 |
|
Mammoth mulls new welcome message From the 100 or so entries, organizers have culled the following three finalists: 1) Welcome; 2) Gateway to the Heart of the High Sierra; and 3) “The mountains are calling … .” John Muir. In reporting this, The Sheet newspaper impishly offers its own proposal: “Please Spend Lots of Money.” Freight volume dropped 30 percent when the recession hit, but it has returned to 90 percent of the peak levels. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway purchased a controlling interest in the railroad in 2009 for $34 billion, and it looks to have been a good investment. Company officials tell the Whitefish Pilot that they expect traffic to return to pre-recession levels by 2013. The railway is currently running more than 30 trains a day through Whitefish and Glacier National Park, and the resumption of business has spurred the hiring of 41 employees in Whitefish. Salaries for the jobs are relatively good, with a diesel mechanic getting $25 an hour, notes the Pilot. Energy is the most significant component of BNSF’s freight. Twenty-seven percent of its freight is coal, most from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. The railroad is also picking up business hauling oil from the Bakken shale region of North Dakota, while delivering drilling equipment and fracking sand. BNSF also hauls turbines and other equipment for wind farms. From Vail also comes news of increasing economic activity, this time in the real-estate sector. Land Title Guarantee Co. in its monthly report found that the average price per square foot for a single-family home in Vail Village went up by one-third during the last year. The village encompasses slope-side real estate. However, the price per square foot of homes elsewhere in Eagle County has dropped an average of 23 percent. The raw numbers suggest that the rich are recovering nicely from the recession, and the foreclosures at the bottom and middle ends are working their way through the system. Greg Miles, a town councilor in Jackson, has urged adoption of a measure, still unspecified, to persuade shoppers at the town’s grocery and convenience stores to use reusable bags. “As a community trying to be sustainable in so many ways, it’s high time we really start this conversation in earnest,” said Miles, according to a report in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. The newspaper notes efforts have been under way through the last three years to publicize the issue of plastic bags. Most end up in landfills. The local Albertsons grocery store estimates it distributes 10,000 to 12,000 plastic bags per week. The Jackson Town Council will likely be splintered when it takes up the issue in 2012. Mayor Mark Barron calls plastic bags “horrendous” but objects to imposing a municipal mandate. Earlier this year, Telluride banned plastic bags and imposed a 10-cent tax on paper bags at the town’s two grocery stores and one hardware store. Mark DeMist, general manger of Clark’s Market, said 75 percent of customers now bring in their own bags and few tourists this past summer objected. The catalyst for concern about plastic bags is the swirl of plastic fragments trapped by ocean currents in the North Pacific. By some estimates, this Pacific Trash Vortex, as it is sometimes called, is twice the size of Texas. Taking stock of what he has learned about weather since taking a high school science class in 1940, former filmmaker Warren Miller speculates that the plastic in the Pacific has altered the jet stream. This change, he writes in a column published in the Vail Daily, could explain the tornadoes, ice storms and floods in the Eastern United States. Rebecca Bundy, a planner, says the proposed ordinance would create a “cultural shift” in the way the community views building design and construction. She emphasized that builders and architects will have flexibility in how they improve their buildings. The Idaho Mountain Express reports that the ordinance being envisioned would adopt the National Green Building Standard. The new study also finds that more rental housing is now needed as compared to before. It also notes that the Hispanic population doubled from 2000 - 11. The Idaho Mountain Express also reports agreement that some lower-income housing built in the past decade has lacked good management and had a “ghetto-style.” “The crazy thing is that I liked Marv,” said Casey Farrell, in an interview with the Sky-Hi News. He was referring to Marvin Heemeyer, who became incensed when the Town Board – which included Farrell at the time – approved of a batch plant across the street from his muffler shop. Vowing revenge, Heemeyer clandestinely armored a Komatsu bulldozer, creating a cocoon around the cockpit to make him impervious to bullets, and set out on a sunny, spring morning to wreak havoc. Heemeyer succeeded. He first rammed the bulldozer into the house of the mayor, then tore out the Town Hall and library, eventually pushing into the front of the newspaper office as the editor, Patrick Brower, ran out the back door. Nobody died, but it wasn’t necessarily that Heemeyer intended it that way. He even took shots at propane tanks, but was unable to penetrate them. Finally, he came to the Gamble’s. He plowed into it, but after hours of destruction, the heavily-weighted bulldozer was finally overheating. Heemeyer then shot himself. After that, Farrell and his wife, Ronda, set up their Gambles store in a business plaza. As for Brower, now retired from the newspaper business, he has completed work on a book that he calls Killdozer. Among those parties interested in buying the hydroelectric component is the City of Aspen. Aspen, in the 1980s, similarly paid for installation of a hydroelectric component into a local dam at Ruedi Reservoir. Ridgway town officials pointed out that while the installation cost a lot of money then, it should be producing electricity for almost no money for the next half-century, maybe longer. Aspen, meanwhile, continues to work on another hydroelectric plant within the town, harnessing Castle and Maroon creeks. As envisioned, it would expand the carbon-free component of the city utility’s electrical supply from the current 75 percent to 83 percent. While 72 percent of voters in 2007 approved a $5 million bond issue to pay for the hydro plant, opposition has grown. New studies by outside groups claim that the project will lose money for many years under the best of situations. City officials stoutly reject that contention, but concede that the estimated price of the project has increased. After seven hours of talk on the subject, the City Council on Monday night voted unanimously to move forward. It’s not a final decision, however, and it depends upon getting a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The soonest that electricity could be produced is 2014. “We think that enhanced activities like ziplines, for example, through the forest canopy would be a really wonderful addition,” said David Perry, senior vice president for the company. “It’s low impact. It would get people to appreciate the national forest for its beauty and its diversity and the ecosystem.” In an interview with The Aspen Times, Perry also said that the company will consider an alpine slide. Although environmentalists have been wary of such amusements, Perry points out that it uses gravity. “It’s not a motorized activity, and it’s people enjoying the outdoors in a family environment. So we think that’s probably OK.” |