Your source for news in Hot Springs County
Your source for news in Hot Springs County
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Wyoming’s largest energy supplier claims state regulators illegally usurped federal authority over electrical rates Wyoming’s largest energy supplier sued state regulators Thursday claiming they wrongly reduced a rate hike by disregarding federal requirements. Filed in U.S. District Court by PacifiCorp, the parent company of Rocky Mountain Power, the suit asks the court to overturn the commission’s January decision to approve only part of an electricity rate hike sought by the Oregon company, which is the largest utility operating in Wyomi...
by Angus M. Thuermer Jr., WyoFile.com Wyoming Game and Fish commissioners backed agency staff last week and approved compensation for trophy game damage to stock that amounted to $388,696 less than two ranchers claimed. With one dissenting vote in the two separate cases, the appointed citizen commission approved $71,339 to Josh Longwell of HD Ranch and $11,626 to Christian Peterson of Crandall Creek Ranch. Longwell claimed $322,685 in stock and other losses to grizzly bears and mountain lions; Peterson claimed $128,857 for losses to grizzlies a...
A judge decided Monday to reduce by $205,483 an arbitration panel’s award to a Hot Springs County rancher for cattle lost to grizzly bears. In a letter to attorneys in the case, District Court Judge Bill Simpson of Cody sided with the Game and Fish Department and Commission who had agreed to pay Thermopolis-area rancher Josh Longwell only $61,202. That sum would cover the value of 20 calves verified as lost to grizzly bears in 2018, adjusted by a 3.5-times multiplier to account for missing calves likely taken by the trophy game animal but n...
Wyoming regulators voted 4-1 on Nov. 10 to permit Aethon Energy to pump millions of gallons of pollutants into an underground aquifer near Shoshoni that critics say is too valuable to pollute. The Dallas investment firm argued through attorney Tom Throne that it would be uneconomic and impractical to use the 15,000-foot-deep Madison aquifer for nearby towns’ or cities’ domestic supplies. That’s one reason to grant the company an exemption to federal Clean Water Act rules and regulations, he said. “We clearly fall into that category,” Throne sa...
by Angus M. Thuermer Jr., WyoFile.com Via Wyoming News Exchange A powerful state senator chided environmental regulators Thursday after they proposed tightening the amount of pollutants a company can release from the Moneta Divide gas- and oilfield. Former Senate president and current chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee Eli Bebout (R-Riverton) wrote the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality saying members of his appropriations committee are concerned the agency will “backtrack” on agreements they made with Aethon Energy. The...
by Angus M. Thuermer Jr., WyoFile.com Via Wyoming News Exchange Aethon Energy violated environmental regulations as it dumped Moneta Divide oilfield wastewater into Fremont County creeks above Boysen Reservoir, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality asserts in a letter. DEQ inspectors found “black sediment deposits” and foam in Alkali and Badwater creeks and “free oil” at a discharge point above them, the environmental agency wrote in a Dec. 17, 2019 letter of violation to an Aethon manager. Inspectors identified the black muck, w...
WyoFile.com Via Wyoming News Exchange An arbitration panel ruled Jan. 27 that Wyoming Game and Fish Department should pay a Hot Springs County rancher $339,927 for stock killed by grizzly bears and mountain lions, almost four times the offer that Wyoming Game and Fish Commission regulations allowed. The judgment for Josh Longwell of the HD Ranch outside Thermopolis came to 80% of the $422,971 damage claim he submitted to the state wildlife agency. The Game and Fish Department and commission had awarded Longwell $89,498 for the loss of dozens...
by Angus M. Thuermer Jr. WyoFile.com On Sept. 22, veteran Wyoming Game and Fish Biologist Bart Kroger climbed into a helicopter for an unwanted mission — to shoot eight wild bighorn rams from the air. He would fly over Owl Creek in Hot Springs County looking for 64 wild sheep that are part of the largest metapopulation in the contiguous 48 states. Some 3,800 animals live across the Absaroka and Owl Creek Mountains from Cody to the Wind River Reservation and beyond, a population that many sportsmen and other wildlife fans prize above all o...
THERMOPOLIS — At emotional hearings that drew hundreds, critics challenged regulators’ baseline assumptions that would allow the dumping of tons of pollutants above Boysen Reservoir while boosters heralded the jobs the 4,250-well Moneta Divide oil- and gas-field expansion would bring. More than 300 residents of Fremont and Hot Springs Counties packed separate hearings in Riverton and Thermopolis to tell the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality why it should approve or reject a discharge permit for Aethon Energy Operating, LLC and Bur...
by Angus M. Thuemer Jr. WyoFile.com Via Wyoming News Echange Millions of gallons of tainted water carrying thousands of tons of oilfield pollutants could flow into Boysen Reservoir and the Wind River each month under a proposed Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality permit, but without substantially degrading water quality, the agency says. The permit would authorize operators of the Moneta Divide oil and gas field, which is expected to expand to 4,250 wells, to discharge 8.27 million gallons a day of “produced water” from the field. Som...
