new data centers favorably. But some communities are more ambivalent. Wasco County Commissioner Scott Hege told the Oregonian that when Google got a big tax-break package to build at The Dalles, "the deal that this community got wasn't that great" because the town gave up huge property tax benefits.
In any case, it's clear that big data centers are rapidly and unexpectedly reshaping some Western communities. After Microsoft bought 75 acres of bean fields for its data center near Quincy in 2006, the town coined a new motto: "Where agriculture meets technology!"
Marshall Swearingen is a High Country News intern.
Images courtesy Flickr user cellanr, GrigorPDX, and wikimedia commons.
"This is an international problem that will require an international solution," Michael Jamison, Crown of the Continent program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association, recently told The Missoulian. The first step, he and others say, is to enlist the aid of the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canada organization created over a century ago to handle these kinds of water disputes.
The International Joint Commission was established by the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty. At that time, Canada and the U.S. were bickering over rights to irrigation water diverted from rivers like the Milk, which spans the Montana-Alberta border in dry but fertile farm country. The treaty addressed these irrigation concerns, along with issues of waterway navigability and water quality. To mediate future conflicts, the treaty set up the IJC, a permanent commission consisting of three Americans and three Canadians appointed by each country's highest level of government. The commissioners have a mix of policy and science experience, and the two chairmen -- one from each country -- serve on the IJC as a full-time job.
The IJC takes up a case when both the U.S. Secretary of State and the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs request it to do so. The IJC has dealt with dozens of cross-boundary water disputes, from the Skagit River in Washington to the Great Lakes and Niagara Falls. The IJC has no direct political authority to make or enforce laws. But it has commissioned scientific studies and made policy recommendations that have had significant impact.
Those favoring the IJC's involvement in the Kootenai case point to the impact it had in a similar case on the nearby North Fork Flathead River. When Sage Crick Corp. proposed new coal mines on a tributary of the North Fork in B.C. in the 1980s (see HCN 5/9/07 "Battle line on the northern border"), Montana Sen. Max Baucus pushed to have the case taken up by the IJC. The Commission conducted a three-year study of the North Fork watershed, and made a strong recommendation against the mining proposals, saying it would degrade water quality and destroy critical fish habitat.
"The IJC was very successful in making the transboundary Flathead issue one that had scientific integrity," says Jamison. "(The IJC recommendation) provided a benchmark that everyone agreed was an honest benchmark, from which future decisions could be made. ... It basically had moral authority."
The B.C. government "wasn't fond of the (IJC's) decision," recalls Dave Hadden, director of Headwaters Montana. But the decision was something that mine opponents held up again and again, as the B.C. government pushed to permit the projects. The controversy intensified in the early 2000s, when a different company proposed a mine in a different part of the North Fork watershed; again, mine opponents wielded the IJC decision. The mines were never permitted, and in 2010, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell signed a Memorandum of Understanding to protect the cross-border watershed, putting it off-limits to development.
For now, Jamison is requesting a moratorium on new coal mines to buy some time. Following that, he says, the IJC is the obvious place to start to resolve the Kootenai dispute in a similar fashion, starting with a coordinated and comprehensive scientific study. If the IJC doesn't get involved, and politicians on either side of the border are left to fight over the issue, that can spell trouble, says Jamison, "we need policy grounded in something that we can all agree on."
According to Jamison, the IJC is a trusted space. "You can convene all your scientists under one umbrella, and together, they can create a unified recommendation that is place-based instead of interest-based."
Marshall Swearingen is a High Country News intern.
Images courtesy Flickr user rian_bean and Wikimedia commons.]]>
Hughes scooped up a bit of placer -- mineral-bearing gravel and sand -- from behind a boulder. With a swish of the pan, he washed away the mud and lighter sand, leaving only a few garnets.
The absence of gold flakes didn't surprise him, though. The day's panning confirmed that little gold is to be found on more than a dozen placer mining claims staked along a 30-mile stretch of the North Fork. These claims grant holders exclusive rights to any valuable minerals. But the Forest Service is now arguing that mining the claims isn't worth the impacts to the river.
The Forest Service's ability to deny mining proposals is severely limited by the 1872 General Mining Law, a frontier remnant that prioritizes mining above all other land uses. But another, little-known law gives it a straightforward way to prevent mining in at least a few locations. The Mining Claims Rights Restoration Act of 1955 lets the federal government challenge placer mining in locations that it once reserved as potential hydropower sites. And on the North Fork, the law is giving the Forest Service the upper hand. "We wouldn't be doing any of this (contesting placer mining) if it were under the regular old 1872 mining law," says Hughes.
The Department of Interior began reserving certain river-valley public lands for hydropower development in 1909, as dam building in the West was revving up. In these "power site withdrawals," mining was restricted. But in 1955, as dam-site exploration slowed, the Mining Claims Rights Restoration Act eased the restrictions, with a caveat: The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management could reject placer mining if it would "substantially interfere with other uses" like recreation.
Although the law applies to more than 7 million acres of public land -- roughly three times the size of Yellowstone -- it hasn't come up often because placer mining techniques like panning are generally low-impact, and because relatively few claims fall in these sites. In California, with its abundant rivers once rich in gold, roughly 4 percent of mining claims are subject to the 1955 law; in dry Nevada, where big hardrock mining dominates, the law is practically unknown.
But in recent years, placer mining has become more popular, spurred by gold prices as high as $1,900 per ounce, and more controversial. To squeeze gold from streams, miners have turned to suction dredging, which uses motors to suck up riverbed sediments and wash out the gold, discharging the muddy water back into the stream. Miners say the practice does little harm, but studies suggest that it damages fish-spawning habitat. California banned suction dredging in 2009; Idaho restricts it on certain rivers.
The Forest Service and BLM can regulate placer mining by applying environmental laws piecemeal to protect habitat, water and cultural artifacts. But both agencies generally view the 1872 law as constraining their ability to restrict mining on public lands.
In the handful of cases involving potential hydropower sites, however, the agencies have argued under the 1955 law that timber harvest, fish habitat, even aesthetic value, outweigh mining -- and in most cases, they've won. In 2002, the Forest Service was able to prohibit all placer mining on a section of the Yellowstone River because the activity would interfere with rafting.
On the North Fork Clearwater, the scuffle started last June, when a few miners subdivided larger 160-acre claims and sold the parcels on eBay and other auction websites. River recreationists complained to the Forest Service when miners nailed signs to trees to stake out the subdivided claims, most of which were 10 or 20 acres. The agency called for a hearing, which was held in January before the Department of Interior Office of Hearings and Appeals, and argued that the miners would push out campers and anglers and harm critical habitat for bull trout, a threatened species. Larger-scale placer mining could destroy Native American artifacts in the riverbanks, the agency stated, and would hamper efforts to designate the North Fork as a Wild and Scenic River. Miners didn't defend 20 of the 36 claims; the ongoing legal sparring over the remaining 16 claims will end in the judge's decision sometime this summer.
Some would-be miners, like James Young, see the Forest Service's move as a federal land grab. He bought a claim on eBay with hopes of retiring to Idaho from Biloxi, Miss., and supplementing his income with suction dredging. At the OHA hearing in Idaho, he argued that Hughes underestimated the value of the gold and complained that the miners would receive no compensation if the Forest Service wins. Others have applauded the agency for taking a stand. Gary Macfarlane, ecosystem defense director with Friends of the Clearwater, says, "This is an example where I think the Forest Service is really looking out for the public interest."]]>


text:
Promoting view between environments
I wanted to find out what is the best practice/recommended way/tool to manage views across clusters.
For example I create a view in the admin tool in Dev and test it out. Then how do I export/import it to say Staging and then Production?
Any pointers would be much appreciated.
Hello Rahulaga,
As far as I know this does not exist in Couchbase, but it should be easy to do it since you can retrieve and create Design View using simple REST call
You can find information about REST API here: http://www.couchbase.com/docs/couchbase-manual-2.0/couchbase-views-designdoc-api.html
So you can create a script or a program that uses this URL to get the view from one environment and push it into another one.
Let me know if you need more information.
Here a small script that you can use as a starting point:
#!/bin/bash content=$(curl -X GET -H 'Content-Type: application/json' $1) curl -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/json' $2 -d "$content"
To execute it you can do
copy-view.sh "source" "destination"
For example:
./copy-view.sh "http://server1:8092/beer-sample/_design/beer" "http://server2:8092/new-bucket/_design/dev_beer"
I will encourage you to always put the destination in "developer" mode to test it before.
Thanks Tug. I've done something similar, and I'm actually maintaining the views as a JSON text file in the source control. I have a small program that loads those files and does a PUT on whichever couch URL I point it to. Seems to work so far, different developers on the team are also using it and can then work with source control and use the tool to sync up their local instances too.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Greenpeace asked me to Facebook message Mark Zuckerberg today. Given the hullabaloo surrounding social networking and activism these days (and more specifically, Malcolm Gladwell's controversial New Yorker piece on the subject), I should have been in some sense prepared for the Rainbow Warriors to request I open to my Facebook home page. The two entities they represent have become, if on some levels superficially, intertwined. Read more »
By Rebecca Bowe and Alex Emslie
Photos by Ramsey El-Qare
This week's Guardian features an in-depth account of the Nov. 5 rally and march held in response to the news that former BART cop Johannes Mehserle, who fatally shot unarmed BART passenger Oscar Grant on Jan. 1, 2009, was sentenced to two years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. With credit for time served and good behavior, Mehserle could be out in less than a year.Read more »
Not that we're saying the sentiment is to be encouraged, but chances are there's a lot of San Franciscans who'd like to see a tech industry bloggerati-programmer-computer whiz punched in the face. And lest you start downloading the Silicon Valley version of Bum Fights, harken now to online TV show White Collar Brawler's incoming detonation of class warfare: The Tech Beat Up (Thu/11).
Read more »
Another preliminary run of ranked-choice ballots in the San Francisco supervisorial races this afternoon shows the same winners as Friday's run: Malia Cohen, Scott Wiener, Jane Kim, and Mark Farrell.Read more »
Okay, I read the gloating from Randy Shaw about Jane Kim defeating the "Democratic Party Machine," which, as far as I can tell, seems to consist of the Democratic County Central Committee and the Bay Guardian. (As I've said before, if I were that powerful, things would change around this city ....)
It annoys me because machine politics were once a harsh reality in this town. But not these days.Read more »
The Oakland mayor's race appears to be demonstrating the ability of political coalitions to use a ranked-choice voting strategy to topple an established frontrunner, overturning the conventional wisdom that the top finishers on election day will usually hold their leads through the tally of everyone else's second and third place votes.Read more »
So let's see if I have this American system of justice right:
You pull a gun and kill and unarmed man, under color of law, and you get two years in prison and wind up serving even less.
You grow a few pot plants and you get five years.
So marijuana is worse than murder. Hell of a system.
In today's episode, we talk about how ugly the next two years are going to be -- and why Obama absolutely, positively must let the Bust tax cuts for the rich expire. Listen after the jump. Read more »
I guess it's time to move past the Bay Area party blowout that was last week and into, well hell, more parties – San Fran's no one-binge pony, after all.
Luckily, these post-World Series, pre-holiday days coincide nicely with the return of Wallpaper to the Bay Area. The indie-pop Oakland duo who made its name with the slo-mo champagne stumble-through video, "I Got Soul, I'm So Wasted" and its remix of Das Racist's "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" is playing The Independent tonight (Mon/8). Read more »
(For a review of Slough Feg's latest, The Animal Spirits, go here. Read on for an interview with the band's guitarist-singer, Mike Scalzi.)
San Francisco Bay Guardian: I noticed a clear theological theme running through the album. Was that – the Reformation – an area of historical interest to you? I'm interested in that choice, of a less exciting historical topic than maybe a more violent event...
Mike Scalzi: It's not as metal, certainly. But in another way, Martin Luther was very metal, in that he was dedicated. Though he was Christian, in his dedication and his rebellion, he was metal. I was reading about all that stuff in an anthology of Western cultures. It was very general – I had to teach it. I'm a teacher. I started teaching Philosophy of Religion a year ago for the first time, and I'm not really that into teaching it, because its not my area of expertise, but I kinda had to. Read more »
The Board of Supervisors plans to introduce a resolution at their Nov. 9 meeting denouncing the deportation of Shing Ma "Steve" Li, a 20-year-old DREAM Act student at City College of San Francisco, calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to grant him deferred action status, and urging Congress to pass the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act. Read more »
Aboriginal Blacks United (ABU) President James Richards has asked UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann to meet with the community before Nov. 15 about UCSF's local hiring plan, or halt all work at its Mission Bay Hospital construction site. Read more »
Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based columnist who has covered political and labor issues for a half-century as a reporter, editor , author and commentator. Visit him at his website, www.dickmeister.com.
OK, the election is over and labor, Democrats and the other good guys came up a bit short. But what now? What next for the good guys?
Well, for starters, organized labor and its Democratic Party allies must be ready to block Republican plans to try to enact legislation that would cut taxes for the very wealthy, slash Medicare funding, and possibly even privatize Social Security. I know that may sound alarmist and far-fetched. But that's what Republican leaders are actually talking about.
After all, the GOP's anti-labor corporate allies spent nearly a billion dollars on the election and they damn well want their money's worth. Larry Cohen, president of the communications workers union, thinks it's getting like the way elections were 100 years ago when the big trusts and robber barons made sure their voices were the only ones heard during election campaigns. Read more »
With preliminary ranked choice results showing Mark Farrell ahead by a slim margin in D2 and Malia Cohen leading narrowly in D10, provisional ballots could prove to be of pivotal importance in these two races.
Or as Sharen Hewitt, executive director of the D10-based C.L.A.E.R. project, put it, "Never before has the weight of the provisional ballot counted so much." Read more »
A preliminary run of the ranked-choice ballots in San Francisco Board of Supervisors races shows D10 candidate Malia Cohen and D2 candidate Mark Farrell winning come-from-behind victories in those races while Jane Kim in D6 and Scott Wiener in D8 maintain their current leads to win their races. Yet with about 50,000 ballots citywide remaining to be counted, Election Department head John Arntz warned those results aren't final.Read more »


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Continuing my series of Q&As on notable incoming freshmen, today we turn our attention to Georgia tight end Arthur Lynch.
Fellow freshman tight end Orson Charles got most of the buzz in the Bulldogs' 2009 signing class but a lot of people don't realize Lynch was actually ranked higher than Charles by Rivals.com. Rivals considered Lynch, of Dartmouth, Mass., the No. 2 tight end in the nation while it ranked Charles No. 7. Scout.com had Charles at No. 3 and Lynch at No. 5.
By any measure, the Bulldogs clearly got two very good tight end prospects to continue the program's rich tradition at that position. That gives them six tight ends in camp, including returning lettermen Bruce Figgins, Aron White, Bryce Ros and Derek Rich. Figgins will miss the first six games of the season as part of a suspension for team rules violations. White is the No. 1 on the depth chart but sat out Georgia's most recent scrimmage, so Lynch and Charles each got a lot of snaps. Lynch had two catches for 19 yards and a touchdown and Charles had three for 55 and two scores.
Lynch (6-foot-5, 255 pounds) and Charles (6-3, 230) each bring something different to the field. Lynch is the more traditional tight end who can move some bodies on the line of scrimmage and pop outside and haul in a pass. Charles, like White, is more of pass-catching threat who can flex outside and stretch a defense down the middle.
Lynch sat down and talked recently about his recruitment to Georgia, how he thinks he'll fit in and whether he'll play this season.
Q: Obviously there is no shortage of tight ends at Georgia, yet both you and Charles signed in the last class. How did the coaches address that during the recruiting process?
A: "From the very beginning they were very straight with me. I was like, 'Well, Coach, I just want to know what other tight ends you're recruiting. If I commit are you going to recruit four more tight ends?' He said, 'We've offered two and that's you and Orson Charles.' I had never heard of him before then so I looked him up and I was like, 'all right.' The next time we talked I asked them what was [Charles] like and they said he was a hybrid guy, he can flex, he can go outside or play inside. I was like, 'What do you think of me? And they said, 'We think you're athletic enough to be a pass-catcher and big enough to play in the line — a balanced tight end.' . . . So really there was nobody leading me on. It was very up straight. That was a big thing that the coaches were up front about it and I'm glad I chose Georgia."
Q: Now that you're here, how do you think you guys are fitting in?
A: "Orson's beefed up. He's at about 230 now so he can really play in the line. I'm about 255. So we both complement one another, just like Aron and Bruce complement one another. . . . Orson's doing great so far. He pushes me to be better and hopefully I'm pushing him to be better."
Q: It was 97 degrees when you guys practiced today. How has your adjustment been from New England weather?
A: "To be honest, I adapted pretty well. I'm hot all the time but I haven't cramped up once, knock on wood. I've been here since May 30th when I moved in and started taking classes, so that's helped. It's definitely different. It's a different lifestyle. I miss home a lot. I miss my mom. But that's not something I can control. I had to move on some day. There's a lot of things I miss but family is the main thing."
Q: What has been your teammates reactions to your New England accent in the middle of all these Southern drawls?
A: "Somehow they can't understand me. Me and some of the kids have trouble. We talk to each other but we'll be saying, 'What? What? What?' They think I say a lot of words weird, so it's just different. That's my accent, same as my mom, my grandparents. I can't really change it. I definitely won't be saying y'all."
August 13th, 2009
8:29 am
on Oct 31 Charles will have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Spikes…just like noshow did
August 13th, 2009
9:11 am
I love all the arrogance from UF fans. We should just cancel the season and give them the national championship now. You've had a great run, but I think you are all in for a rude awakening this year… It's a long way down from the top, and boy is it going to sting when UF hits the bottom. See you on Halloween…
Go Dawgs
August 13th, 2009
9:13 am
Gators wear jean shorts
August 13th, 2009
9:25 am
Mr. Spikes must be getting paid really well at Florida bc it is apparent he was going to be an early draft pick and after listening to him speak it is also apparent he is no scholar. So why did he stay at UF bc of his love for that greasy haired coach!
August 13th, 2009
9:27 am
Oct 31 the Gators will lose game #2 Gauranteed!
August 13th, 2009
9:36 am
maybe mr lynch can teach our country boys the kings english
August 13th, 2009
9:57 am
Sounds like a solid guy. Looking forward to seeing him play,esp the formation of 2 TEs lined up.
August 13th, 2009
10:31 am
Sounds like a good kid! I'd love to see Lynch and Charles in some 2 tight-end sets and split Aron White out in the slot, or use Charles in the slot and White inside in the same set.
I like our options at TE this year, too MiltonDawg.
Besides, my 6′3″ 210 lb. son who plays both TE and DE resembles Lynch (minus the 2 inches in height and 50 lbs. of muscle), but my kid definitely says "Y'all"…
August 13th, 2009
10:50 am
Betcha he'll be saying y'all before he finishes his career here in God's country
August 13th, 2009
11:00 am
Knowshon showed up for 188 yards… T-bow is 1-1 as a starting QB against the Dawgs. You UF people don't have an off week before the WLOCP this year and we do. Team with off week before the game has won last 20 or so…
August 13th, 2009
11:21 am
Lynch and Charles will be a perfect balance for UGA . Lynch will always be at TE and Charles will play some at WR – so they are very different. They both have excellent hands and pass catching skills and they will both play a lot for the Dawgs and hopefully stay healthy and stay four years at UGA. These guys will play this year.
August 13th, 2009
11:40 am
Tim…maybe when Charles does meet Spikes, Penn Wagers will call Spikes for the Unsportsmanlike Penalty he should have called on that very same play with Knowshon last year, where your thug laid on top of him screaming in his face. If one of the dawgs players did the same thing Wagers would have thrown him out of the game.
I think this blog is right…as long a you and the World Wide Leader beleive the Gators will win the BCS this year…why do they even play the games?
Tuck Febow!
August 13th, 2009
12:00 pm
This guy (Lynch) is the real deal. He will play this year and so will Orson Charles. Charles will be used in the slot and probably get the ball on quick outs and reverses. He is a hoss… I am telling you he is gonna be something else.
August 13th, 2009
2:26 pm
Welcome to Athens. Get used to losing to Tech.
August 13th, 2009
3:06 pm
Hey Tim, hopefully Charles will have the same "beginners luck" against UF that "noshow" had and we will see another uGA freshman have their coming out party against the Gaytors. See Herman Archie's post for so caled "noshows" stats D-bag
August 13th, 2009
4:20 pm
what?! A UGA player might get tackled/hit by a UF player?! Oh no, we better call off the game. That isn't what happens in football is it?
August 13th, 2009
4:27 pm
I love dudes, especially ones that wear jorts.
August 13th, 2009
4:39 pm
saint simmons isn't a ajc employee. I m quoting jim carrey on this, Saint simmons is one pathetic loser who sits on the internet 24/7 waiting for new UGA posts. Seriously dude get a job
August 13th, 2009
6:01 pm
August 13th, 2009
6:38 pm
How about a empty Backfield, with a double tight end set and Green, and Brown on the outside !!
August 13th, 2009
7:50 pm
I give him two years before he says ya'll.
August 13th, 2009
8:18 pm
just bring back the "D"
August 14th, 2009
12:58 am
I still havent figured out why his name used to be arthur fontaine on scout and rivals both
August 14th, 2009
6:01 am
I give this guy a year and it will show he wont pan out like the rest of these so called top recruits. BTW does he have a sore hamstring? Whats the next excuse?
August 14th, 2009
7:42 am
Since 1985,GT has had a professor inflicting his child molesting skills while teaching sand castle construction.It all makes since now,nerds in Berkas=molesters with a degree!
August 14th, 2009
9:46 am
Lynch had somne family hang ups in New England that caused his to change his commit from BC where his mother and sister attended. Hope it works out for him at UGA.
August 14th, 2009
11:08 am
We are glad that we have this young man. He will not only be a great contributor but a good student as well!
August 14th, 2009
12:12 pm
Hey "I Love it" where was Mr. Spikes in 2007 when Knowshon blistered the Lizards for 188 yards? We will see y'all in October!
We are glad to have both Lynch and Charles.
August 14th, 2009
1:12 pm
I know where Spikes was in 2007….chasing MO Mass down the sidelines on his 85 yeard TD. I also know why he stayed this year. He's mad that Tebow didn't give him a kiss like he kissed Joiner a couple years ago.
If the Dawgs stay healthy, we WILL beat Florida.
August 14th, 2009
2:51 pm
Spikes will be a bust in the NFL…. That is why he stayed.
August 14th, 2009
4:15 pm
This is how you do it!
August 19th, 2009
10:23 am
Hey Tim, Spikes can't run with Charles but I hope he is covering him.
August 24th, 2009
7:40 pm
Stay true, Artie!


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PORTAGE(WKZO) -- They held a Firefighters funeral for Nathan Fruin as 250 E.M.T.s, firefighters and Public Safety Officers from all over the region passed by his coffin to pay their respects, and to begin the services in Portage monday afternoon.
Two thirds of St. Catherine of Sienna Catholic Church was filled with friends, family and just folks from the area who wanted to attend the ceremony, and celebrate the life of the 22-year-old. An estimated 12-hunded turned out filling the church and overflow seating in the lobby.
A procession to Maple Grove Cemetery was led by a Mattawan Pumper truck bearing the coffin, and included a long line of fire rigs from all over the Midwest. They passed by small groups of residents who stood by the road to see he procession go by.
Fruin suffered a heart attack on his way to a fire call last Tuesday night. Watch above for footage from the ceremony.


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PHOTO CREDIT: Marcelino Portfolio, Creative Commons License.
Welcome to part 5 of our track-by-track battle between Metallica's First Four Albums (a.k.a. "The Good Ones").
To see how the battles between the Track 1s , Track 2s , Track 3s , and Track 4s went down, click those links I just typed.
Now that you're all caught up, let's move on to...
Track 5
Once again, these middle of the album cuts present us with very tough choices, starting with...
Kill 'Em All - "(Anesthesia) - Pulling Teeth"
"Bass solo, Take 1."
And with those four words, Cliff Burton proceeded to show all metal bass players that you could do more with your instrument than simply keep time.
Classical riffage in the first half, followed by a thrashing second half featuring a backing beat from Lars Ulrich, "Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth) does more with two instruments than some metal acts can do with a full band and orchestral backing (ex. all of the Load-era material on S&M).
Ride the Lightning - "Trapped Under Ice"
Metallica played their gig in Antarctica over the weekend, and left this song OFF the playlist.
Major...freaking...oversight fellas.
"Trapped..." is pure thrash metal. Grim lyrics, furious double-picking, a couple of killer sing-along sections. No proggy stuff here. Just thrash.
Maybe it's because this blog is being written in the middle of Wisconsin on a late fall day that feels like winter, but I will say it anyway, this Metallica classic is very under appreciated.
Master of Puppets - "Disposable Heroes"
"Back to the front!"
Side B (you see kids, back in the day...records, cassettes, etc.) of "Master of Puppets" starts with an uncompromising 8+ minute thrash-metal indictment of the war machine. Featuring stanzas like...
"Back to the front
You will do what I say, when I say
Back to the front
You will die when I say, you must die
Back to the front
You coward
You servant
You blindman"
"Soldier boy, made of clay
Now an empty shell
Twenty one, only son
But he served us well
Bred to kill, not to care
Just do as we say
Finished here, Greeting Death
He's yours to take away"
This isn't the jingoistic rah-rah that you get from some Wal-Mart rock and metal (and country) bands. Metallica is straight up saying, "War is bad. You want to support the troops? Stop sending them off to die."
Given our country's recent overseas conflicts, "Disposable Heroes" is just as vital today as it ever was.
...And Justice for All - "The Shortest Straw"
"Shortest Straw" continues the socially conscious lyrical themes and proggy composition (though with a bit more straightforward thrash) of "...Justice...".
Maybe it's because it's sandwiched between two superior songs ("One" and "Harvester..."), but "Shortest Straw" always seemed like a track I'd fast-forward through to get to the next one. Good song, but just not one I'd jam all the time.
Scary FN Terry's Pick: "(Anesthesia) - Pulling Teeth"
It came down to this or "Disposable Heroes" for me. As much as I love "Disposable Heroes", I'll never forget the first time I heard "(Anesthesia)-Pulling Teeth" and thought, "Damn! He's doing THAT on a BASS?"
Cliff Burton (R.I.P.) for the win.
Of course, that's just my dumb take. Make your pick for the best Metalli-Track 5 below:
Tune in tomorrow when the Track 6s face off!
*In addition to completely sucking at playing bass, "Scary" Terry Stevens is a radio host for Midwest Communications. You can Book Face with him here.