Sorted by date Results 1 - 8 of 8
CASPER — Wyoming’s grizzly bears — and the humans who manage them — have had a standout year. Conflicts, the official designation for confrontations between bears and people or their property, were the lowest the state has recorded since 2014. And the six bears relocated in 2022 represent the least since the ‘90s, said Dan Thompson, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s large carnivore supervisor. “It felt all summer, and into the fall, like a low-conflict year,” Thompson said. But the agency was reluctant to declare the year a success too e...
CASPER — Members of a major railroad union voted to reject a tentative contract deal, union leaders announced Monday, renewing the possibility of a strike that could shut down the country’s railroads — and several key Wyoming industries — early next month. The deal resulted from last-minute negotiations convened by the Biden administration in mid-September, when tens of thousands of unionized rail workers were readying to strike over working conditions. The agreement added a pay raise, an extra day off, protected benefits and guarant...
CASPER — Land use revenue earmarked for Wyoming’s schools dropped for the fifth year in a row, the Legislative Service Office reported Monday. It’s the least the state has earned from activities on school trust lands in at least 15 years. The majority of Wyoming state lands are managed to support K-12 education. Money earned from leasing those lands for grazing or mineral extraction goes toward public schools, along with up to one-third of the state mineral royalties generated there. Wyoming has accrued about $2.9 billion from activities on it...
CASPER — Questions about the advanced nuclear reactor planned for Kemmerer have circulated since the day TerraPower announced it would be built in Wyoming. People living near the candidate sites wanted to know where the spent fuel would go. If — and how — the electricity the plant generated would be taxed. Whether workers would be rehired from the coal plant it ended up replacing, and if the coal mine the plant relied on would survive. Wyoming, home to the vestiges of a booming uranium industry, still houses plenty of untapped uranium reser...
CASPER — On unit 2 of the Jim Bridger power plant, Wyoming isn’t taking no for an answer. State leaders and operating utility Rocky Mountain Power have doubled down on their commitment to resolving a dispute over pollution controls, and keeping the unit open past its impending April compliance deadline, after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced this past week that it would propose disapproving the state’s alternative plan. The rejection wasn’t exactly surprising, according to Randall Luthi, Gov. Mark Gordon’s chief energy ad...
CHEYENNE — Unit 2 of the Jim Bridger Power Plant is six weeks from violating federal air quality regulations, putting the plant at risk of premature retirement, Gov. Mark Gordon revealed Monday. In a strongly worded letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Gordon warned that Wyoming would sue the agency over disputed pollution control measures at Bridger units 1 and 2 if the state’s alternative solution, which regulators submitted to the EPA in May 2020, is not approved within the next 60 days. “I hope you will take advantage of th...
CASPER — The biggest coal-fired power plant in the country gets all of its coal from Wyoming. A second of its four units is now slated for retirement, halving total capacity before the end of the decade. Three Wyoming mines — Buckskin, Caballo and Eagle Butte — supply most of the millions of short tons of coal burned annually by Georgia’s 3,520-megawatt Robert W. Scherer Power Plant. Last year, roughly 10% of the mines’ combined coal production went to Scherer, according to the Energy Information Administration. Unit 3 is expected to shutter b...
CASPER – Some communities would balk at the idea of a company building an experimental power source on the edge of town. Glenrock is not one of them. Before the end of the year, developers of a new type of nuclear power plant will decide which of four Wyoming towns will house their project, and Glenrock wants to be selected. During a Wednesday meeting with the heads of TerraPower and Rocky Mountain Power, community leaders listened attentively to the companies’ pitch. Most were already on board with the project. A few safety questions did come...
