Idaho

On Sept. 3, 1973, a fire swept through the baghouse of the Bunker Hill mine in Idaho’s Silver Valley. The building was designed to filter pollutants produced by smelting, the melting of rocks that separates metal from its ore. The gases produced in this process carried poisons, including lead. At the time, the prices of lead and silver were climbing toward all-time highs. Rather than wait for new filters and repairs, company officials kept the mine running. They increased production, bypassed the filtration steps and, for eleven months, dumped noxious gases directly into the surrounding area. Then, horses in the area began dying. When data on children’s blood lead levels began to arrive in September 1974, one year after the fire, the results were shocking. The fire became one of the largest single lead-poisoning events in U.S. history. The Bunker Hill smelter in the 1970s. The mine closed in 1991, but planning is underway...

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Sackett v. EPA that federal protection of wetlands encompasses only those wetlands that directly adjoin rivers, lakes and other bodies of water. This is an extremely narrow interpretation of the Clean Water Act that could expose many wetlands across the U.S. to filling and development. Under this keystone environmental law, federal agencies take the lead in regulating water pollution, while state and local governments regulate land use. Wetlands are areas where land is wet for all or part of the year, so they straddle this division of authority. Swamps, bogs, marshes and other wetlands provide valuable ecological services, such as filtering pollutants and soaking up floodwaters. Landowners must obtain permits to discharge dredged or fill material, such as dirt, sand or rock, in a protected wetland. This can be time-consuming and expensive, which is why the Supreme Court’s ruling on May 25, 2023, will be of keen interest to developers,...

As wildfire risk rises in the West, wildland firefighters and officials are keeping a closer eye on the high mountains – regions once considered too wet to burn. The growing fire risk in these areas became startling clear in 2020, when Colorado’s East Troublesome Fire burned up and over the Continental Divide to become the state’s second-largest fire on record. The following year, California’s Dixie Fire became the first on record to burn across the Sierra Nevada’s crest and start down the other side. We study wildfire behavior as climate scientists and engineers. In a new study, we show that fire risk has intensified in every region across the West over the past four decades, but the sharpest upward trends are in the high elevations. In 2020, Colorado’s East Troublesome fire jumped the Continental Divide. AP Photo/David Zalubowski High mountain fires can create...