Park status won’t harm homeowners, supporters say

Editors note: Because of a production error, this story did not run in full in Saturday’s edition. The entire story is below: Upgrading Colorado National Monument to a national park won’t jeopardize property owners along its border, proponents of park status said. There will be no “buffer zone” around the park because it’s already surrounded by private property, as well as lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, said Terri Chappell of Grand ...

---

2 Sentinel veterans 
to lead newsroom

A new but familiar management team is now leading The Daily Sentinel newsroom. Mike Wiggins, 37, who has run newsgathering operations for the past year as city editor, is now the Sentinel’s managing editor. Duffy Hayes, 41, who has run the GJSentinel.com website in addition to his most recent assignment as the assistant city editor and Mesa County reporter, will take over as city editor. Laurena Mayne Davis, 49, who took over as managing editor in 2009, will move to new duties as ...

---

Sign near Times Square pushes Web interest in area

Manhattanites navigating the urban canyons of New York City have sought succor in the real canyons of Colorado National Monument, enough so that they represent the third-largest number of hits on the Grand Junction Visitor and Convention Bureau mobile website. The hits on the site are tied to the ad that ran at 42nd and 7th streets near Times Square, signs that reminded New Yorkers that there was something more than asphalt and concrete. “They walk by that gorgeous picture and they ...

---

Obama should OK Keystone pipeline, Tipton says at hearing

When President Barack Obama announced Friday he was cutting red tape on federal construction projects, he was framed by heavy equipment owned by a man who testified Thursday in Congress that presidential delays on the Keystone XL pipeline hurt his company. Peter Bowe, president of Ellicott Dredges in Baltimore, testified before a subcommittee of the House Small Business Committee chaired by U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., that delays in the permitting of the pipeline from Canada to Texas ...

---

Park status won’t harm landowners, backers say

Upgrading Colorado National Monument to a national park won’t jeopardize property owners along its border, proponents of park status said. There will be no “buffer zone” around the park because it’s already surrounded by private property as well as lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, said Terri Chappell of Grand Valley Region Citizens for a National Park, noting that she spoke to National Park Service officials. Opponents of park status are ...

---

Dominguez-Escalante plan includes
some road closures in Cactus Park

The management plan for the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area could result in road closures, particularly in the Cactus Park area, intended to result in a usable network of roads and trails. The idea is to make Cactus Park easy to negotiate, even for newcomers to the area but familiar in general with national conservation areas, officials said. The Grand Junction Office of the Bureau of Land Management on Friday unveiled the draft resource management plan for the 210,000-acre ...

---

No park, 
say foes 
of status 
change

Opponents of national park status for Colorado National Monument are gathering signatures on the Redlands with plans to offer them to former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo. McInnis said the petition-gatherers have some good points, but he’s not a full-out opponent of national park status. “I’m just not sure we’ve addressed the concerns,” McInnis said Thursday. Redlands resident Ruth Ehlers, however, credited McInnis with providing her with information about ...

---

Area conservative group caught in IRS dragnet, member says

The Western Slope Conservative Alliance is among as many as 5,000 organizations across the nation whose applications for nonprofit status were stymied by the Internal Revenue Service, a Grand Junction man said. After officials with the organization filed their first requests for nonprofit status in 2010, they received information back in 2012. “They sat on it for that long,” Kevin McCarney of the alliance said. The organization has since changed its name in part because of the ...

---

Hickenlooper orders plan for water conservation

Colorado water officials are to draft a state water plan by December 2014 under an executive order issued on Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper. The plan calls on the Colorado Water Conservation Board to head the planning process, working with other state agencies, river basin roundtables and other organizations to preserve agriculture in rural Colorado and while accommodating population growth. The water conservation board met Wednesday in Grand Junction. “Colorado deserves a ...

---

Rep. Tipton calls for probe 
of IRS actions

Further investigation is needed into the Internal Revenue Service’s handling of conservative organizations seeking nonprofit status, U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., said Tuesday. Tipton in March 2012 had raised questions about the IRS practices “that seem to be targeting the tax-exempt sector through new requests for additional information, as well as what I’m told is an unnecessary increase in audits on this particular sector.” Tipton also signed an April 23, ...

---

Grand Junction grad measures his success

The Tsinnijinnie Russell who walked on Tuesday with 347 of his fellow Grand Junction High School Tigers to claim their diplomas at Stocker Stadium isn’t the same one who walked into the doors of the school four years ago. He’s a greater—and a lesser—person. Lesser in the sense that he weighed in about 165 pounds, or 100 pounds less than he weighed walking into Grand Junction High. It was a feat he managed by running and eating almost nothing but cereal, he ...

---

Grand Junction alumnus presents colors as member of elite honor guard

A member of the Grand Junction High School Class of 2012 presented the colors Tuesday at Stocker Stadium for the Class of 2013 commencement. Airman 1st Class Grant Kampa, a member of the Air Force Honor Guard, whose service includes the inauguration of President Barack Obama, happened to be home on a recruiting trip when the opportunity arose to serve at the commencement. Kampa qualified to try out for the Honor Guard during basic training and was among the six selected for the Honor ...

---

Fruita Monument ceremony a show of hope, victory

The pomp and color so evident in Stocker Stadium Tuesday evening during Fruita Monument High School’s graduation ceremonies provided a distinct sheen over countless stories of struggle and persistence, as it does every year. Kylie Goetz is one of those stories. She has grown up in the shadow of cancer, one dark enough that it might have meant her mother, Nora, might not see her graduate. Nora Goetz, however, on Tuesday did see her daughter walk with her classmates and collect her ...

---

Water watchers: April helped - a little

April snowshowers brought some relief to the parched Colorado high country, but they look more like an aberration than a trend, speakers said at the State of the Rivers meeting on Monday. “I guess we can be really thankful for April of this year because if it hadn’t been for April, we would have been in a real bad spot,” Aldis Strautins, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service said to about 60 people at the meeting in the Colorado Mesa University Center. The ...

---

Man lays family’s claim to oil shale

A Grand Junction man says his family’s oil shale claims covering thousands of acres in northwest Colorado are valid and an analysis by the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder says he might have a point. The Bureau of Land Management says the odds are against that, but that it’s likely something courts would have to decide. Researchers at the Center of the American West at CU began looking last year into the claims held by the Smalley Creek Oil ...

---

Monument official leaves to supervise eastern fossil beds

The National Park Service official who guided Colorado National Monument as an interim head will take over as the new superintendent of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in eastern Colorado. Michelle Wheatley is to take over the 6,000-acre national monument May 28. “She’s really irreplaceable,” said Barbara Bowman, division director of the Grand Junction Visitor and Convention Bureau. “We built so much fabulous tourism” with Wheatley. Wheatley was ...

---

Jim Evans fathered U.S. revenue plan for counties

A memorial service will be Saturday for Jim Evans, who for years led the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado and spearheaded discussions about oil shale, natural gas and other resources. It also was Evans who sparked the idea of having the federal government pay the equivalent of property taxes to counties with vast tracts of federal land. Evans died Sunday. He was 73. Working for the National Association of Counties in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1970s, urged the chief of ...

---

Sen. Udall helps draft an effort to stop ‘mindless spending cuts’

U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins are working on legislation that would give the president great latitude to manage the effects of budget sequestration. Collins and Udall previously carried legislation aimed at blunting the effects of sequestration on the Federal Aviation Administration, which furloughed air-traffic controllers in response to the 5 percent reduction in the agency’s budget. The legislation to be introduced next week will allow the ...

---

Valuations a ‘mixed bag’ this year, assessor says

Property valuations in Mesa County are “a mixed bag,” this year, Assessor Barbara Brewer said. Notices of valuation were mailed last week to property owners in the county, marking the beginning of the appeal period, which ends June 3. Once appeals are completed, Brewer will make a formal report to the Mesa County Commission in July. Last year, assessed valuations of property in Mesa County amounted to $2.028 billion, down from the previous year’s $2.3 billion. The ...

---

Retired rangers eye drilling near national parks

The Bureau of Land Management has tools to avoid conflicts between the energy industry and national parks, a small organization of retired National Park Service rangers says. The organization, Park Rangers for Our Lands, came together around concerns about leasing near Dinosaur National Monument in northwest Colorado and Mesa Verde National Park in the southwest corner of the state. Management of drilling in the vicinity of national parks should be “smart from the start,” ...

---

Special Olympics coming to Grand Junction

The Flame of Hope for Colorado Special Olympians will flicker across western Colorado on Saturday as the torch that precedes the 2013 Summer Games arrives in Grand Junction. The Law Enforcement Torch Run will escort the flame from the Pepsi Center in Denver to the Aspen Valley Harley Davidson store in Glenwood Springs, then travel to the Grand Junction Harley Davidson, 2747 Crossroads Blvd., arriving about 4 p.m. Saturday. Arrival of the flame sets the stage for the June 1-2 Summer Games ...

---

Senate panel OKs bill for small hydro projects

A measure that would allow for quicker construction of hydropower projects on canals, pipes and other U.S. Bureau of Reclamation conduits on Wednesday passed its first test in the Senate. U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who plans to sign on as a cosponsor of the measure, S. 306, voted for it in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which approved the bill. The next step for the measure is a vote on the Senate floor. The measure by U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., already ...

---

Use lumber mills to manage forests, Colorado senator says

Lumber mills have a new place in the thinking of U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo. “I now see them as a way to manage the forest and reduce fire risk,” Udall said Tuesday in an interview with The Daily Sentinel. “In this era of megafires, we should leverage every available tool.” Udall last week visited Montrose Forest Products, which has reopened after being purchased by the Wyoming-based Neiman family. He said he will press for the continuation of stewardship ...

---

Airport Authority eyes $8 million bond issue for West Star Aviation expansion

Two corporate jets already have appointments in December 2014 for a yet-to-constructed paint hangar at West Star Aviation Inc.—the next step in West Star’s expansion at Grand Junction Regional Airport. Those expansion plans were to get a vote this morning from the Grand Junction Regional Airport Authority, which is considering issuing $8 million in bonds for the hangar, which will make it possible for West Star to service the biggest of corporate jets, including one still on ...

---

West Star project could bring 150 jobs

The Grand Junction Regional Airport Authority on Tuesday will vote on a project that will create as many as 150 jobs at West Star Aviation Inc., painting large corporate jets. The authority will vote on a plan to build an $8 million, 45,500-square-foot hangar at West Star, for a business expansion that will attract aircraft from around the world. In the first year, the project will involve 40 new jobs paying an average of $52,000 a year. Most of the hiring will be done within the ...

---

Riding popularity grows for badlands above Gunnison Gorge

The sons — and grandsons — of men who spent their formative years in the badlands overlooking the Gunnison Gorge today spend their free time on the same lands, now called the Flat Top-Peach Valley OHV Area. “Originally it was more of a local spot,” which might have been as much home to woodsies — parties in the desert with alcohol and minors — as to off-road riding, said Karen Tucker, manager of the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area. Now the ...

---

Riders criticize BLM effort to manage area

From a flat overlooking Grand Junction to the south, with the Bookcliffs still miles away to the north, a small band of dirt bikers prepares for an evening run into the setting sun. It’s nearly two hours before the final rays of day turn the cliffs from murky brown to purple, plenty of time to drive out in a cloud of alkali dust and be back at sundown. Taming this section of Zone L, as it’s called on the Bureau of Land Management maps, makes about as much sense as trying to ...

---

North desert’s 
dusty future

The grayish-brown, dusty knobs, arroyos, humps, hummocks and hills of the desert north of Grand Junction at their best look like rumpled elephant skin left to dry unevenly under the western Colorado sun. For many, that soil is uninspiring, a terra incognita, and best left that way. To others, it’s an Adventureland that Walt Disney could never hope to duplicate. To the Bureau of Land Management, the lumpy land poses a multiuse challenge. And to at least one Grand Junction man, they ...

---

Immigration-reform supporters champion their cause at Grand Junction rally

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., on Thursday started his western Colorado pitch for an immigration measure crafted with seven other senators, a measure that got high marks at a rally in downtown Grand Junction. A national agricultural organization welcomed the legislation put together by Bennet, three other Democrats and three Republicans, Bennet said after meeting with representatives of several organizations Thursday in the old Mesa County Courthouse. “It’s a lot for people to ...

---

Team effort needed on wildfires, Tipton says

A tube containing ash captured as it flowed down Waldo Canyon will come in handy when explaining the continuing effects of wildfire to members of Congress, U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., said. Tipton was part of a field committee hearing in Denver on Thursday aimed in part at drawing attention to his measure that would give local and state officials a strong say in management of nearby national forests. Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton was among the witnesses who testified at the ...

---

Rep.Tipton argues for ski areas’ water rights

A skirmish over ski-area water rights is one aspect of efforts by federal agencies to wrest control of water from the states and concentrate it in the federal government, U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., said. The U.S. Forest Service “has come up with new ways to attempt takings of private water rights,” Tipton said during a hearing on how federal agencies deal with water rights in Washington, D.C. Durango Mountain Resort has been denied access to water by the Forest Service, ...

---

New glimpses of history go on display

Every corner in the Museum of the West has a new look with Saturday’s opening of the downtown Grand Junction museum for the 2013 season. “Every time you walk around a corner, you’re going to see something different,” said David Bailey, curator of history. The museum will unveil new exhibits each spring now, Bailey said. Visitors are now greeted with a look at baseball as it was played in western Colorado before and just after the turn of the 20th century, hear the ...

---

Oil shale corporation suffers tech setback

American Shale Oil Corp. is back at the drawing board, working on a device that can heat oil shale far below the surface. AMSO’s heater is back in Canada, where crews are working to reverse mechanical failures, Vice President Roger Day said Friday. “We are remanufacturing,” Day said, “We’re going through another cycle.” AMSO’s is one of several efforts in western Colorado aimed at producing oil from oil shale without disturbing hundreds of feet ...

---

‘Primo’ bragged 
of slinging meth, 
court filing says

Rumors of a western Colorado drug ring that dealt hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine and cocaine got confirmation when a confidential informant whispered in the ear of a federal agent in January. That conversation set off a series of events that led to the taking down of the drug ring with the arrests of 25 members. In all, a grand jury indicted 36 people in connection with its dealings. The reputed head of the ring, Francisco Peralta-Cabral of Rifle, is in custody and authorities are ...

---

Use water wisely in 2013, managers plead

Grand Valley residents will be asked to limit their water use, but no measures aimed at limiting use by high rates or rationing are on the horizon. The main suppliers of domestic water — Clifton Water, Grand Junction, Ute Water Conservancy District and Palisade — asked Friday, though, that residents water and wash with one eye on the state’s parched peaks. The winter of 2012-2013 “makes for two years in a row of below-average snow and moisture levels,” said ...

---

Uranium license OK’d by health department

With a major regulatory hurdle out of its way — again — Energy Fuels Resources Corp. is now looking to the uranium market for the signal to move ahead with construction of a mill. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reissued the radioactive-materials license Thursday after officials culled though six days’ worth of testimony, much of it under oath, taken in Nucla late last year. The license comes, however, as uranium prices have tumbled to lows not ...

---

Drug ring rocked

The beginning of the end of a drug ring long rumored to operate in Grand Junction took shape Tuesday, when local and federal officials stopped a car bound for Las Vegas to collect 3.5 kilograms of cocaine in exchange for $95,500 in cash. That event set off the snapping of a dragnet that was laid out by a Mesa County grand jury indictment handed up April 16 against 36 people on drug-
related charges. Those identified as leaders of the organization also face racketeering ...

---

Drug ring spreads to Mexico

A Grand Junction-centered drug ring has ties to a Mexican kingpin, authorities said this morning in a press conference in the Mesa County Justice Center. Authorities are hoping to work with Mexican officials to arrest a man identified only as “Cain,” Dan Rubinstein, Mesa County chief deputy district attorney, said today at a press conference in which he announced that a four-month investigation had resulted in the arrests of 25 people since Tuesday. Eleven more remain at ...

---

Uranium price keeps new projects on hold

Energy Fuels Inc. is fulfilling contracts for uranium at well above the current spot price, but it’s waiting with the rest of the industry to see that price nearly double before investing in new projects. “Right now, we’re trying to hunker down a little bit and watch our pennies,” Curtis Moore, director of communications and legal affairs for Energy Fuels, said Wednesday. Energy Fuels is fulfilling contracts with utilities for about $56 a pound, well over the ...

---

Opponents: Redraw plan 
for uranium
 development

The U.S. Department of Energy should go back to the beginning and reconsider the options available for the management of 25,000 acres in the Uravan Mineral Belt, environmental activists said. The Energy Department is conducting public hearings on its plans for the land, which is divided into 31 leases. Under the preferred alternative in the study, the Energy Department would continue with its leasing program for 10-year periods. Another option calls for the agency to restore the land, ...

---

Uranium workers may get more help

Downwinders, drillers and so-called post-‘71 uranium miners would be eligible for radiation-exposure compensation under changes to the 24-year-old law proposed in the Senate. Senators from Colorado, Idaho and New Mexico are asking that the law, which has pumped more than $1.7 billion to former nuclear-industry workers, be expanded to cover more people and clear up contradictions in existing law. Current law authorizes compensatory payments totaling $150,000 to miners, millers and ...

---

Theos remembered as popular ‘rascal’

Nick Theos, a Meeker rancher, state legislator and, to some, an unlikely peacemaker, died April 11 at age 92. “He was a scalawag, a rascal, a sonofagun,” said Kathleen Sullivan Kelley, who described her relationship with Theos as that of a “bitter political opponent” and a “good friend.” Theos took Kelley and her husband, Reed, to Republican Lincoln Day dinners and they reciprocated by taking him to Jackson-Jefferson Day dinners, where Theos was once ...

---

Elections chief leery of proposal to allow same-day registration

Legislation that would allow for Election Day voter registration in Colorado demands too much too soon of an unproven computer system, Secretary of State Scott Gessler said. Gessler, a Republican, said he and his office were “frozen out” of talks in which HB1303 was drafted by Democratic legislators and liberal organizations. As he has learned of the contents of the bill, “I’ve become more and more alarmed about the procedural aspects of it,” Gessler told The ...

---

Montrose judge issues warrant for dog’s owner

The owner of Dutch the dog is now in a bit of dutch himself. Montrose Municipal Judge Richard Brown issued a bench warrant Thursday for Jeremiah Aguilar, the U.S. Army veteran who has said Dutch is a service dog that calms Aguilar’s symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Aguilar has refused to turn over Dutch to authorities for euthanasia, which was ordered in response to his attack on a former owner last year. Aguilar was to have explained to Brown on Thursday why he had ...

---

Landmark gone in 2 quick blasts

The old smokestacks at the Cameo generating station looked like gray bars set against a light gray background Wednesday morning as puffs of dark smoke billowed out from their bases and the canyon walls shook with the report of explosives. The west stack, the taller and newer one, went first. It wobbled like a Star Wars Galactic Empire Walker under attack by Ewoks, then toppled and finally collapsed. The second stack, the shorter, older one, was less stubborn, tumbling more compliantly ...

---

Forest Service to pay resorts’ legal fees in water rights lawsuit

The U.S. Forest Service will pay $125,000 to the National Ski Area Association for its attorney fees in a case the association brought to stop the agency from demanding new water rights. U.S. District Judge William Martinez approved an agreement between the agency and association after the ski areas sought $163,000 in attorney fees for the case, according to court papers. The agreement to pay attorney fees drew a scathing response from U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., who said that ...

---

Senators: Ranchers should get drought aid

Protection for ranchers from the ravages of drought should be included in the 2013 Farm Bill, senators from Colorado and Wyoming said. U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., wrote to the Senate Agriculture Committee to include disaster assistance for livestock owners in legislation being crafted. “Permanent baseline funding for livestock disaster assistance programs will provide our ranchers and farmers the confidence they need to make business decisions that will ...

---

Tipton forest management bill on hold

A bill that would give governors and local authorities greater control over dangerously dry conditions in national forests is awaiting action by the House Natural Resources Committee. U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., is optimistic he’ll soon get a vote from the full committee after the measure passed a subcommittee last week, Tipton’s spokesman said. Tipton, however, has yet to find a Senate sponsor for the measure, HR818, the Healthy Forest Management and Wildfire Prevention ...

---

Ski area water rights topic of focus groups

The U.S. Forest Service is turning to focus groups to help it deal with a water-rights directive that landed the agency a slapdown in federal court. Forest Service officials are to conduct focus-group discussions Tuesday about the clause, which they hope to publish in August and then begin the process of collecting public comment in preparation for adoption by February. The process being undertaken is “bizarre beyond belief,” said Glenn Porzak, a Colorado water lawyer who ...

---

harmon boys

 ...

---