Willow Belden

 It’s official: The Environmental Protection Agency says Sublette County and parts of neighboring counties are violating federal air quality standards because ozone levels have gone above the legal limit multiple times in the past few years. It’s widely recognized that the problem stems from emissions in the oil and gas industry. When you get the right combination of two types of emissions -- NOX and VOCs  -- coupled with certain wintertime weather conditions, ground-level ozone forms. Ground-level ozone is the main component of smog and can cause respiratory problems.

Laramie-based author Alyson Hagy has a new novel that just came out called “Boleto.” She joins us to talk with us about the book, which tells a story of a young man from rural Wyoming named Will Testerman.

The Environmental Protection Agency has sent a letter to governor Matt Mead, saying it will be formally listing Sublette County as an area in violation of federal air quality standards.

Over the past several years, emissions from oil and gas development near Pinedale have caused ground-level ozone to form. On some days, the pollution has rivaled that of major cities and has caused respiratory problems for area residents.

The Sierra Club and Wild Earth Guardians are suing the federal government over planned coal leases in the Powder River Basin.

The BLM has approved the sale of four new coal leases in the area, which could produce up to two billion tons of coal. The Sierra Club’s Connie Wilbert says her group worries about the greenhouse gas emissions that could result from the additional mining and subsequent use of the coal.

Wyoming will have six political parties on the ballot this year, which is more than in any election since the 1930s.

State Election Director Peggy Nighswonger says minor parties often try to get on the ballot in presidential election years, but they often fail to get the required number of signatures from registered voters. She says this year, they’re more organized.

The BLM has drafted an Environmental Impact Statement on a proposed uranium mine near Rawlins. The project would stretch over more than 4,000 acres of land and would use in-situ technology, where they inject fluid into the ground to extract the uranium and then bring it to the surface to process.

Dennis Carpenter, the BLM’s Rawlins Field Manager, says the project doesn’t raise many concerns.

“It’s a pretty small project by most of our standards,” Carpenter said, adding that the area has been mined in the past.

Wyoming lawmakers are considering further reforms to the state’s pension system. This year, the legislature lowered pension benefits for new employees  and changed the way cost-of-living adjustments are made.

But Cheyenne Representative Bryan Pedersen  says he is convinced that even with the changes, Wyoming won’t have e

“This will at best float us three to five years. It’s a band-aid that will kick the can further down the road. And that’s with the plan fully performing at the eight percent estimated average annual return.”

This week, there was an explosion at an oil rig near Douglas. Natural gas spewed from the well, and about 50 people were evacuated from their homes. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden visited Douglas shortly after the accident and put together this montage of residents’ reactions.

A group called One Million Bones is hosting genocide awareness events across the country Saturday, including in Cheyenne.

Amanda King, a UW student who’s helping out with the program, says people will gather and create a symbolic mass grave, with fake bones, to represent victims of genocide.

“As the symbolic grave is laid in front of us, we’ll discuss contemporary cases of genocide, and we’ll educate the participants who are there on conflicts that are currently happening today,” King said.

The historic Territorial Prison in Laramie is opening a new exhibit this weekend, which focuses on the era after the facility served as a prison – when the University of Wyoming used it for agriculture research. Willow Belden spoke with Deborah Amend, the superintendent of the prison, before the opening to hear about the history of the site, and the important studies that were done there while it was used for ag. She says the prison was built 140 years ago, as a federal territorial prison … but things changed in 1809, when Wyoming became a state.

Seniors at the University of Wyoming will be graduating next week, and while the job market is still tight around the country, prospects for finding employment have improved significantly this year. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden Reports.

Increase in coal exports on the horizon
There are more new ports designed for coal export being proposed in the U.S. and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin coal producers are training their eye on the developments. With some of the most efficient economies of scale in the world, a larger percentage of PRB coal could be making its way across the ocean soon. What would that mean for Wyoming and the global community? Irina Zhorov reports. 

The Game and Fish Department plans to ban sage grouse hunting in most of northeast Wyoming. Parts of eastern Wyoming are already off limits, and now, sage grouse hunting will be prohibited in Sheridan, Johnson, Campbell and Weston counties as well. I spoke with Tom Christiansen, the sage grouse coordinator for Game and Fish. He says the agency is making the change in large part because of public concern over dwindling sage grouse populations. But he also says stopping hunting won’t solve the problem, because hunting doesn’t actually affect sage grouse populations that much.

April is sexual assault awareness month, and Becca Fisher from SAFE Project, a group that provides services to victims, joins us to talk about the problem. She says nearly half of Wyoming women are sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. The incidents can range from unwanted touching to all-out rape, and Fisher says common scenarios are a little different than you might expect.

A team of UW engineering students recently traveled to Alabama to compete in NASA’s annual moon buggy race. The race is for high school and college students who have designed and built non-motorized vehicles that resemble lunar rovers. Teams from all over the world participated, on a race course meant to resemble the surface of the moon. The winning moon buggies aren’t actually going to space, but as Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden reports, the project is a major learning experience for the students.

April is sexual assault awareness month and Becca Fisher of the Albany County SAFE Project, which assists victims, says many people have misperceptions about rape.

“A lot of us are taught to believe that it’s going to be a stranger jumping out from the bushes, or someone on a dark street when we’re alone walking at night. And that’s not typically how it happens.”

Fisher says in about 90 percent of sexual assault cases, the victim and the perpetrator know each other, sometimes very well.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is planning to make most of northeast Wyoming off limits to sage grouse hunting. Tom Christiansen, the agency’s sage grouse coordinator, says that’s because of public concern about declining populations in the area.

“We do hear concerns about, ‘Well, why are you continuing to hunt when sage grouse populations, especially in some parts of the state, like northeast Wyoming, are declining and are proposed for listing?” Christiansen said.

A recent UW masters student named Mark Pedri is producing a documentary aimed at evaluating which types of energy production are best, in terms of cost, environmental impact and other factors.

Pedri visited energy-producing facilities across Wyoming, including coal-fired power plants, wind farms, oil rigs and solar installations, and interviewed workers and managers. He traveled by bicycle, to make the project more exciting for himself and for his audience.

Four UW students are heading to Alabama this weekend for the annual NASA moonbuggy race. They’ll be racing a contraption they designed and built, which is meant to resemble a lunar rover. The racecourse mimics the moon, with craters and other obstacles. Team member Davis Fay says UW’s moonbuggies in past years have had some spectacular crashes, so his team’s goal this year is to finish the course upright – at least for the first round of racing. “You get two runs, and our strategy for the first one is just … finish the course and don’t break anything,” Fay said.

The National Elk Refuge has put GPS collars on additional elk in the past few weeks.

Lori Iverson with the Refuge says that sofar, 88 elk have been collared, so that researchers can track the animals’ movement and habitat usethroughout the region.

“That information can design hunting seasons to meet objectives,” Iverson said. “In this corner of northwestern Wyoming, it can monitor the effects of wolves on elk density, and just evaluate the effects of elk density on potential disease transmission as well.”

The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to keep hundreds of wild horses at a private ranch near Laramie. The BLM removes hundreds of horses from public lands each year to prevent the range from getting over-crowded, and they usually send the horses to long-term pastures in the mid-west.

Dennis Carpenter is the BLM’s Field Manager in Rawlins. He says keeping the horses here should be slightly cheaper, because the ranch will be open to tourists – for a fee.

Wyoming received a “D” letter-grade for its laws pertaining to charter schools. That’s according to a new report by the Center for Educational Reform.

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately-run and often have a specific focus, like science or the arts.

The study ranked states based on how they regulate and fund charter schools, and Wyoming came out as number 35.

The University of Wyoming is getting access to a portion of the supercomputer that the National Center for Atmospheric Research is building in Cheyenne, but it’s also building it’s own smaller supercomputer on campus.

Bryan Shader is the special assistant to the vice president of research and economic development at UW. He says the campus supercomputer will be faster and more powerful than the computing systems the university has now.

Climb Wyoming has received recognition as one of the country’s top ten programs helping to move people out of poverty. The honor came from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Administration for Children and Families, among other agencies.

The nonprofit Climb Wyoming helps struggling single mothers find work by providing job training, parenting advice and professional counseling.

Wyoming has experienced record high temperatures this month – in some cases more than 20 degrees above average. The National Weather Service says that’s because winter storms coming in from the west have been following slightly different tracks than usual.

“The lows that have developed have either gone way to our south or have gone to our north,” said Chuck Baker, a lead forecaster in Riverton.

A doctoral student at the University of Wyoming has developed a new method for producing and selling vegetables. The student’s name is Nate Storey, and he’s designed a growing system in one of the university’s greenhouses that requires no fertilizer, produces virtually no waste and yields four times as much produce as traditional greenhouse setups. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden reports.

A new report by researchers at the University of Montana warns that unless energy development slows down, sage grouse populations in the Powder River Basin could die out. The study, which was commissioned by the BLM, was meant to determine whether the sage grouse population there can survive, given current oil and gas drilling activities, and what would happen to the birds if more drilling occurred or if there were new West Nile Virus outbreaks. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden spoke with Dave Naugle, who co-authored the report. He says the sage grouse population in the Powder River Basin has already declined by 82 percent as a result of energy development.

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A new report commissioned by the BLM warns that unless energy development in the Powder River Basin slows down, sage grouse populations there could die out.

Dave Naugle of the University of Montana co-authored the report. He says the sage grouse population in the Powder River Basin has already declined by 82 percent as a result of oil and gas drilling, and he says a disease outbreak similar to recent West Nile Virus occurrences could mean that fewer than 100 males would be left. That, Naugle says, “would functionally mean that that population could go extinct. ”