Thursday, 17 Jan 2002

No Small Thing

When your first novel wins the Booker Prize, sells 6 million copies, and earns you a publicity trip around the world, what do you do next? Arundhati Roy, author of the 1997 novel The God of Small Things, decided to switch from fiction to hard facts. In her newest book, Power Politics, Roy takes on the development of dams in India, the importance of public dissent, and the difficulty of negotiating her dual identity as an author and an activist. Michelle Nijhuis reviews the results, only on the Grist Magazine website.

She's Breaking Up, She's Breaking Up

The proposed reorganization of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which is currently in federal bankruptcy court, could spell bad news for thousands of acres of pristine landscape in the Sierra Nevada. Right now, PG&E is supervised by the California Public Utilities Commission, whose regulatory structure requires strict environmental protection and encourages public access to the company's 140,000 acres of watershed and timberlands. But all that could change if PG&E, which suffered huge financial losses during the state's energy crisis last spring, divides into 26 smaller corporations that would operate under the less-eco-friendly authority of federal energy regulators.

Long Live King County

How far would you go to stop urban sprawl? That's the question of the hour in King County, Wash., where a private anti-sprawl proposal is pushing the conservation envelope on several fronts. At issue is a proposed $185 million purchase of second-and third-growth forest just east of Seattle. The land purchase by the Evergreen Forest Trust would be the most expensive private conservation deal in U.S. history and would protect a huge tract of land -- 104,000 acres, or an area twice the size of Seattle itself. Sounds great, but there are several catches. First, parts of the land, all of which is currently owned by the timber company Weyerhaeuser, would continue to be logged for at least four decades, to help pay for the purchase cost. Second, the purchase would need special dispensation from the Internal Revenue Service or, failing that, congressional approval.

Making History

Historian-in-the-news Stephen Ambrose has pledged to donate $250,000 to help remove an aging dam near Missoula, Mont., at the confluence of the Clark and Blackfoot rivers, and clean up the 6.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment behind it. The Milltown Dam and its reservoir constitute the terminus of the nation's largest Superfund site and the final resting place of decades of mine waste; the debate about what to do with the dam and the reservoir has been heated, with environmental groups in favor of removing both and restoring the riverbeds, at an estimated cost of $120 million. The company responsible for the cleanup, Atlantic Richfield, prefers a $20 million initiative to strengthen the dam and leave the sediment untouched. The U.S. EPA will issue a decision in the spring. Ambrose is siding with the greenies, calling the cleanup a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to help the environment.