NEWS ROUNDUP

Measure would compensate people exposed to nuclear tests Montana residents, including those in Lewis and Clark, Broadwater and Jefferson Counties, sickened by Nevada's nuclear tests in the 1950s may receive compensation for their illnesses under a measure Republican Sen. Conrad Burns is trying to push through Congress. Burns' bill, introduced Monday, would amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to add 15 Montana counties to the areas currently eligible to receive compensation. The law provides $50,000 for individuals with diseases tied to radiation who lived in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona at the time of the tests. A National Academy of Sciences report released last month noted that Montanans are not eligible to receive compensation even though they are some of the most profoundly affected from the tests, many of which were held in Nevada between 1952 and 1957....
National Parks Director Says "Whole Parks" May Be Outsourced The National Park Service is now considering contracting out the entire operations of three national parks, according to a memo from NPS Director Fran Mainella released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Previously, the National Park Service looked to outsource certain types of jobs, such as maintenance, among several parks but is now looking at park units in their entirety for future bids by private firms. The three parks under review are Boston National Historical Park, San Juan Island National Historic Site (in Washington state) and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Altogether, these three parks employ 312 NPS employees on a full-time basis. In an April 15, 2005 memo, NPS Director Fran Mainella cited these three parks as the subject of "preliminary [competitive sourcing] planning efforts for FY 2005. We will be reviewing whole parks to achieve the most efficient operations possible."....
Editorial: Roadless rules less than meets the eye It's now official: Governors now have the ability to offer the U.S. Forest Service recommendations for managing roadless tracts of national forest in their states. The Bush administration in recent days has been trumpeting the new roadless-land management regulations as a significant improvement over former President Clinton's 2001 executive order effectively setting aside from development more than 58 million acres nationwide. To hear some environmentalists howl, you would think the administration's change in regulations will open large expanses of wild land to road-building, logging and mining. It's possible there are people in the Bush administration who are pleased with this assessment, given that the truth is considerably less exciting and possibly will prove less pleasing to the industries and political factions who wouldn't mind a chance to develop some of the backcountry. In fact - and remember, you heard it here first - the on-the-ground effect of the Bush administration roadless-land regulations is unlikely to be a whole lot different from what Clinton did....
"Bear central" raises its guard Even in a community that is a vanguard of bearproofing in America, the battle of wits between bruins and humans is never-ending. New bear-deflecting tactics are expected to be needed in what is shaping up to be a second straight bad bear year, with 20 calls already to Snowmass wildlife officials. One bear has poked its head in a doggie door. Another has ripped at the metal around a skylight in an attempt to make an aerial entrance. One bruin has been pushing at windows and doors in a burglar-like test for weak spots. "If they are doing that already, it's kind of a clue that we're in for some trouble," said Tina White, who, along with Laurie Smith, provides full-time animal-control services for Snowmass Village....
Sharpshooters aim to cull flock of cormorants Under ominous gray clouds that spit rain showers, flocks of cormorants came and went. It was a typical spring day Monday for the growing cormorant colony on Leech Lake, estimated at nearly 10,000 birds last year. But the presence of two cylindrical hunting blinds -- elevated on stilts -- and the occasional pop-pop-pop of a shotgun from a nearby island signalled that something unusual was going on. Federal officials are shooting double-crested cormorants. Although the birds are federally protected, sharpshooters using air rifles and shotguns are killing nesting adult cormorants on Leech Lake because of concerns that the fish-eating water birds are hurting the walleye population on one of the state's prime fishing lakes....
Lewis and Clark tourism not living up to the hype In Idaho, boxes upon boxes of Lewis and Clark refrigerator magnets occupy the back room of Dave Hunt's gift shop. He wonders whether they'll ever sell. In Great Falls, Mont., dismal orders for advance tickets haunt an upcoming monthlong festival pegged to the bicentennial of the explorers' push into the Rockies. And downstream on the Missouri River, Williston, N.D., hotel operator Tom Kasperson flatly assesses the effect of Lewis and Clark tourism on his business: "Zero." Westward-rolling truckloads of "Corps of Discovery II" exhibits, bound for the Pacific coast by year's end, reached Kasperson's town in March. Moving at the pace of the original expedition, the National Park Service's road show confirmed his suspicions that Lewis and Clark buffs rarely travel in herds....
Feds acknowledge state title to Porcupine riverbed The state of Alaska owns the land under the Porcupine River, the federal government acknowledged Tuesday. A top official in the U.S. Department of Interior signed a decision stating the federal government has no property interest in 214 miles of the riverbed. Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration asked for the decision. The Porcupine River flows into northeast Alaska from Canada and joins the Yukon River at Fort Yukon. Under federal law, states own the beds of navigable waters. However, determining which waters are navigable has been a time-consuming process often only resolvable by courts. In at least one Alaska case, even a court was unable to rule....
Kane County Commission ready to settle sign squabble in court The Kane County Commission has several more days to decide whether it will comply with a letter from the Bureau of Land Management asking it to remove signs on roads across federal property or face potential legal action. In a letter dated April 26, Sally Wisely, director of the BLM office in Salt Lake City, gave commissioners two weeks to remove the signs that designate the roads for off-road-vehicle (ORV) use. Some of the signs are posted adjacent to BLM signs designating wilderness study areas off-limits to ORVs. The letter said the deadline for removal of the signs was Tuesday. But Don Banks, spokesman with the federal agency in Salt Lake City, said the deadline was moved to Monday of next week because the certified letter was not signed for until April 29. So far, the BLM has not heard what the county plans to do....
Big-tire shortage slows mining industry Steve Walker was ready to sell four 200-ton dump trucks, with price tags as high as $3 million, when the orders were canceled. The buyer, a coal company planning to open a new mine site, was ready to buy. It just couldn't find the 12-foot-tall tires to get the trucks rolling. The mammoth tires, which can cost up to $30,000 apiece, are in short supply worldwide, leaving earth-moving industries, including coal, in a lurch. The shortage is due to a rise in equipment orders, an increase in worldwide mining because of increased mineral prices and growth in China and other Asian counties. "It's definitely a problem at this time," said Utah Mining Association President David Litvin, citing impacts on two open pit mines: Kennecott's Bingham Canyon copper mine and a surface phosphate mine that Simplot Mining and Manufacturing operates outside of Vernal. "We understand this shortage could continue through 2006 if the increase in mineral production worldwide continues," he added. "And we're starting to see some impact on smaller tires, such as the ones used on large loaders."....
GE kicks off ambitious green initiative Last night, General Electric Chair and CEO Jeffrey Immelt canoodled with Congress members and industry top brass at a swish cocktail party on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., celebrating the launch of "ecomagination," an initiative he announced earlier in the day to ramp up development of clean technologies and lighten the company's Goliath-like environmental footprint. Guests nibbled organic canapés and sipped wine produced by a solar-powered California vineyard (equipped with GE's own photovoltaic panels) as they perused exhibitions of the company's new technologies -- here a life-sized model of a hybrid-engine train and a state-of-the-art wind-turbine blade, there a super-efficient washing machine and a sophisticated diorama of coal-gasification technology. After a speech in which Immelt announced that "it's no longer a zero-sum game -- things that are good for the environment are also good for business" and vowed that GE was embarking on this initiative "not because it is trendy or moral, but because it will accelerate [economic] growth," he presented a series of "ecomagination" television ads that will be airing nationwide over the next several months....
Column: THE CLIMATE OF MAN—III In February, 2003, a series of ads on the theme of inundation began appearing on Dutch TV. The ads were sponsored by the Netherlands’ Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management, and they featured a celebrity weatherman named Peter Timofeeff. In one commercial, Timofeeff, who looks a bit like Albert Brooks and a bit like Gene Shalit, sat relaxing on the shore in a folding chair. “Sea level is rising,” he announced, as waves started creeping up the beach. He continued to sit and talk even as a boy who had been building a sandcastle abandoned it in panic. At the end of the ad, Timofeeff, still seated, was immersed in water up to his waist....
Popularity of Flat Iron Steak Increasing Gerrine Kirby didn't know what she was getting herself into the first time she saw it. A new cut of steak? After all these years? Kirby, who teaches a culinary arts class, hesitantly took a bite of the curiously shaped piece of meat, which looks like an old-fashioned flat iron. Her fears turned out to be unwarranted. "It was excellent," she said. "It's kind of become the darling of chefs across the nation," said Jane Gibson, a spokeswoman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Denver. The Nebraska-born tender cut has skyrocketed in popularity since it started being sold about four years ago, finding its way into farmer's markets, grocery stores and restaurants....

===